ART IN PUBLIC PLACES (APP): KINGSTONPROJECT DESCRIPTION:

APP: Kingston consisted of six temporary installations in public locations across the city of Kingston, Ontario. The exhibition consisted of three locally-based artists, and three nationally-based artists in an effort to create a dialogue about public art between cities – beginning with a free bus-tour of the sites, and culminating in a public panel. APP: Kingstonwas a professional project that successfully balanced a budget with funds procured through civic grants, community corporate sponsorships, and partnerships with local cultural institutions and individuals.

Curated by Riva Symko, Matthew Hills, and Jocelyn Purdie APP: Kingstonexamined ‘spectacle’ as a device and phenomena in public art. The intention of this project was to cultivate an appreciation of the visual arts in our community and beyond, to stimulate discussion, and to increase understanding of public art as we anticipated the City of Kingston’s development of a public art policy. 

[ x]curated curatorial collective Statement of Curatorial Vision:

Our newly formed curatorial collective is a peer-structured group focused on the visual arts, creativity, and community. Currently comprised of a small number of independent and emerging curators in the Kingston community, the collective endeavours to engender an increased appreciation of, and literacy for, the visual arts in Kingston – and beyond – with the ongoing development of a variety of unique curatorial projects emphasizing creative excellence and 'of the moment' artistic practice. Formed with an eye to innovative and atypical curatorial activity, xcurated is informed by recent trends in the Canadian art world that seek both fresh methods of exhibiting contemporary art, and new audiences for those exhibitions.

Millie Chen & Warren Quigley:Greenroom (cast gelcoated fiberglass, steel, light fixtures – Originally commissioned by L.L.O. Sculpture Garden Foundation, Toronto)

 Millie Chen and Warren Quigley’s Greenroomconsists of a group of sculptures cast from actual furniture and painted in the “Field Guide to Naturalizing Greens” palette. This colour system (which was invented by the artists) mimics the act of introducing a foreign plant, animal, or person to a new environment where it must adapt to the local conditions. In this way, Greenroomalso acts literally: the curators are introducing a duo of Toronto artists’ to the Kingston ‘art scene’ in the hopes of creating an exchange between the two cultural landscapes. When Greenroomwas exhibited in the Toronto Sculpture Garden, it played a functional role: weary visitors to the Garden could rest on the couch, wedding parties would pose in the dark with the lamp on, and children would use the coffee table as a climbing gym. Here in Kingston, it is more of a decorative, albeit lonely, curio: revitalizing an otherwise empty construction site, and setting an inviting, yet impenetrable scene for the possibility of future domestic comfort. Greenroom is acting like the greenroom backstage at a theatre for the condominium development that will eventually be the star of Bagot and Queen Street. 

The ‘naturalizing’ palette of Greenroom also refers to the attempt at making something more ‘lifelike’, or trying to capture something ‘natural’. But Greenroomis wholly theatrical – a temporary out-of-the-ordinary artistic spectacle in the centre of our developing and redeveloping urban landscape. It is also frustratingly subtle – distanced from us by a chain-link fence that both protects the work, and isolates us from interacting with it fully. Greenroom embodies our aspirations for prized furnishings, and designer spaces but, as a public artwork, it also challenges us to consider our constructed environment in a way that juxtaposes it with the private spaces of our own living rooms. 

Shayne Dark: Free Form in Blue(cedar split rails, paint)

Heading south down West Street, as the road curves gently toward the downtown core, Shayne Dark’s Free Form in Bluemakes for a striking image. The bright blue curiosity is nestled comfortably in the thick branches of a solid, antique locust tree rooted deeply into the front yard of the Kingston Pumphouse Steam Museum. The Pumphouse itself rests stoically along the shore of a sun-sparkled Lake Ontario as the Wolfe Island windmills spin gently in the distance. The entire scene is a spectacular pastiche of natural beauty, historical monumentality, and modern industry. The placement of Dark’s work here is an action in line with the idea that public art acts as a spectacular aesthetic respite from the otherwise common, functional civic landscape. As a dramatic and unusual anomaly, Free Form in Blueprovides the viewer with a liminal moment of reflection, during which conceptual connections and sensory consciousness meet at the crossroads of everyday reality and experiential imagination – however briefly. 

The assemblage of large pieces of natural wood used in the construction of Free Form in Blue, have been carefully found, selected, and collected by Dark over a period of several months. Culled primarily from the densely forested area behind his studio, these leftover bits of tree limbs and trunks retain much of their rough surface and uneven ridges. However, the wood has clearly not been left entirely untouched – coated as it is with a synthetic layer of neon-coloured paint, and manipulated into a shapely sculptural object. Free Form in Blueappears to us here as an artificial encroachment on the living spirit of this generations-weathered locust tree, but also as an expression of its’ original organic material. In this way, Dark’s installation reminds us of the delicate intersections that exist between the natural and constructed environments that surround us. 

