Here are a few new pieces off to Red Deer later today, so I just quickly took some digitals. They’re for a group show to be held at the Harris Waarke Gallery which will present the work of faculty from the Red Deer College Ceramics Department where I was the Visiting Artist last fall. Should be a great show including the work of Trudy Golley, Candice Ring, Brian McAuthur and Dawn Deterando.
They didn’t really know what was next.
They felt the tug of war.
4048 : 783,209
Alot of my figurative pieces in the past had dealt with violence and inequality, but for these ones I decided to make a more direct statement about the war. It’s hard though to make work about current events that are constantly changing and shifting in front of your eyes, and for a long time I had held off making this work as I didn’t want to make work that was hollow and simply jumping on the bandwagon of political art about the war which has been in fashion in the last few years, with some artists producing incredibly strong and powerful statements, while others arguably aiming to make confrontationally charged work that falls flat. I’m not quite satisfied with the development of the ideas in this work thus far, but who am i kidding, i never am. But it has been interesting to put the ideas into concrete form. What I wanted to discuss though was the inequality of the media representation of the dead count, the North Amercian or eurocentric overendulgence and valuing of one soldier loss over the countless Iraqi civilian and military loss, the political game at play which brings nations into the situation regardless of the views and stance of the people in their so-called democratic societies, and the fate of all those injured in battle, whether they be army personal or innocent civilians and the uncertain future that they face.
Hopefully in the near future i’ll be able to update with other images from the exhibition, so stay posted…
