East & West Galleries:

This exhibition is a new presentation of an exhibition presented at the Concordia University Art Gallery from December 8th to 21st, 1983. The following excerpts from an interview by Peter O'Brien with Ron Haselden on the Montreal exhibition. The complete interview will be published in the British magazine "Aspects" in January 1984.

O'Brien: The first thing that strikes me about the show is what you're doing with the stability/instability of language.

Haselden: A lot of of the work is based on my confronting the French language. One immediately starts to read French, often in association with English. Here I want to learn more French, because if you don't learn it then in many cases you're excluded. All the language I'm using in the work for this show is found language, mainly from advertisements, but because it's French it has a strange kind of sound quality and a strange image quality.

O'Brien: What about words as things? You seem to be working with words not only as metaphors or sound or noise, but also as substance. There is a weight, a colour, a physicality there also.

O'Brien: Do you see this work as political?

Haselden: I think there is an intention there, but I've tried to keep it on the edge, to keep it from not being overtly political. I'm very interested in the situation here in Quebec and the insistence on maintaining the French language and culture.

O'Brien: What about surfaces? There's more concern in the work with surfaces than in some of your earlier work.

Haselden: When I came here I tried consciously not to drag my history over with me. In the earlier work the historical associations have more to do with evolution of time, whereas here the historical situation is more connected to politics. As for the surfaces, there's a few things to mention. I have a very definite sculptural interest and that I hope manifests itself in the way I've been using the space here. The long drawings on the floor have a sculptural aspect to me. They're not pinned up on the wall. They try and move through the space. They're the result of having a long studio.

O'Brien: How does the film relate to the rest of the work?

Haselden: I started thinking about the film idea in my studio, while I was drawing a lot and working with the net photographs, and the emptiness of my studio seemed to invite some kind of action down the space. In the film, through animation, we mote it, rotate it, give it different positions within the room, while at the same time the camera is locked onto a rotating tripod, so that the room itself is turning as well as the shape in it. The film is about reorienting or disorienting one's position in the room, using the "X" shape as an added ingredient to push that feeling harder.

I never felt I had to do just drawing or just sculpture. I was interested in using as many approaches as I felt were appropriate, and what one sees in the show is a result of that diversity.

The Ron Haselden exhibition is in collaboration with:

Sylvie Belanger, Gail Bourgeois, Normand Cleveau, Marie-Andree Cote, Richard Dubreuil, Tilya Helfield, Dzian Lacharite, Rosanne Lamarre, Rene Lemire, Lacquie L. Lupien, Joan Metcalf, Josette Oberson, Francesca Penserini, Pascale Trudel, Rene De Carufel, Kathy Horner, Florence Moreaux.