Curator’s Statement · Stacey Koosel

RAMBLE ON

by Stacey Koosel

Ramble On is an exhibition of artworks from UBC Okanagan Gallery’s Public Art Collection, a rambling tour, which introduces some of our newest acquisitions including works by Judith Schwarz, Sheldon Louis, Tania Willard and Neil Cadger. The exhibition was inspired by UBC Okanagan alumnus Clinton McDougall’s wooden sculpture of a car tire entitled Reinvention (2005). The tread on the tire forms a pattern based on the utilitarian principle of adding grip or traction to move forward. The idea of using patterns, repetition or grids to gain traction or derive meaning is a universal principle. From the longitude and latitude of cartography, to charting information in graphs, to ideas of the matrix (with or without Keanu) – there is something about hypnotic repetition and persuasive grids that artists utilize to communicate complex ideas with clarity, impact and irreverence.

Marshall McLuhan was a 1960s philosophy of media guru, perhaps the last time an academic deeply infiltrated pop culture, his ‘15 minutes of fame’ sound bite was borrowed and misattributed to Andy Warhol, he met with politicians and pop stars to help them navigate the new electronic media era, talking about the body electric. McLuhan prophesied many futuristic ideas: the global village, the information superhighway, the narcissism / numbness of the screen, and the concept of information overload. The idea of information overload is that when our senses become overwhelmed, we resort to pattern recognition. What unites the works selected for this exhibition is the incorporation of patterns in various forms whether they are in the depiction of baskets, videos of repeating human forms, series of screen prints or use of colour and form in repetitive patterns, to literal grids as is the case in Judith Shwarz’s artworks.

Shwarz’s laser cut steel and birch plywood sculptures, Grid and Grid II (1996) are an X and O - primary shapes, the beginning of handwriting, symbolic of nature and culture.1 A spatial play, one is a cross and one is a circular movement, both are elongated to contribute to the sense of dimensionality. Shwarz explained that early on in her practice she was influenced by influential minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewit, to make works that were abstract, not narrative or representational. Grid and Grid II communicate the relationship between culture and nature, the tension between the industrial grid represented by the steel grid element of the work and the natural warm grain of the wood, the wood grain itself being a system. There is a conflict between what you see and what is there in reality, the pair present conflicting perception. The illusion is the multi-dimensionality of the piece, the laser cut steel is just from one sheet, as is the birch plywood, the flat pieces can appear multidimensional and cause a glitch between what you are seeing and what the body is experiencing - it invites the viewer to stand inside that conflict. Even though Grid and Grid II are conceptual and intellectual, the tactile, warmth of the wood versus the dark coolness of the steel gives the work a tactility. The works of Judith Shwarz have secured a prominent position in the history of Canadian Art.2

Ida Shōichi (1941–2006) was a Kyoto based internationally recognized artist who is considered one of the most important printmakers in the development of Japanese contemporary prints in the late sixties and early seventies.3 Shōichi’s Surface is the Between - Between Vertical and Horizon is a series of 5 etching, aquatint, and drypoint with chine collé prints entitled Descended Blue No. 1 – 5 (1982). The minimalist, abstract series of five prints repeat a blue square figure with variations, careful inspection of the prints reveal the intricate inlay of metallic stripes on some iterations. Since the mid-1960s, Shōichi focused on a unifying concept of his practice he called The Surface Is the Between which he explained in a 1983 interview as:

“The reason prints fascinate me is that each of the printing processes has this element: there’s always a vertical force and a horizontal force, and between them the print is made. There’s the force of the press, coming down on a horizontal thing, and at that instant of contact. With screen-prints, for example, you come down with a squeegee on the horizontal screen, and the ink comes down through the holes. That interaction of forces creates something, which is the work, and the work is the document of the process. With woodblocks, you bring the baren down on the block, and in between you have the paper. The result is the document of the impact.”4w

For Shōichi, the concept of The Surface Is the Between was both spatial and temporal, and the vertical and horizontal lines were graphic representations of the printing process.5

Neil Cadger’s The Collective Body (2021) is a transdisciplinarity audio/video project that explores the ‘skin hunger’ and isolation of social distancing in the Covid-19 era, made in collaboration with fifty artists, dancers and musicians. The Collective Body explores the constraints and freedoms of digital connections, and can be seen as a meditation on disembodied spaces. The project was rhizome-like, it invited dancers to record themselves separately in their own space, the video was then sent to musicians, who used the dance footage as inspiration for their own soundscape. The new audio recordings were then sent to other dancers, who used the sounds as inspiration for their own movement. The recordings were gathered and merged together at random, resulting in a collage of diverse bodies and movements. The soundtrack to the video was composed by Andew Stauffer, who collected the audio recordings of all the musicians and composed them into larger scale compositions to accompany the visuals.6 Neil Cadger edited the visuals, and Andrew Stauffer edited the sound files, which sought to recreate the transdisciplinarity creative collaboration between dance and music.

