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Jana Sterbak, I Want You to Feel the Way I Do... (The Dress), 1984-1985, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa. Photo © NGC.

Massimo Guerrera, installation detail of Darboral (Ici, maintenant avec l’impermanence de nos restes), 2000, La Biennale de Montréal, 2000.

Mowry Baden, The Light that Separates Night from Day, 2003, Stainless steel, plastic, aluminum, 262 x 450 x 567 cm, Courtesy Diaz Contemporary, Toronto, Collection of the Artist.

Rebecca Belmore, Installation view of Architecture For A Colonial Landscape, 2006, Multi-media installation at aceart Inc., Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Rodney Latourelle, installation detail from In the absence of unambiguous criteria, 2007, Program, Berlin.

National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
613-990-1985
Ottawa
Caught in the Act:
The Viewer as Performer
October 17, 2008-
February 15, 2009

Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer is a dynamic, experimental and above all, experiential exhibition that gives viewers the chance to become active participants in the artistic process, and engage directly with projects created by 11 Canadian artists and collectives: Mowry Baden, Rebecca Belmore, BGL, Max Dean & Raffaello D’Andrea, Geoffrey Farmer, Massimo Guerrera, Glen Johnson, Rodney LaTourelle, Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, Kent Monkman & Jana Sterbak.

Their sculptures, immersive environments and installations encourage an active exchange between viewers, the gallery space and the work of art — an interaction that is in fact as significant as the artworks themselves. By promoting these new types of relationships, the artists all share the same goal: to implicate the audience in new and exciting ways. They seek to surprise us, to challenge us, and to show us how meaning is shaped through collaboration.

Organized by the National Gallery of Canada, Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer is the largest contemporary art exhibition to be mounted at the National Gallery in close to a decade.

Mowry Baden has influenced a generation of sculptors in Canada and the U.S. with his engaging, participatory installations. For almost 40 years, he has challenged contemporary sculpture through a staggering number of projects and artworks that borrow from psychology, architecture and performance. Born in Los Angeles in 1936, Baden received his BA from Pomona College (Claremont, CA) and MA from Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA). After teaching at Stanford and the University of British Columbia, among others, Baden began his tenure at the University of Victoria in 1975; he is currently professor emeritus. He has had solo and group exhibitions across North America, including Los Angeles, Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver and New York (including MoMA). His work is represented in collections in Canada and the U.S. He has been commissioned to create public art works in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco, Santa Barbara, Pittsburgh, Washington and Victoria, where he now lives.

Born in Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Belmore was Canada's official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally including two solo touring exhibitions, The Named and the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); and 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2001). Her group exhibitions include Houseguests, Art Gallery of Ontario (2001); Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1995); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and Creation or Death: We Will Win, at the Havana Biennial, Havana Cuba (1991).

BGL is comprised of Jasmin Bilodeau (b. 1973, resides Quebec City, Sébastien Giguère (b. 1972, resides Quebec City), and Nicolas Laverdière (b. 1972, resides, Quebec City). BGL was created while the trio were studying at Laval University. For over 10 years, they have exhibited widely and frequently both in solo and group exhibitions including The 1er Bienal del fin del mundo, Ushuaia, Argentina, the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal, Musée d’art moderne Lille Métropole, France, Mercer Union, Toronto, Hart House, University of Toronto, The Havana Biennale, Cuba and The Montreal Biennale. They have been recognized by the Canada Council for the Arts, The Conseil des arts et letters du Québec and were finalists for the Sobey Award. Their work is found in the collections of The Musée National des beaux-arts du Québec, The Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and The National Gallery of Canada.

Known for cheeky, critical and explosive works, BGL create self-referential in-situ installations that take over architecture and encompass a gallery’s context. The resulting artworks speak directly to contemporary culture and the nostalgia of memory.

From artful creations at the Venice Biennale to ‘intelligent’ warehouses for distribution giants like Staples and Walgreens, Raffaello D’Andrea’s work has captured the imagination of researchers, gallery-goers and business leaders around the world.

Developed over years of research at the California Institute of Technology, Cornell University and now ETH Zurich, D’Andrea’s work has been widely published in top academic journals, and has earned him such diverse accolades as a United States Presidential Early Career Award for Science & Engineering and a place in the permanent art collection of the National Gallery of Canada.

D’Andrea equates his achievement with his commitment to scientific and mathematical rigor, and his desire to collaborate with innovators in other fields.

Max Dean was born in Leeds, England in 1949, and received a B.A. in art history from the University of British Columbia in 1971. Since then he has had a prolific career as a performance, video and installation artist, producing work that actively questions and explores the relationships between the artist, the spectator and the work of art. He has employed a diversity of materials from traditional drawing tools to cars, found objects, bathtubs, and television monitors as well as new technologies to explore issues pertaining to the psychological and metaphorical aspects of interactivity.