Michael Davidge: Pretty Vacancy(neon lighting)

Kingston-based artist Michael Davidge’s Pretty Vacancy, directly references two things: the 1977 song, “Pretty Vacant” by seminal punk rock band, the Sex Pistols, and the ubiquitous neon (NO)VACANCY signs of roadside motels. While the former inflicts raucous snarls about political unease, recessionary poverty, and youthful unrest, the latter symbolizes a safe place for physical relief from the stress of the highway, and a temporary vacation from the realities of home and working life. Both, however, contain an underlying current of anxiety. The kind of cultural anxiety that has become apparent with the past few decades worth of rapid growth in spectacular capitalism – some might say at the expense of spiritual or intellectual reflection. And the kind of personal anxiety that is present when facing the uncanny strangeness of a blank motel room – like a mixture of the Bates Motel from Hitchcock’s Psycho(1960) and the sterile luxury of a Hilton. Residing somewhere between these two currents, lies Davidge’s desire to captivate and confuse us with his puzzling – and pulsing – textual game.  

Davidge’s use of neon is certainly not without precedent. In fact, it has proven to be an attractive and compelling medium for a substantially large number of contemporary artists (including Bruce Nauman and Ron Terada among many others). Perhaps it is that neon is a surprisingly complicated and dialectical substance, which makes it so artistically seductive. Indeed, it can appear both retro and futuristic, it can be tongue-in-cheek but it can serve as a serious mode of communication, it is impossible to ignore and yet it is also an invisible part of our everyday urban-scape. When placed in the context of this otherwise quiet, residential neighbourhood in Kingston’s Swamp Ward, is neon an obnoxious imposition or an amusing curiosity?

Robert Hengeveld (with Marcia Huyer): Into the Wild

The work of Toronto-based artist, Robert Hengeveld, has previously been described as “modestly spectacular”. His subject matter often deals in the simple, the mundane, and the familiar – the modest. Indeed, the work displayed here resembles little more than an abandoned camping tent pitched at the edge of the woods. What makes this particular tent more spectacular than others is that the backside has been cut away to create an open grotto in which strips of camouflaged nylon hang like earthy stalactites dripping from a thick, mossy cave. In fact, the sheltered portion of this tent is meant to mimic the hollow space found between thick groupings of dense, living brush. However, its overtly synthetic material and deliberately bright red shell belie any natural relationship to the protected woodlands of Lemoine Point. Just like a store-bought camping tent, the chimerical cavity of Into the Wildoffers us a softer, cleaner experience of nature. 

As a complete image – earth, tent, trees, sky, stars – this installation paints something like a reminder of our own forays into the backwoods: propelled by romantic desires to ‘get away’ to the profoundly silent, untouched hinterland that lies just beyond the pressing strictures of the city limits. In this way, Into the Wildalso has something in common with the ubiquitous genre of Canadian landscape art that has played a significant role in constructing our country’s vast wilderness as a sublime and metaphoric subject akin to (colonial) National Identity itself. The absurdity of Hengeveld’s representation hints at a tension between the ‘authentic’ landscape of our cultural imagination and our own mediated interaction with it. Through the use of tents, hiking boots, windbreakers, steel knives, matches, portable stoves, bottled water, etc., how much of our urban lives do we bring with us ‘into the wild’? And just how ‘wild’ isthis land? 

Steven Laurie, Donut Machine(mixed media, steel, engine, tire, fender, and other machine parts, cut vinyl decals)

As an open-ended comment on the spectacular realm of commerce and exchange dominating the eastern section of the City of Kingston, APP presents The Donut Machineby Toronto-based artist, Steven Laurie. This custom-designed, petrol-fuelled, 10 horsepower machine is constructed from back-yard equipment parts, and car and truck components bought from ‘big-box’ hardware stores like Canadian Tire and Princess Auto. The stylish black and red finishings, stainless steel exhaust pipe, custom chain guard, orange Chevy engine-block fender, and ornamental decals have all been painstakingly chosen, built, tested, and re-tested by the artist himself. This kind of attention to detail is reminiscent of the countless hours of labour put in by motor enthusiasts and car-lovers building and customizing their own vehicles in home garages across the country. But unlike a beloved sports car or an old Ford, which has the practical use of transporting people from one place to another, the only thing the Donut Machinecan really do is generate a whole lot of obnoxious noise, raise huge plumes of grey-blue smoke, and burn rubber!

Even though they might be functionless, Laurie’s homebrew machines are completely functioning. For example, in his Burn Out performances, Laurie uses the Donut Machineto literally “burn rubber” by holding it like a rototiller and skidding it across a patch of existing cement or asphalt (such as a parking lot or a street). This action creates a predetermined pattern of blackened circles, curves, ‘donuts’, and marks much like those left behind by bravado-filled race car drivers showing off their torque to a crowd of cheering motor fans at a speedway. In fact, Laurie’s machines have been described as “hyper-masculine” – a reference to the conspicuous display of muscle, power, and aggression required for their operation. It leaves us wondering: in today’s contemporary culture of consumption, can masculinity be bought in the form of gadgets, gizmos, or customized gear?