TRUTH OR FICTION?
Doug Buis
Rodney Graham
Kent Monkman
Carol Sawyer
Camille Turner
Central Gallery
April 6 to May 22, 2010
The group exhibition TRUTH or FICTION? brings together various sorts of contemporary art by five contributing artists from near and far: Doug Buis (Knutsford/Kamloops), Rodney Graham (Vancouver), Kent Monkman (Toronto), Carol Sawyer (Vancouver) and Camille Turner (Toronto). The gathered art works share certain attributes: they refer to history and historical narratives, past, present and future; they include historical figures, but also little known, dubious and perhaps fictional characters; and, despite being about the past, present and future, they are more interested in representation than in mimesis—rather than mimic reality they represent it, with all its ambiguities and uncertainties. Four of the artists in the exhibition appear within their work. Rodney Graham presents himself as a west coast modernist painter. Carol Sawyer introduces us to Natalie Brettschneider, whose mid-century history (including a sojourn in Kamloops) unfolds through a collection of small black and white photographs. Miss Chief Eagle Testicle reappears repeatedly in Kent Monkman’s work, re-enacting history while posing for painted and daguerreotype portraits and, more recently, video clips. In TRUTH or FICTION? we also meet visitors from the future: in Camille Turner’s work, Dogon space travellers return to earth during a time of multiple but interconnected crises, to make us aware of Afro-futurism and The Final Frontier. Meanwhile, Doug Buis offers us localized mise-en-scène with accompanying narratives populated by little known but somehow familiar characters. The narratives in the exhibition and the characters involved in them—independently and in conjunction—invoke a certain uncertainty.
The Centre for innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada (CiCAC) at Thompson Rivers University supported the TRUTH or FICTION? exhibition through an artist-residency for Camille Turner, during which new project components were produced in Kamloops.
Generously sponsored by B-100
Book Club
In conjunction with Kamloops Art Gallery’s exhibition TRUTH or FICTION?, the Kamloops Library spring Book Club examines the role of representation in various cultural forms, including visual art and literature. The Wednesday evening Book Club group will read and discuss The Secret River by Kate Grenville and then, on April 7th, view the exhibition. The experiences offered by the book and the exhibition call into question a variety of social constructs and ideologies proposing singular or absolute ‘truths.’
Carol Sawyer
Natalie Brettschneider performs “Oval Matt,” Paris, c. 1920 (detail from the installation Natalie Brettschneider in British Columbia)
photograph
Courtesy of the Artist
