Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Apologia - a new body of work






Post- Stanley Cup, pre-Occupy, Apologia re-purposes texts taken directly from the raw plywood hoardings that covered Vancouver streets after the June 2011 riots. I've mimicked the gestures and faked the textures and colours of the original scripts and then re-mixed selected portions of the narrative scrawl into a fabricated tableaux of counterfeit relics; creating, in effect - a false 'Apology Wall'.

Lost in the crowd, amidst the spectacle's shameless sermonizing and almost self- congratulatory contrition are fragments of feeling that seem to point to a deeper and potentially meaningful, collective unrest. By re-contextualizing the 'real' wall's chastening catch-phrases, randomly inserting manipulated 'profile picture' images, and assigning imaginary authorship to impersonal confessions, I'm hoping to redeem the more plausible expressions of private regret, remind people of other civic events that bear witnessing, explore genuine acknowledgements of public dissent and perhaps, by reading between the lines, discover the catalysts for inciting a lasting and constructive civic conscience.