
Sometimes I must admit I feel a bit perverse in my story planning. All eyes are on Vancouver and where do I focus an artist interview on? The other end of the country, in St. John's. Ah well. Art does happen everywhere, even (gasp!) during the Olympics.
I have to say I did enjoy my chat with Helen Gregory, a well-regarded Newfoundland artist currently exhibiting at the Rooms in a show curated by award-winning novelist Lisa Moore. Where I thought our conversation would focus on death--Gregory includes a lot of skeleton imagery in her work--it ended up being more about collecting, both personal and institutional. Here's an excerpt from our condensed chat published in today's National Post:
Q [You say you were inspired by 16th-century wunderkammer, or cabinets of curiosity.] What were cabinets of curiosity?
A They were predecessors to the modern museum -- basically accumulations of objects meant to inspire wonder in the viewer. Things were displayed quite crammed together, with the theory that if each object was awe-inspiring individually, the effect would be even more so when things were displayed together.
A lot of these cabinet collections were started by the very wealthy, and they were more about a display of wealth than about education. They weren't divided scientifically -- that came later. A lot of the stuff in my paintings is from natural history collections at the Rooms, the Redpath Museum in Montreal and the Canadian Museum of Nature near Ottawa.
Q But a lot of your paintings conjure death, not just collecting. How do you account for that?
A Well, some of these items, especially in earlier paintings, are from my own collection. In one painting, there's a sparrow skull that still has a ball of feathers attached -- this is something I picked up on a walk, and kept. A lot of people might find it disgusting, but I see the beauty in decay. And I like to collect these types of objects as a result. I used to think about my tendency to collect things as a personal impulse. But in my recent studies -- I'm doing a doctorate right now -- I've been looking at collecting as a global and social impulse, an institutional impulse, too. Granted, some of my images are very personal -- of sentimental souvenirs like dried roses, for example. But I can also recognize that it's a general human impulse to collect.
There's also a nice bit in the interview about a mollusk with body issues and a legendary giant squid.
Image of Helen Gregory's Blue Tanagers courtesy of the artist and the Rooms
Showing posts with label helen gregory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label helen gregory. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Collecting Cultures: Q&A with Helen Gregory
Labels:
helen gregory,
the rooms
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