He has exhibited widely — both alone and in over twenty group exhibitions – beginning with Pacific Vibrations at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 1973 - and internationally — in England, Germany, and twice at the Venice Biennale in 1999 and in 2001 for The Table: Childhood now in the Gallery’s collection. He taught at the University of Ottawa (1979-88), and later at York University. From 1985-86, he was artist in residence at the National Museum of Science and Technology, Ottawa, and in 1996, he received the Jean Chalmers National Visual Arts Award. 

Geoffrey Farmer is based in Vancouver and continues the tradition established by Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham and Jeff Wall, who have all developed international practices whilst remaining based in the city of Vancouver.

Farmer is known for producing large-scale eclectic works that are characterised by their interpretive structures, meticulous research and transformative qualities. Specific literary or cinematic narratives anchor the projects, which are continually revised, altered and adapted from exhibition to exhibition. These specific narratives become the conceptual engine and are used to generate and contextualize the processes and materials produced, acquired and presented.

In Québec, Massimo Guerrera is the pioneer of what is termed “relational esthetics”, i.e. art in which meeting with the Other becomes not simply a subject to portray but rather a genuine material to implement. Based on the notion that we are overridingly beings shaped by our relationships, he uses food as the main metaphor to implement this idea of constant change and digestion where certain people are concerned.

Rodney Latourelle (b. 1965, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Lives and works in Berlin, Germany) is a graduate landscape architect and writer who — in his most recent work — has crossed over from landscape design into the realm of art. Based in Winnipeg, LaTourelle has discovered a spatial/artistic hybrid. He has transcended the experiments of Judd, by providing for the full immersion of body in coloured light — a walk-in painting. LaTourelle's experiments are transitional — they bridge the gap between art and architecture. His prototypes suggest endless possibilities for spatial and metaphysical life.

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins live and work in Toronto, Ontario. They work collaboratively in the field of large format sculpture, mixed media, installation and electronic art.

Jennifer and Daniel are known for their ability to creatively produce refined multimedia installations that are well-crafted, intricate and large scale. They have a diverse vocabulary that employs industrial and non-traditional materials. Engagement with the viewer is a primary focus for them and is initiated through the strong physical presence of their work.

Jennifer Marman and Daniel Borins graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2001. Prior to that, Jennifer received a BA in Philosophy from the University of Western Ontario and Daniel received a BA in Art History from McGill University.

Born in St. Marys, Ontario, Kent Monkman, an artist of Cree ancestry, works with a variety of mediums, including painting, film/video, performance and installation. He has had solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, Walter Phillips Gallery, and the Indian Art Centre, and has participated in various international group exhibitions including: "We come in peace..." Histories of the Americas, at the Musee d'art contemporain de Montreal, and The American West , at Compton Verney, in Warwickshire, England. Monkman has created site specific performances at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection, and at Compton Verney, UK, and has also made super 8 mm versions of these performances that he calls "Colonial Art Space Interventions". His award-winning short film and video works have been screened at various national and international festivals, including Sundance, Berlin, and the Toronto International Film Festival. His work is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Museum London, The Mackenzie Art Gallery, the Woodland Cultural Centre, the Indian Art Centre, and the Canada Council Art Bank. A solo exhibition of his work was mounted by the Art Gallery of Hamilton in the summer of 2007 and will tour to museums across Canada including Art Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.

Jana Sterbak (born 1955) is best known for her works constructed from meat. Two sculptures, Vanitas: Flesh Dress for an Albino Anorectic (1987) and Chair Apollinaire (1999), were both works whose primary medium was cured flank steak also known as "skirt steak".

Born in Prague, Czechoslovakia, Sterbak immigrated as a teenager with her parents to Edmonton, Alberta in 1968. Then to Vancouver in 1970 at Kitsilano High School. A year at University of British Columbia in 1974 was followed by a transfer to Montreal. She acquired her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1977 at Montréal's Concordia University, Her MFA at University of Toronto in 1982.

Sterbak's works deal primarily with issues of power, sexuality, and control, and she also explores the relationship between humanity and the technology it has created. Her Standard Lives - Abridged was displayed in the centre of Newcastle-upon-Tyne in September-October 1990.

Canadian Museum
of Contemporary Photography
National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
613-990-1985
Ottawa
Steeling the Gaze:
Portraits by Aboriginal Artists
October 31, 2008-
March 22, 2009

Profoundly symbolic works by some of Canada’s most celebrated Indigenous artists send a powerful message on the evolution of Aboriginal self-determination in Canada. They are presented in Steeling the Gaze: Portraits by Aboriginal Artists.

