Barry Doupé (Vancouver)

Whose Toes

March 18 – April 17

Artist talk with guest Jessica MacCormack:  Friday March 18, 7pm
Opening reception: Friday March 18, 20.30pm

 

Listen to the artist talk (audio)

 

Whose Toes is a distant, false memory. Showcasing the late Princess Diana and John F. Kennedy as its main characters, it is an invitation to return to past events that have caused discomfort and, collective trauma, and to re-imagine a misstep in time. The narrative threads need to be spoken aloud to be made sense of. The air from your mouth has to enter the collective sphere of air. An open mouth, circular and centerless, held open by centrifugal force — agasp, empty, rotten out by conspiracy. To sidestep the inheritance of the world. A new time branch that connects the personal experience to the rest of the world. A distorted delusion smearing personal and collective failures. The clockwork of human interaction, a historical soft spot, an ethical blind spot.

 

Please be advised that some material might not be suitable for children.

 

 

Evening screenings: Friday March 25, April 8 and 16, 7pm

 

Ponytail follows several inflicted characters and recounts the ways in which they find resolve. A series of scenarios held together by an attraction to failure and its spectacle describe the characters' malfunction -- their inability to fulfill personal desire. Compelled by the consequences and rewards of their attempts they question their own trajectory. Ponytail presents a unique society of characters that employ elements of melodrama, performative monologue and traditional narrative structure.

 

 

 

Barry Doupé (b. Victoria, BC) is a filmmaker living in Vancouver. He holds a Bachelor of Media Arts Degree from Emily Carr University. His films have been screened throughout Canada and Internationally including the Ann Arbor Film Festival, Anthology Film Archives, New York, Lyon Contemporary Art Museum, Pleasure Dome, Toronto and the Tate Modern, London.

 

 

 

Working with animation, video, painting, drawing, installation and intervention, Jessica MacCormack's interdisciplinary practice examines the complex position of culture within neoliberal capitalism and critiques modes of social control, while exploring the potential for art to function as a site of resistance. She is specifically interested in how modes of violence are perpetuated collectively through popular narratives, concepts of justice and denial of accountability.

Frequently engaging with communities and collectives, her practice eschews individual authorship in favour of collaboration. This has included an ongoing commitment to working with women and youth who are in conflict with the law, through the creation of art projects in prisons as well as at numerous centres that support marginalized people.

In 2008, she completed an MFA through the Public Art and New Artistic Strategies program at the Bauhaus University (Weimar, Germany). Her work has been shown nationally and internationally in festivals, screenings, artist run centres and museums. She is currently employed as an Assistant Professor of Studio Arts at Concordia University.

 

Documentation of the exhibition : Guy L'Heureux