Tania Willard, is an artist, curator and associate professor at UBC Okanagan, of Secwépemc and settler heritage whose research intersects with land-based art practices. Willard’s Gut Instincts (2018), a bright, eye-catching neon digital print of traditional entrail design Indigenous basketry, is an affirmation of women’s intuition, instinct and ancestral voices. Gut Instincts is based on digitally altered museum photography of cedar-root basket collected as part of the North Pacific Jesup Expedition (1897–1902) from Stl’atl’imx territories. Willard has described the basket as a “universe of knowledge” related to hunting, seasonality,

and land that articulates the deep reciprocity of the Secwépemc people with their territories and the otherthan-human worlds that share them.7 A large-scale outdoor installation version of Gut Instincts was shown as part of an exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery, curated by Jaime Issac in 2018 entitled Woven Together. The baskets depicted were made by Indigenous women whose names were not recorded, which speak to the colonial disappearances and dispossession of Indigenous women, communities, and lands.8

The exploration of materiality in Willard’s basketry textures and patterns continues in Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Untitled Portrait #1, (2018) in which a figure is represented as a part of the fabric of the same background. Ahmadzadegan is an artist and alumnus of UBC Okanagan with an active voice in the Okanagan artistic community. The Laundry Room Collective is an artist collective created by Ahmadzadegan and fellow UBC Okanagan alumnus and artist Brooklyn Bellmond, with the mission to foster arts, creativity, culture, and community. Ahmadzadegan’s practice has explored themes of identity in socio-political inquiry. Untitled Portrait #1 by Ahmadzadegan can be seen as a unification of humans and their environment, the figure and ground merged into one and the tension that arises therein.

Sheldon Pierre Louis is a member of the syilx Nation, an Okanagan Indian Band Councillor, and a community leader whose work is influenced by his ancestral roots. Louis’s caxalqs (red dress) (2021) exhibited for the first time since it was commissioned by the Okanagan School of Education and donated to the Public Art Collection is a celebration of the strength and resilience of Indigenous women. Louis’s painting portrays a powerful Indigenous female figure, in support and to address the issue of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit). The patterns that repeat in the painting have significance, for example the elk teeth on the red dress symbolize her importance and worth in traditional Indigenous society. Louis’s impact on the Okanagan cultural community is widespread as his outdoor murals, paintings and community service communicate a unique voice that articulates a vision for an Indigenous inclusive future.

A collection of three paintings by syilx artist David Wilson: Spirit Horse and Rider (2013), Sylix Territory Study (2016) and Northern Lights (2012) portray a visual language that uses repeating symbolic imagery, pictographs, and circular forms with Coast Salish influences to communicate a modern take on a traditional narrative. As a young artist Wilson wanted to know what Indigenous art from his community looked like, he explored the Vernon Museum’s archives and found roots of his Interior Salish culture in centuries-old pictographs documented in anthropology books.9 The stars in the horizon of Spirit Horse and Rider, Sylix Territory Study and Northern Lights, when examined up close reveal a multi-dimensionality and spirituality that may not be appreciated on first glance. Wilson’s works draw on the symbols and stories of Okanagan First Nations cultural heritage with vibrant acrylic colours and surrealist, symbolic imagery that reverberates.

Takesada Matsutani’s organic abstractions function as in-depth investigations into materiality and form. From 1963 until 1972 Matsutani was a key member of the influential, avant garde, post war, Japanese art collective, the Gutai Art Association (1955–1972). Matsutani famously experimented with vinyl glue, a new commodity in Japan at the time, using his own breath to manipulate the substance, creating sensuous

forms reminiscent of human bodies.10 A print version of the vinyl glue sculptures is most literally depicted in Object-D (1972), while the other prints in the collection L’angle (1968), La Proliferation I (1968), Unknown (1973), Chimney - A (1973) rift off the abstract drips and folds to hard-edge forms referencing Japanese philosophy and calligraphy. L’angle (1968) depicts abstractions of drafting and cartography tools in almost monotone psychadelic fashion, the hard angles of reason giving way to playful forms floating their way off the paper.

The map making theme of Matsutani’s L’angle brings us back to the central or unifying theme to this group exhibition, Ramble On, finding meaning through patterns, repetitions, rhythms and grids. Through a variety of artistic mediums - sculptures, paintings, prints and video artworks by a diverse roster of artists - alumni, faculty, local, Indigenous, international, figurative, abstract, emerging and established. Through the darkest depths of information overload and useless self-important distractions on the lonely road back home, we find a path to ramble on. Here’s hoping you can enjoy the journey.

Author Bio

Dr. Stacey Koosel (she/her) is of Indigenous (Métis) and European heritage, and works as the Curator of UBC Okanagan Art Gallery. Besides the management of the Public Art Collection, she also leads artist residencies, exhibitions and publications at the gallery, and the development of our new downtown gallery. She lectures on art history and curation studies in the Art History and Visual Culture program at UBC Okanagan, and is passionate about art history and contemporary art, with a focus on decolonization practices, Indigenous art and art publishing.

Endnotes:

1 Christopher Youngs, Judith Shwarz Transcriptions, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading PA, 2000. 2 Ron Moppett. Fictive Sace, Judith Schwarz / Arlene Stamp. Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art, 1995. 3 Shoichi IDA, Prints. MoMak, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. https://www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionArchive/2012/391.html 4 Ida, Shôichi and Brody, Leslie. “Shoichi Ida: An Interview”: The Print Collector’s Newsletter, March-April 1984, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 7-8. (The interview, in English and Japanese, took place on December 24, 1983, at the Ueda Gallery, Tokyo.) 5 John Fiorillo. Viewing Japanese Print, 2020. https://www.viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/kindai_hanga/ida_shoichi.html 6 Andrew Stauffer and Neil Cadger share more about the Collective Body. CKUA radio interview, October 19, 2021. https://ckua.com/listen/on-art-the-collective-body/ 7 Tania Willard. Gut Instincts. Shimmering Horizons. Or Gallery, 2021. https://shimmeringhorizons.orgalleryprojects.org/tania-willard/ 8 Tania Willard’s Gut Instincts. The Kelowna Art Gallery, 2018. https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts 9 David Wylie. In Studio with artist David Wilson Sookinakin. pqbnews, 2021. https://www.pqbnews.com/life/in-studio-with-artist-david-wilson-sookinakin/ 10 Michael Irwin. Takesada Matsutani. Ocula, 2021.https://ocula.com/artists/takesada-matsutani/

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