Seriously? comes in a range of materials, from ceramics and beadwork, to cartoons and performative faux autopsies.
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Seriously? Comedy and Satire in Canadian Art 1970s–Now
When: Jan. 25 to May 18; opening reception Jan. 24, 6-8 p.m.
Where: Griffin Art Projects, 1174 Welch Street, North Vancouver
A good mannequin is hard to find. Just ask Melissa E. Feldman.
“Finding a mannequin has been the greatest challenge of the show,” said Feldman, the curator of a new exhibit that looks at comedy and satire in Canadian art.
“Mannequins are extremely expensive, hundreds of dollars. Finding one that we could afford and was the right size was very difficult.”
The mannequin is necessary to model Anna Banana’s Banana costume, a featured piece in Seriously? Comedy and Satire in Canadian Art 1970s–Now. A Vancouver-based conceptual artist, Banana wore the outfit for her 1975 Banana Olympics in San Francisco, footage of which will also be featured in the show.
Along with video, the work of the nearly 20 Canadian artists displayed in Seriously? comes in a range of materials, from ceramics and beadwork, to cartoons and performative faux autopsies. Some pieces comment on mainstream culture and identity politics and others on, according to the gallery’s description, “the rhythms of lives spent close to nature and their communities.” Styles include “the folksy Victoria school, Vancouver’s edgy Intermedia scene, Halifax conceptualism, Regina funk and First Nations artists’ embrace of manga and comics.”
The idea for Seriously? came out of Feldman’s research into what she calls “noncanonical areas of artmaking” stemming from her interest in feminist art and a Vietnam-era funk esthetic found in Northern California and the Northwest.
“California funk started in Northern California in the ‘70s and largely came out of ceramics artists who were rethinking clay as narrative sculpture but in a way that was playful and irreverent,” she said. “Their work made fun of good taste and the elitism of the art world.” The work of one of the figures from that time, Maija Peeples-Bright, is featured in the Griffin show.
The Pennsylvania-based curator soon realized that “the type of attitude and social satire associated with Northern California funk was not limited to that region but was more widespread.”
Feldman had curated a show at Griffin in 2017. Through the gallery she met Adrian Norvid, a Montreal-based artist whose satirical autopsy, or “awetopsy,” is featured in the exhibit. He will also perform one during a guided walk-through Jan. 26.
“Those initial conversations with Adrian clued me into the fact that this was indeed a sensibility and an attitude you could look at in Canadian art,” Feldman said.
“And I also knew of some Canadian Indigenous artists whose work used political satire as a strategy for dealing with difficult subject matter and histories.”
One of those artists is Judy Chartrand. Her work has proved controversial in the past but, placed in context of other satirical and humorous pieces, her intent may be clearer in Seriously?
“If I’m included in a group show, and my work is different from everybody else’s because it has this kind of content, then it’s more apt to offend some people,” Chartrand said.
Her pieces in the show include three plates, a bowl and a small diorama. One of the plates is red with text in white reading “It’s been rough since you arrived.”
She doesn’t necessarily see her work as humorous, or at least not broadly so.
“Some of it is humorous to me, but I wouldn’t expect it to be humorous to the larger public. It’s more like insider stuff, based on a First Nations sense of humour and experience.”
For broader satire there is the conceptual work of Anna Banana and her friend Vincent Trasov.
Alas, Trasov’s infamous Mr. Peanut outfit didn’t make the show’s final cut. But visitors to Seriously? will be able to see footage of Mr. Peanut’s 1974 run for Mayor of Vancouver.