ARCHIVES >> Front Gallery: Allison Hrabluik, Island, Bar, and Abattoir

Back Gallery: Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Curious About Existence

Front Gallery: Allison Hrabluik, Island, Bar, and Abattoir

Back Gallery: Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, Curious About Existence


Allison Hrabluik, The Pit Bar, Dawson
City, Yukon, video still, 2004

Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby,
Curious About Existence, video still,
2003

October 21, 2004 - November 27, 2004
Opening Reception: Thursday, 21 October, 8 PM

Front Gallery: Allison Hrabluik
Island, Bar, and Abattoir

Hrabluik photographs her locations on site then takes her images back to the studio where she uses them to make miniature sets. Filming her characters’ silent pantomimed action within the confines of her studio, she selects every few frames from the shot footage, cuts out the individual characters by hand, then places them within the miniature sets—bringing them to life by way of stop-motion animation. The miniature set building and labour-intensive technical aspect of her animation process; the sharply articulated divide between the actual filmed space of her characters and their replicated, miniaturized, and superimposed placement within the space of her collaged location; the suspension of disbelief that her recreated film sets require of the viewer; the contrast between seductive aesthetics, cyclical content, and connotative setting—these all function with the disembodied and disjointed "action" of her characters to create a changed place and a new moment.
- Luanne Martineau

"For Pit Bar, Dawson City, Yukon I visited the Yukon partly to satisfy an interest in comparing the Canadian North with my romantic impressions formed of the north of Lofoten Islands, Norway. During my research I managed to both de-romanticize my notion of the place, and confirm it with a more familiar definition. It was hard to avoid the Klondike legends of Dawson City, being that the gold rush is the most documented moment in the Yukon's history. Due to our lack of abilities to handle the Yukon wilderness, I spent more time in the town of Dawson City than originally intended. During this time, I was introduced to the younger generation's attempt to replace the legends of Klondike history, and their recognition of the economic necessity of building a culture in Dawson that could function independently from this history. It is this attempt by the younger generation that The Pit Bar, Dawson City, Yukon is nodding towards."
-Allison Hrabluik

Allison Hrabluik is from Calgary, Alberta and currently lives in Toronto, Ontario. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions and film festivals across Canada and internationally, including Catriona Jeffries Gallery (Vancouver, BC), Downtown Artspace (Adelaide, Australia), Market Gallery (Glasgow, Scotland), EK Arts Centre (East Kilbride, Scotland), Stride Gallery (Calgary, AB), Eastern Edge Gallery (St. John’s, NFLD) and Latitude 53 (Edmonton, AB). Allison’s videos have recently been screened for Artboat as part of Art Chicago through Threewalls Gallery (Chicago) and as All Set: Two Model Videos by Allison Hrabluik on CBC Radio 3. She has recently made multiple works with Tutu magazine (Glasgow), Patti magazine (Vancouver), Art Metropole (Toronto), Artcity (Calgary), and independently as The Lost Hamster Commission.

Back Gallery: Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby
Curious About Existence

Episodic in nature, Curious About Existence reacts ultimately against an uninspired but prevailing acceptance of moral terms. It begins with a song of worship, an ode to the looming nastiness of our organic existence. A celebration of disorder and entropy, the opening song seems borne of a curiosity about the possibilities of joy and freedom. In a more lighthearted segment, a squirrel and beaver converse about how everybody feels bad a lot of the time, which is compounded by the stupid things they do as a result. These stupid things are more eloquently characterized by Richard Wagner’s wife, Cosima, in excerpts from her letters to Nietzsche. “Treat your impulses as a comedy that wants to entertain you, not a doctrine to be followed,” she writes. By enjoying the spectacle of the river creatures’ conversation, we are guided through another chapter of anxiety about shame with the opportunity for impunity.
-Jennifer Hsu

Cooper Battersby and Emily Vey Duke have been working collaboratively since June 1994. They work in printed matter, installation, curation, and sound, but their primary practice is the production of single-channel video. Their work has been exhibited in galleries and at festivals in North and South America and throughout Europe, including the Walker Center (Minneapolis), The Banff Centre (Banff), The Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver), YYZ (Toronto), The Renaissance Society (Chicago), The New York Video Festival (NYC), The European Media Arts Festival (Osnabruck), Impakt (Utrecht), and The Images Festival (Toronto). Their tape Being Fucked Up (2000) has been awarded prizes from film festivals in Switzerland, Germany, and the USA. Bad Ideas for Paradise (2002) was purchased for broadcast by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and for the libraries at Harvard and Princeton, and has won prizes from the NYExpo (NYC) and the Onion City Festival (Chicago).


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