Gilray at the AGO

Going through some old magazines of mine, ( I do this all the time, however the studio is still chock a block with stuff, lets just call paper ephemera) I came across this old issue of the Tate Gallery magazine. In days of old, it would be enough for me to hold onto it as it was 1994, prior to the Tate Modern, akin to pre corporate buy out if you will, but space is limited at the studio these days so I had to go through it to see if it was really worth keeping.

This tate magazine of summer 1994, has a grouping of work under the heading of the body imagery examining the way the body was depicted at this time and what that says about the society.

Check out this beauty:

In this essay was some of the Tate's collection of Gilray prints and others of the era. Yes, the AGO is having a show right now of Goya and Gilray, but I was unsatisfied with both masters at the gallery. Goya, how the hell can you be unsatisfied by Goya?

Well, the gallery has chosen to put up a copy of the Los Caprichos that is hand tinted by a collector...really? As a kid I collected comics and hockey cards, colouring them in made them worth nothing, I fail to see how these prints are exempt from a simple rule every 8 year old knows. What the hell is this? An art gallery or Ted turner in the 80s?

Gilray's work on display is good, a strong showing of his immense talents, but he was a man who served the best aspects of his satire when it was as close to the bone as possible.

Just look at this:

Now that is what I call, not pulling a punch! In the AGO show you see some imagery where he criticizes the revolution in France, on their new found freedoms and their new found lack of basic necessities...But this image, clearly spells out it's views on how the British and much of Europe saw the French Revolution and the following reign of terror.

The way he portrays his countrymen, he is not too enamoured with them either, clearly. We also get to understand how the people at that time feared the uncertainty a revolution brings about, and how through the news of the day, genteel Paris seemed to be at end.

So don't get me wrong, it is still worth it to stop in at the AGO, you will find the coloured Goya prints jarring if you have studied them but there is draftsmanship in spades, and a real strong valid criticism of the world the artist lived in. To me, the raw imagery of Gilray really communicates this on a personal level.

I'm not some major proponent of magazines either, but here I go just loving another magazine, and storing it above the fridge in a cupboard at the studio instead of recycling the damn thing, sigh.

Yes, this magazine really was 1994, just look at the advert on the back

Libby Hague: Sympathetic Connections at the AGO's Young Gallery

Libby Hage: Sympathetic Connections

Loop Gallery member Libby Hague’s installation called Sympathetic Connections transforms both the inside and outside of the Young Gallery at the Art Gallery of Ontario.  This three-dimensional work combines representational and abstract forms created out of woodblock prints on Japanese paper to fill the gallery. These paper sculptures dangle from the walls and cascade down from the ceiling, while a wall-mounted print of a nuclear power plant looms in the periphery, an image inspired in part by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year.

Libby Hague described her experience of showing her work at the AGO for this post:

"I was thrilled when Michelle Jacques gave me this opportunity because  the AGO is  a fabulous building. Its prominence  even got me the respect of the eavestrough guy and I thought - "Oh, that's how it works." More practical is the reality that until I have a specific  gallery to work in, I am more or less only rehearsing. My own studio has a grungy  functionality but there are too many things in it that interfere with my ability to read the work.  In my studio the work is  developed in sections and rather hopefully, if abstractly, in my imagination.  Installation artists need spaces like painters need paint. 

Libby Hague's installation at the AGO

The Young Gallery is thoughtfully designed so it brings a kind of formal clarity to the work . At the same time it's quite transformative because as you move around the room, the sculptures radically change depending on whether they are seen against the white wall or the city window. The first is a situation that I can control and the second  interjects  the human random chaos factor. I also put in an oscillating fan to move the pieces and  make them seem more alive and to shift  their relationships slightly. Additionally, the space  is like a huge window gallery that is visible 24/7 so the day to night shift is very interesting for me. 

An initial problem  which proved very useful was caused by the  mirrored facade on the Gehry reno. It makes it impossible to see in the gallery except at night and so happily the AGO accepted my proposal to do an intervention on the outside window as well.  This links the lines of the Gehry facade, the Henry Moore on the corner  and the sculptures I made inside. Once it was up , I loved how the mirror glass moved tour buses, people - Dundas St.   through the piece. It feels alive. 

Libby Hague at the AGO (exterior view)

A lot of my work has been about disaster and hope. This piece contrasts the exuberance of creating 3-D forms and by extension all creative activity with the pretty but disquieting  silhouette of the Pickering nuclear plant. The decision to put in the power plant came about because the Fukushima crisis happened while I was working on this. 


My reading of these  two elements, the sculpture and the power plant,  is that no happiness is so certain that  it can't disappear in an instant nor is it so simple that it is uninflected by danger or risk. A second reading , which I don't usually entertain, is that the sculpture is the disaster - post nuclear mayhem loosed upon a world that  loves a good disaster from a position of safety, of course. 


The show is up until September 11 and right now I am struggling with the possibility of having a puppet intervention that afternoon in the gallery."

Libby Hague at the AGO

Libby Hague: Sympathetic Connections at the AGO

Loop member Libby Hague's has a new installation at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) that opened yesterday.  Libby Hague: Sympathetic Connections is on view until September 11 and is part of the AGO’s Toronto Now series of rotating contemporary projects by Toronto artists.

The installation transforms woodblock prints into paper sculptures that connect across the walls, ceiling, and external windows of the AGO’s Young Gallery. Sympathetic Connections combines representational and abstract forms in a room-spanning three-dimensional installation. Colourful sculptural forms crafted from Japanese paper fill the gallery, dangling from walls and cascading down from the ceiling, while a wall-mounted print of a nuclear power plant looms in the periphery, an image inspired in part by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in Japan earlier this year.

“Libby Hague’s playful, yet foreboding narratives give physical form to fictional worlds that simultaneously mirror and manipulate reality,” says Michelle Jacques, the AGO’s acting curator of Canadian art. “Sympathetic Connections provides a timely exploration of our problematic relationship with the natural environment, invoking universal themes of responsibility and dependency, vulnerability and rescue, and risk and luck.”

To see more of Libby's work, visit her website at www.libbyhague.com.