Rouge: la ville, le carré et l'épingle de sûreté
GALERIE CARTE BLANCHE
Mary Joyce
Mary Joyce est une artiste née à Montréal et vivant à Edmonton. Graveuse, dessinatrice et peintre primée, elle produit et présente ses oeuvres au Canada et en Europe depuis 1986. Elle puise la matière de sa recherche dans la rétention sensorielle par la mémoire du corps, le travail, le fonctionnement des choses, le travail des femmes, l'architecture industrielle et l'ingénierie.
Rouge : la ville, le carré et l'épingle de sûreté
Une exploration du droit à l'éducation et de la mobilisation citoyenne, ce montage représente des gens se déplaçant ensemble par le courage et la détermination. Les sujets se massent pour réclamer le changement social à travers des marches dans l'espace public occupé : le soulèvement des étudiants québécois pour l'abolition de la hausse des frais de scolarité en 2012 et pour faire tomber le gouvernement. Le carré rouge continue d'imprégner les mouvements de mobilisation politique partout au Canada, avec des allusions à d'autres mouvements mondiaux de citoyens. L'exposition examine le rôle du citoyen et de la mobilisation de la rue dans l'histoire sociale et politique.
Un immense carré de feutre rouge est suspendu avec d'énormes épingles de sûreté, définissant un couloir étroit dans l'assemblage des toiles de la galerie où le visiteur participe à une marche avec des camarades dans une rue bondée de la ville, les épaules et le cou frôlés par le feutre doux et réconfortant du carré rouge, et aperçoit des images de la lutte dans de grandes peintures et gravures carrées. L'expérience physique et politique de cette présentation est ce que j'offre aux participants, qui pourraient bien être des personnes habituées au port du carré de feutre rouge, hissant un grand carré de tissu rouge dans le centre d'une procession de rue.
L'oeuvre documente une période de l'histoire politique et devient en quelque sorte à la fois le lieu et le produit de l'engagement citoyen dans la mobilisation du savoir. Les mouvements populaires passés et présents se confondent dans le temps et l'espace. Leurs signes et symboles participent aux idées et à la politique. Comme le simple carré rouge, l'art peut stimuler et mobiliser. Il peut même remettre en question dans la mesure où il donne un pouvoir à la pensée, à l'expérience sensorielle et à l'émotion. Rouge est à la fois de l'art et de la politique en tant que recherche sur les mouvements de masse citoyens. Le montage artistique provoque la réflexion, la discussion et une mobilisation future.
Mary Joyce a remporté plusieurs prix et bourses. Ses oeuvres se retrouvent à la Fondation des arts de l'Alberta, dans les archives de l'atelier d'imprimerie Flint au Musée des beaux-arts de Hamilton, dans la collection de la galerie d'art Ad Axiom à Burlington, dans les archives de l'Association des graveurs du Manitoba à Winnipeg, dans la collection du Projet pétrolier oriental Husky de Terre-Neuve et dans des collections privées au Canada, aux États-Unis et en Europe.
Translation
Mary Joyce is an artist born in Montreal, living in Edmonton. Printmaker, drawer and primarily painter, she has been producing and presenting her works in Canada and Europe since 1986. She takes the materials of her research from sensory retention through body memory, labour, how things work, women’s work, industrial architecture and engineering.
Red: City, Square and Safety Pin
An exporation of the right to education and of citizen mobilization, this installation represents the people
moving together through courage and determination. Subjects mass to demand social change through marches in busy public space: the uprising of Quebec students for the abolishment of the student fee hike of 2012 and to make the government fall. The red square continues to permeate movements of political mobilization throughout Canada, with allusions to other global movements of citizens. The show examines the role of a citizen and of mobilization in the street in social history and politics.
A huge square of red felt is suspended with enormous safety pins, defining a narrow corridor in the assemblage of canvasses at the gallery where the viewer participates in a march with comrades in a crowded street of the city, shoulders and neck brushed by the soft and comforting felt of the red square, perceiving images of struggle in large square canvasses and prints. The physical and political experience of this presentation is what I offer to participants, who could very well be persons used to carrying a square of red felt, hoisting a great square of red fabric in the centre of a procession in the street.
The work documents a period of political history and becomes both the site and the product of citizen engagement in the mobilization of knowledge. The movements of the people, past and present, intermingle in time and space. Their signs and symbols contribute to ideas and politics. Like the simple red square, art can stimulate and mobilize. It can even pose a challenge to the point where it gives power to thought, sensory experience and emotion. “Red” is both art and politics as far as research of the mass movements of the citizens are concerned. The artistic display generates reflection, discussion and future mobilization.
Mary Joyce has won many prizes and grants, Her works are found in the Alberta Foundation for the Arts collection, in the archives of Flint print studio at the Art Gallery of Hamilton, in the collection of Ad Axiom Art Gallery of Burlington, in the archive of Martha Street Printshop in Winnipeg, SNAP Printshop in Edmonton, Husky Oil in Newfoundland, and I private collections in Canada, Europe and the USA.
RED: City, Square and Safety Pin
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada June 19-July 1 , 2014:
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada June 19-July 1 , 2014:
Installation by Mary Joyce
Reception: June 21, 2014, 2-4 PM.
