The Last Picture Show
In the fall of 2009, I visited the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV) in preparation for this show. The purpose of this trip was to collect as much source material as possible for the production of “The Last Picture Show”. For three days I scoured the AGGV and with a sketchbook, a camera and the gallery’s copier, I recorded its architectural details, historical documents, artworks and the enclosed garden.
This process of collecting source material is part of a methodology I have used for years where I create works based on existing images. Found images, most often pulled from library books, are disassembled and recombined on the canvas rewriting the original narrative. This process has taken me through the history of art allowing me to lift gilded edges from the wings of Baroque angels, cavorting lovers from Flemish Tapestries, hard edged and vibrant stripes from Modernist paintings and fighting cocks from Japanese woodblock prints. In 2007, I figured that a living institution would be a far better source of material than a library book, knowing that the combined history of the institution and its collection would be twice as rich. In 2008, the AGGV invited me to exhibit and work on “The Last Picture Show” began.
I knew from earlier research that physically the AGGV acts as a bridge between two distinct periods, joining a Victorian home to a Modern concrete building. I also knew that the gallery housed an extensive collection of Asian artifacts in addition to a number of significant works by Canadian artists. It was the merging and combining of difference and disparity embodied in the gallery that interested me. Difference as a strategy was a means I often employed in my work to heighten effect.
When I arrived that fall, gallery staff guided me through the numerous vaults and various rooms that make up the AGGV. Pulled from vault shelves and drawers were a number of works that I had singled out as being especially significant. Once settled, gallery staff graciously entrusted me to carry out my research largely unaccompanied and without encumbrance. For an artist such as myself, this was certainly a boon. To experience artworks outside of the constraints of the gallery, often cordoned off and guarded, restored much of the lost aura in these works. But what made the greatest impression on me during this visit was the cavernous and labyrinth-like quality of the buildings’ vaults, which shifted in size, height and layout depending upon which basement you were standing in, and also, the sheer volume of collected artefacts. It was apparent that the gallery had long outgrown its basement storage space. Objects were spilling out of their racks and drawers and into makeshift cartons and hallways—simply put, there was just so much stuff.
When I came back to Toronto, I began working on the studies for this show and in short order, my work space resembled that of the gallery’s vaults. Surrounded by all the images of the gallery, I created the four pictures that make up this exhibition. Each painting is made up from bits and pieces of the images I collected from the gallery and every motif can be found in the gallery’s collection or in this physical environment. In “The Last Picture Show,” the tradition of portraiture is referenced and I do believe that every artwork is a picture of the artist whether figurative or not. “The Last Picture Show” represents my feelings towards picture making, the art world in all of its manifestations, the nature of collecting and archiving culture and the artist’s role in this production line.
I would very much like to thank the staff at the AGGV for all their help in this project with a special thank-you to Nicole Stanbridge, Stephen Topher, Mary Jo Hughes and Barry Till.