Xpace Cultural Centre: Volume 5 Volume Centre: Cultural Xpace b h a f rr h c w e gg q 1 2 3 4 5 tt d ii j u k + E 6 7 8 9 0 n o w - mn op v l Xpace x Volume Issue 5 y v S z v Xpace Xpace Culture Centre is a membership driv- en artist-run centre supported by the OCAD Student Union and dedicated to providing emerging and student artists and design- ers with the opportunity to showcase their work in a professional setting. We program contemporary practices that respond to the interests and needs of our membership. As we program with shorter timelines this allows for us to respond to contemporary issues in the theory and aesthetics, keeping an up to the minute response to what is going on directly in our community. Volume Volume is Xpace Cultural Centre’s annual anthology of exhibition essays, interviews and support material. Volume acts as a snap shot of the programming that hap- pens every year at Xpace across our many exhibition spaces: our Main Space, Window Space, Project Space, and External Space. The essays included here demonstrate the breadth of exhibitions and artists that help to contribute to Xpace’s place as a vibrant part of Toronto and OCAD University’s arts community. This publication gathers togeth- er documentation covering programming from August 2013 - July 2014. t Co n Main Space Window Space Storied Telling 5 Don’t Go 50 Mystery Machine 10 Observations 54 Betrayal of the 14 Arrangements 57 Proper Medium Frank 60 Provisions 21 Chalk Form Census 64 Posts and Pillars 25 Live and Active Mories 68 Fado:11:45pm 32 Long Live the Working Class: Images Festival: 39 I am only interested in 71 Transcending Binaries what is not mine Tectonic Breaks 44 CASH4KARMA 77 s t en Project Space External Space Yellow Pages Catacomb 82 Inside the Village 114 by the Grange Stories 86 Plesure of A Lazy Laity 90 Twitch 117 Queenston Quarry 120 Roomies 94 Toronto Harbourfront 123 An Expedition 97 Mancave 101 SemiCycle 126 Holy Trannity 129 Bad Luck Amazon Giftcard 105 Personal Inventory 133 Myriad (No1) 109 1997 136 m ain Space Storied Telling Humboldt Magnussen August 9 - 31 Ella Dawn McGeough 2013 Alexis Boyle Brette Gabel Curated by Amber Landgraff “The storyteller takes what he tells from experience – his own or that reported by others. And he in turn makes it the experi- ence of those who are listening to his tale.” Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller Top Bottom Ella Dawn McGeough Alexis Boyle An Average Sunset (Pegasus) Moving Mountains 6 Top Bottom Brette Gabel Humboldt Magnussen Nightmare Quilts Performance 7 There is nothing I like better than a good story Similarly, Ella Dawn McGeough’s jacket, An told correctly. The telling of the story matters. Average Sunset (Pegasus), becomes active The ways in which ideas and moments are through absence. The position of the jacket, lovingly strung together, woven intricately into hung on the back of a chair with arms extended, a bigger picture. I crave stories messy with references the idea of an absent human body details – I want to live with the details, keep wearing the jacket. The stunning aesthetic of them close, to treasure the way that details can the jacket draws the viewer’s attention and make a story whole. The exhibition Storied Tell- desire, where people want to be that body ing explores the idea of the storyteller, shifting wearing the jacket. At the same time, during the the role of narrator from the artist to the object run of the exhibition the jacket will be going “on and back again. As a curator I am fascinated tour.” In it’s absence, posters will publicize the by the ways that telling about a work functions jacket’s alternative location. Mimicking the aes- as a story. What are the stories that we tell? thetics of late 70s/early 80s metal tour posters, When Francis Alÿs describes why he devel- the jacket becomes an active object, traveling ops his artworks around the idea of a story or through different locations. Our desire for the fable he explains, “If the story is right, if it hits jacket becomes a desire to follow where it a nerve, it can propagate like a rumour. Stories goes: like band groupies, we go where it does, can pass through a place without the need to longing for the chance to bask in its presence. settle. They have a life of their own.” And it is this life, the ways that stories are transmitted, how they move and change, take on the details Brette Gabel’s Nightmare Quilts start with of the teller and the listener, and the ways that the telling of a story. Gabel invites friends and they are active and activate that Storied Telling strangers to tell her about their nightmares explores. These artists — Humboldt Magnussen, and then she transforms that description into Ella Dawn McGeough, Alexis Boyle and Brette quilt patterns. The beauty of the materiality of Gabel — are storytellers. They are mythmakers, the quilts, the skill with which they are made, capturers of dreams, movers of mountains, and the practice of quilt making itself – the and authors of entire worlds. At the same time, long rich history of quilting patterns carrying while the artists are the tellers of these stories, stories through both patterns and materials the works themselves take on an active role chosen – belie the content of the stories told: in the story’s transmission, shifting effortlessly our nightmares, those subconscious fears between performative and static objects. given form while we sleep. The coziness of a handmade quilt, the tactility and softness invites curling up with the quilt and revisiting those The tent from Alexis Boyle’s performance Mov- nightmares, a playful request of the dreamer ing Mountains, found here collapsed on the to sleep with their fears. Included in the show, floor, becomes activated, a living mountain, with Stitches, Shark Attack, and The Hag, creepily the presence of the artist’s body. In Moving tell of nightmares about doctors performing Mountains two people walk the tent across procedures on themselves, swimming in shark both a natural and urban landscape. The idea infested water, and the common feeling of of a moving mountain brings to mind a majestic dreaming that you’ve woken up but can’t move and terrifying picture, a rumbling shifting of the because an invisible demon is sitting on your earth, a magical impossible moment. Howev- chest holding you down. er, Boyle’s performance subverts this majesty, bringing humour to the work as the two figures in the tent move across the screen with stilted, hopping movements. Back in the gallery, with- out the performer’s presence, the tent, along with the two videos, exists as a document. The objects indicate a potential for movement, and in this way, attention is drawn to the absence of the two bodies that made up the mountain. 8 Finally, Humbolt Magnussen has created an These objects, they tell a story. They have a life entire world, which his works, Hunty Helmet, of their own. Maybe if we listen closely, Stealing of the Voice Beard, and a dinner party they will tell it to us. performance (taking place during the open- Amber Landgraff ing reception) revolve around. In this world, questions of identity and voice are personified through intricate characters with entire rich histories — small bits of which are revealed through each telling. Hunty Helmet is a wear- able mask representing the character Hunty, who was put on trial for stealing the Chrysan- themumalo’s voice beard — the same crime that is illustrated in Stealing of the Voice Beard. At the same time, Magnussen brings this fantasti- cal space into the real world through interactive performances, involving elaborate costumes and explanations of the rich history of the world that he has created. In this world, the Chrysan- themumalo has been missing for months. If you have any information about the Chrysanthe- mumalo’s whereabouts, please let us know. Humboldt Magnussen Performance Ephemera 9 Mystery Machine Augustina Saygnavong September 13 - October 5 Marvin Antonio 2013 Manden Murphy “What sort of satisfaction results from working in a group?” Maria Lind In the cartoon Scooby-Doo the characters often The artists in the Mystery Machine take Gillick’s find themselves stumbling onto the trail of an observation as a starting point for their tongue- unexplainable mystery: haunted houses, myste- in-cheek collaboration. Choosing to use the rious disappearances, and other conspiracies. Scooby-Doo reference as an instructional set- In the early incarnation of the show, through up, much like a punch line to a joke, Augustina almost sheer dumb luck, the Scooby Gang Saygnavong, Marvin Antonio, and Manden always manage to reveal that these paranormal Murphy, come together with three individual in- activities have often prosaic and human causes. terventions into the gallery space that are meant The common trope in Scooby-Doo is “Let’s to overlap and respond to each other, creating Split Up and Look for Clues,” where the gang a “whole.” Entering the gallery Saygnavong’s go their separate ways to investigate, coming light sculpture, Pipe Down, mirrors the venti- together at the end of the episode to reveal lation and plumping pipes in the gallery space, the answer to the mystery. However these providing a sobering illumination stretching revelations come about, not through good across the ceiling of the space. Bisecting the detective skills, but rather the bumbling antics gallery, Murphy’s Fuck Off Dad, creates both an of Scooby-Doo and Shaggy ruining Fred, Velma obstacle and a delineation of a new space with- and Daphne’s more intricate plans to catch in the gallery space, creating a forced perspe the villain in the act.