This deeply reflective exhibition will showcase CMCP’s significant collection of Indigenous artists as well as those drawn from the NGC’s and selected private collections. It combines portrait photographs and video installations by 12 artists — KC Adams, Carl Beam, Dana Claxton, Thirza Cuthand, Rosalie Favell, Kent Monkman, David Neel, Shelley Niro, Arthur Renwick, Greg Staats, Jeff Thomas and Bear Witness.

“It is the first time that CMCP and the NGC have worked together on the theme of contemporary portraiture by Aboriginal artists,” said CMCP Director, Martha Hanna. “This exhibition pays tribute to prominent Aboriginal artists whose works offer a new voice.”

The exhibition explores how contemporary Aboriginal artists have used the portrait as a means of self-expression in spite of its long problematic history for their peoples. “The portrait is a European convention which exerts control over the subject,” explained the CMCP co-curator Andrea Kunard. “In the past, Aboriginal people were often objectified for commercial purposes. They were represented as a dying race doomed by the inexorable march of ‘civilization.’ Contrary to this portrayal, they have neither vanished nor died out; they survived.”

The exhibition’s other co-curator who is the NGC’s first-ever Curator in Residence, Indigenous Art, Steven Loft, added that “these artists use their cameras to create a means of cultural self-determination. By reconstructing the narrative of race, they have captured the wide plurality of Aboriginal histories, cultures and contemporary realities and have created their own visual identities.”

Aboriginal artists as
creators of visual history
These artists reclaim images of themselves, their families and their communities and use them as a means of transforming past concerns into the present. They challenge stereotypes, creating a new visual history and are harbingers of a changing reality.

Keeping ancient
traditions alive
To challenge the detrimental characterizations of Aboriginal life developed through colonization and assimilation, contemporary Indigenous artists represent identity as a changing and complex state, rather than one that is essential, singular and “frozen” in the past. Within these images, which describe contemporary existence, references to traditions, family and community, appear as a source of strength and grounding.

Appropriation, mass media and “acting up”
Bear Witness, Rosalie Favell and KC Adams use appropriation strategies to explore the influence of art history and mass media on identity. In his work, Bear Witness weaves together images taken from popular movies. Rosalie Favell takes images from art history, and KC Adams merges stereotypes and fashion photography in her portraits of Aboriginal community members. Acting up for the camera is another approach for dealing with identity issues. Dana Claxton, Shelley Niro, Rosalie Favell, Thirza Cuthand and Kent Monkman use photographic space as theatre, taking on various guises to present a multifaceted view of contemporary Aboriginal existence.

Socio-political issues
Kent Monkman, Rosalie Favell and Thirza Cuthand explore contemporary, social and political issues within the Aboriginal communities, such as sexuality, hybridity and shifting socio-political dynamics.

The Full Face Portrait
Arthur Renwick and David Neel focus on the face and how it is framed. Neel uses more conventional studio techniques to present his portraits. While Renwick presents larger than life, full face portraits, positioning his subjects as living embodiments of Aboriginal spiritual and cosmological traditions. Both artists offer a glimpse of Aboriginality we do not often see reflected in our media saturated society.

Exhibition Curators
Andrea Kunard has been with the CMCP since 1998. She has presented a number of important exhibitions including Shifting Sites (2000), Susan McEachern: Structures of Meaning (2004), Michael Semak (2005), The Painted Photograph (2006), Jin-Me Yoon: Unbidden (2006) and Cheryl Sourkes: Public Camera (2007). She has given lectures at Carleton and Queens University on Canadian Art, the History of Photography, and Cultural Theory. In addition, she has published articles on contemporary and historic photography in a variety of publications including The Journal of Canadian Art History, International Journal of Canadian Studies, Early Popular Visual Culture, Muse, C Magazine and ETC Montréal.

Steven Loft, was appointed as the NGC’s first ever Curator in Residence, Indigenous Art in January 2008. His professional experience within the Indigenous arts is extensive and encompasses being Director of the Urban Shaman Gallery in Winnipeg, Aboriginal Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, and Artistic Director of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association. Over the past 15 years, he has presented numerous significant Aboriginal exhibitions and is a widely published author on this topic.

Jeff Thomas, 1710-1998 / Tee Yee Neen Ho Ga Row – Mohawk (Christianized Hendrick), Emperor of the Six Nations, 1710/1998 / Self-portrait – Onondaga, Champlain Monument, Ottawa, Ontario 1998, 1998, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa.

Arthur Renwick, Eden, 2006, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Arthur Renwick, Jani, 2006, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.

Rosalie Favell, The Artist in Her Museum / The Collector, 2007, Collection of the artist.

Shelley Niro, Time Travels through Us, 1999, Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa.