Friday, October 23, 2015 to Friday, November 27, 2015
Opening Reception: Friday, October 23, 7 - 10 PM
About the exhibition:
In the dust of this world explores the work, life, and philosophy of the late Canadian futurist Frank Ogden in relation to a world that is falling apart. Also known as 'Dr. Tomorrow', Ogden (1920 - 2012), was a Canadian futurist who developed predictions by collecting and collating massive amounts of information from every potential telecommunications network available to him. Often contradictory and problematic in nature, with a dose of paranoid logic, Ogden's findings nevertheless give insight into the difficulties that face a world in physical, psychological, and technological transformation. Transdisciplinary in scope, this project presents several interrelated digital and analog components that in unison form an ambitious portrait of Ogden's work and philosophy by exploring how research has the potential to leak into form.
Alongside artist Dustin Wilson, McGeough founded Friends of Ogden Park in the spring of 2014 whose purpose is to organize games and performative activities that function as forms of research. The metaphysical ‘Ogden Park’ is a construct that serves as testing ground. Here, the playful interactions of people serve as models for large-scale social interactions as described in futurist Frank Ogden’s forty predictive laws.
About the artist:
Ella Dawn McGeough (b. 1982, Vancouver) holds an MFA from the University of Guelph (2013) and a BFA from the University of British Columbia (2007). Nationally, McGeough’s work has been exhibited across Canada. Internationally, she has exhibited in Finland, Beijing, and New York. Recent and upcoming shows include solo exhibitions at G Gallery (Toronto), Howard Park Institute (Toronto), and YTB Gallery (Toronto) with group exhibitions at Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto), Nicolas Metivier Gallery (Toronto), Olga Korper Gallery (Toronto), The Drake Hotel (Toronto), and PARMER (New York). In addition to making art she organizes events and exhibitions. With artists Colin Miner and Liza Eurich she founded www.moire.ca in 2012, which produces online contemporary arts publications among other activities, including the group exhibition A kind of graphic unconscious at Susan Hobbs Gallery.
Working across disciplines McGeough’s practice attempts to make “things” leak from research. Often centered on the act of portraiture this research responds to the collision between the gaze’s ability to capture a subject and through the representation inherent within reflection turn it into a thing. She situates this series of events within a process of historicisation, where societies articulate their key moments of self-determination. This is an aesthetic process. A process in which art and its exhibition play the important function of suspending events within a sphere of speculation – possibly a beautiful one where objects and images are stilled and their meaning gains weight over time. Caught mid-pose/static/frozen-in-time, their physicality acts as a manifestation of their poiesis.
Comments