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Lorna Mills and Sally McKay
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Sticker by Swintak
I am a Sol LeWitt fan. Last night at the opening for AGO's Swing Space, I got stickered by Swintak. Swing Space is the AGO's smart strategy for programming during massive renovations. The focus is on contemporary art, and the shows on right now are pretty good. Swintak had Lawrence Weiner fan stickers too. All three were showing together as part of the ongoing project Wallworks (*see note below), in which artists work directly on the walls. Like a lot of artists my age, LeWitt and Weiner (and Ed Ruscha, who at least had a bloody sense of humour) opened the door for me to contemporary art. But that's not to say they should be revered in perpetuity. Swintak, a smart young Canadian performance and installation artist, outshines both these "forefathers of conceptual art" (as curator David Moos described them). LeWitt's piece—a big swooshy rainbow stripe painting, more reminiscent of Frank Stella than of LeWitt's signature ethereal grids—spanned all four walls of the gift shop. Weiner's text filled a wall in the room adjacent to the gift shop. Classic Weiner, instructions for installation had been gifted by the previous owners, and rendered by AGO staff with, surprisingly, a fair amount of input from Weiner himself about paint colours and so forth. The text said something about chains holding together and/or breaking apart ... I didn't transcribe it. Swintak's piece was on the opposite wall, framing the doorway to the gift shop. Yes the gift shop was rather prominent but, in it's nomadic reno-incarnation, just a shadow of its former venerable self.
C. A. Swintak, The thing that won't let you walk away, 2005. Taken from AGO website.
At first glance, Swintak's piece looked like old-style (Rauschenberg) assemblage, ie: just a bunch of random junk stuck to the wall. But this messed up recreation of daily life clutter is doubled, one side a mirror of the other. Blue jeans and socks cascade from under a bed with rumbled sheets. Newspapers, dirty dishes, crumpled panties and dust balls are reflected in perfect symmetry. It's like a digital image, except it's all real stuff, glued to the wall. Swintak's level of detail is good. Every inch, from the empty beer can frieze to the lacy, ladies' slip-covered columns is considered and duplicated. Beyond the elegant non-illusion of reflection, the work reads as a personal portrait (or self portrait), with possible (subtle) feminist reading. The woman to whom this clutter belongs is undeniably a blue jeans girl, but she also owns a pair of red high-heeled shoes with matching underwear. She isn't fussy, she drinks beer, she reads the paper. She doesn't sweep her clutter under the rug, in fact, she'll even put it on display. Juxtaposed against Weiner and LeWitt, this piece is full of life and female agency. I really like the AGO's decision to mix it up. Weiner and LeWitt have been dragged out of history into an engagement with Swintak's contemporary take on conceptual art. Swintak is given a dose of high-profile respect, and her bright, grounded practice can handle it.
*NB: Wallworks started with Weiner, LeWitt and Swintak, whose works are all shown in proximity, but the project is ongoing and according to AGO PR will result in 20 pieces over the next 2 years. Raymond Pettibon also had a piece installed last night which I completely misread. It's about surfing dudes. I'm sooo not a California girl... I thought the big blue wave was supposed to be sky, that the reference to "curls" meant nice hair, and that the floating heads were angels of people who'd died from AIDS. Some days I should not be allowed out of the house. UPDATE: Sarah Milroy on Rayond Pettibon here