Making the first selection

Darryn begins his consideration of the work available to him in map drawer #11.

After we each picked a location out of the karmic coffee tin, it was clear that we would all be selecting works on paper. There is nothing wrong with this... on a normal day. Today our gallery registrar and in-house framer, Shelly Mallon, was out of the office. This meant that the framing was up to us curators. Again, normally there is nothing wrong with this. However, after my top three picks from that location couldn't find a frame to fit with the matting that was with it, I decided that I would have to wait for Day 2 when Shelly would be able to cut me a new matte to fit a frame.

It is things like this little hiccup that most people don't think about once a show is finalized and opened for public viewing. By that time, everything that needs a frame will have one and these presentation concerns are less visible. It was a fitting start to the Smackdown though; these sort of things are issues to consider when a curator is going through any permanent collection. This initial experience, in my Smackdown debut, left me with a mixed impression. On one hand, I wanted to stick to my initial decision and choose the work that I felt was my strongest first choice. Weighing against that was the desire to have my work hung and properly displayed by the end of day one. In the end, I got to keep my initial choice.

Storage is obviously very important for an issue like this. It is not practical (or possible) to keep everything in its own dedicated frame. Because of this, much of the paper-based works are kept in these map drawers and solander bins. They are all maintained inside a matte (of better or worse condition) and they all have an archival (acid-free) piece of tissue paper on the surface of the image. These conditions are necessary to maintain paper-based artworks for long periods of time without deterioration or discoloration.

Anyways, as my two competitors waged on with fitting frames, I was left to wait until the next day. All that was left for Day 1 was to gather research on my choice, Donald Harvey.

Discussing the placement

Lisa ended up choosing the first work she saw when she opened the drawer. The work is a serigraph (silkscreen print) by John Boyle entitled Northern Landscape, 1976 (17" x 24"). It's interesting to note that a different work by Boyle (a painting entitled Vincent) was Daniels first choice in the first curatorial smack down as well, although the reasons for making the choice are quite different.

Boyle is a London Ontario artist who was very involved in the artist run centre/London arts movement back in the 1960s. Boyle has an interesting tie to Sarnia. During his career he submitted a painting into a group show at the London Museum but his painting, that of himself, naked in a chair, was considered to risqué. Since he was denied admittance to the show, all of his friends pulled their pieces out of the show in protest. The shows next stop was in Sarnia where all of the pieces were displayed, including the Boyle.

The reason Daniels chose Boyle in the first Smack Down was because she had a lot of difficulty with his work and wanted to set up a situation where she was forced to consider it more seriously. As a curator in a public institution, one must often separate themselves from works that they are naturally drawn to and consider all works in the collection with equal rigor.

It was not a surprise to Daniels that when she opened the drawer this time round, the Boyle presented itself to her. Boyle is a strong nationalist, at times to the point of being almost anti-American. Questions regarding the Group of Seven, national identity, the Canadian landscape and national pride are inescapable if you're a curator in a Canadian public art gallery that has works by the Group in their collection.

The permanent collection exhibition currently up in the gallery next door includes work by the Group of Seven, so to have the opportunity to place Northern Landscape within close proximity to the work by the Group will, at least for awhile, allow us to consider how the influences of and mythologies created by the work of the Group have been addressed by other contemporary Canadian Artists.

The fact that the title is Northern Landscape, and the image is a portrait of a white male Cowboy and an Aboriginal male, sets up a number of questions and challenges for the viewer, particularly within the context of Canada's social and cultural histories, national identity, and the grip of the Group. It's too early to tell how this piece will relate within the overall exhibition as all the pieces are quite small, very different and have not been hung in relation to each other. We'll see what day 2 brings...