The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts
9925-118 Avenue, Edmonton, T5G 0K6
Edmonton, Alberta, Canada June 19-July 1 , 2014
Red: City, Square and Safety Pin
In the red.
A quarter-million people thronged through Montreal streets in spring 2012. "Nous sommes équerrement dans la rouge!" – we are squarely in the red – came the response of students and families to tuition increases and debt. They called for the right to higher education. Education rights are like social safety pins – they hold our future together.
Art for the sake of social movement happens in the streets. A red felt square – secured to coats with a safety pin – became the small symbol of mass student protests and social advocacy mobilized in Montreal streets and all over Quebec. And only a year later Alberta’s students wore red squares to confront massive public funding cuts.
I decided to research that spring’s momentous events even as my studio practices as an artist began to change. In a state of shift, I searched for immediate news accounts from the street just as I abandoned paint brushes for new tools, combed media reports and photo-documentation, and searched websites to sift sources, rethink news, and see social change in its many visual and embodied forms.
Red and squares emerged as my route to explore social transformation. I took up Kandinsky’s views on the rightness of the square for the colour red as much as his views on art and the human spirit. He considered the fluctuating power of art a gauge to spiritual health for the people. I was also reminded of Françoise Sullivan’s use of red in automatisme contexts within Refus Global’s call for modernism. And art writer John Berger’s social conscience of the sixties as well as Joseph Beuys’ in the seventies, along with Janet Mitchell’s street scenes.
“Know and claim social rights” writes John Berger in Permanent Red. “There is no alternative than a permanent search for freedom, and more and more freedom,” encourages Joseph Beuys. Transform a simple shape and colour into popular language. Generate art and human spirit in the streets. Honour, mark, document social rights.
A huge square of red felt hangs suspended from oversize brass safety pins. It defines a narrow corridor in the gallery installation. Viewers enact a march through a crowded city street – hugged by soft and comforting felt around their shoulders – seeing images of struggle in square paintings. The physical and political experience of this performance is what I give to viewers, who could well be people wearing red felt squares, hoisting a large uplifted square of red fabric into the centre of a street procession. Or carrying a red balloon.
The installation Red: City, Square and Safety Pin is my salute to rising social movements, political mobilization, and citizen engagement. At once local and global, national and international, activism in Canada is growing and ongoing. As an artist, I work to call attention to social and political change, to potential for art and life-altering consequences. As art and people in the streets call for rights, so I wish to bring the streets into art and art into living.
Mary Joyce, 2014
Statement co-written with Dr. PearlAnn Reichwein
Red: City, Square and Safety Pin
In the red.
A quarter-million people thronged through Montreal streets in spring 2012. "Nous sommes équerrement dans la rouge!" – we are squarely in the red – came the response of students and families to tuition increases and debt. They called for the right to higher education. Education rights are like social safety pins – they hold our future together.
Art for the sake of social movement happens in the streets. A red felt square – secured to coats with a safety pin – became the small symbol of mass student protests and social advocacy mobilized in Montreal streets and all over Quebec. And only a year later Alberta’s students wore red squares to confront massive public funding cuts.
I decided to research that spring’s momentous events even as my studio practices as an artist began to change. In a state of shift, I searched for immediate news accounts from the street just as I abandoned paint brushes for new tools, combed media reports and photo-documentation, and searched websites to sift sources, rethink news, and see social change in its many visual and embodied forms.
Red and squares emerged as my route to explore social transformation. I took up Kandinsky’s views on the rightness of the square for the colour red as much as his views on art and the human spirit. He considered the fluctuating power of art a gauge to spiritual health for the people. I was also reminded of Françoise Sullivan’s use of red in automatisme contexts within Refus Global’s call for modernism. And art writer John Berger’s social conscience of the sixties as well as Joseph Beuys’ in the seventies, along with Janet Mitchell’s street scenes.
“Know and claim social rights” writes John Berger in Permanent Red. “There is no alternative than a permanent search for freedom, and more and more freedom,” encourages Joseph Beuys. Transform a simple shape and colour into popular language. Generate art and human spirit in the streets. Honour, mark, document social rights.
A huge square of red felt hangs suspended from oversize brass safety pins. It defines a narrow corridor in the gallery installation. Viewers enact a march through a crowded city street – hugged by soft and comforting felt around their shoulders – seeing images of struggle in square paintings. The physical and political experience of this performance is what I give to viewers, who could well be people wearing red felt squares, hoisting a large uplifted square of red fabric into the centre of a street procession. Or carrying a red balloon.
The installation Red: City, Square and Safety Pin is my salute to rising social movements, political mobilization, and citizen engagement. At once local and global, national and international, activism in Canada is growing and ongoing. As an artist, I work to call attention to social and political change, to potential for art and life-altering consequences. As art and people in the streets call for rights, so I wish to bring the streets into art and art into living.
Mary Joyce, 2014
Statement co-written with Dr. PearlAnn Reichwein
Red: City, Square and Safety Pin (le carré rouge)
Demokratie!
"Our Safety...Sherbrooke"
2015-2016:
