The Lion’s Share (Food Series)

Main Gallery
Artist: Rita McKeough

Commissioned for the Food series, Calgary-based artist Rita McKeough created a mock restaurant in the gallery with found and constructed objects, kinetics and sound. This exhibition used a humorous and dream-like scenario to raise questions about the complexities of our relationship to eating animals.

Artist Biography

Calgary based audio, media installation and performance artist Rita McKeough has exhibited extensively in Canada since 1977 and has presented her work internationally. She has taught at various art institutions throughout Canada and has been a drummer in various bands. McKeough has maintained a commitment to artist run centers, community based art and music initiatives. She insists that she has been fortunate to have the support and assistance of her friends and community to produce her work.
Born in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, McKeough studied printmaking and sculpture at the University of Calgary where she received her BFA. She went on to study at the NSCAD University where she was awarded her MFA in 1979.

Artist Statement

In my installation and performance work over the past 25 years I have consistently interacted with architectural spaces and implicated architectural systems, often destroying and consuming the walls themselves. I have worked from a feminist perspective, sometimes more directly than others. I have always been drawn to social issues, idealism and social change. I hope to allow humor and self-criticality to be present in my practice and to strive to challenge myself to take risks. I have always been motivated by the challenge of responding to a site, which may be either a gallery space or a public space.

In a recent work Outskirts, which included a performance that was ongoing in the installation, I built electronic and mechanical devices, which performed aspects of the performance with me. Outskirts dealt with our relationship to the natural environment and our ambivalence about how to balance the freedom and mobility of our lifestyles with our concern for the environment. I would like to continue to explore the potential of a relationship to the performing object within my installation and performance work.

Over the past few years I have been interested in the l’informe (the formless) as conceived by Georges Bataille and recently theorized by art historians Rosalind Krauss, and others. The formless in relation to architectural space explores the dissolution of boundaries (disciplinary, performative, artistic) as well as works or ideas that are temporary, contingent, nomadic, hypothetical, historical and fictional conceptions of space. I am interested in re-imagining my relationship to the built environment within my research.

The Lion’s Share

The Lion’s Share is a new installation work based on my ongoing concerns about the consequences of urban and agricultural development and processes.

This work follows and builds on issues explored in my most recent installation work, entitled Wilderment. For this installation I created a series of small moving cranes that destroyed an imaginary prairie landscape, consuming the environment in the name of development. My reference point is the change in the landscape in and around Calgary where in recent years I have seen suburban development destroy prairie grassland at an alarming rate. I have been researching the design and science of cattle feedlots and the demands on the prairie from these various large scale industrialized farming systems. I am interested in juxtaposing the systems and structures that are used to feed livestock with the architectural designs of public eating areas. I am interested in constructing and performing with food products, perhaps enacting the foods concerns about its quality and the quality of its life.

I am drawn to chaotic and immersive environments that reconfigure contradictions and tensions in our everyday lives.

THE LION’S SHARE

Fresh Daily

All you can eat

Serve yourself

Bits and pieces or the whole thing

Share or don’t

Mix it up

Lick the plates clean

Lick the table clean

Lick the floor clean

Take what you want

Take a little more

Take a few more bites

Drag some home for your family

Wipe your mouth dry

Lick your hands clean

Suck the bones dry

Don’t worry about the mess

Nothing will be left

Nothing wasted.

Illustration of the fable from Francis Barlow’s edition of Aesop’s Fables, 1687

Cereal Gen (Food Series)

Main Gallery
Curator: Josephine Mills and Jane Edmundson

Planned in conjunction with Liberal Education course
Artists: Lyndal Osborne and Alex Moon (and works from the Collection)

Cereal Gen is the second exhibition in the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery’s Food series that runs June through December 2011. With three exhibitions and a public-site project, the series addresses social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. Green Thumb opened the series and featured works from the U of L Art Collection that explore gardens and greenery both in terms of pastoral imagery and political implications.  Consisting of detailed installations that play with the forms and technology from scientific laboratories, Cereal Gen includes recent work by two Alberta artists and focuses on social and economic issues related to seed production and farming.  Between October 1st through 6th, look for DodoLab’s project The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking In Lethbridge which will be appearing in several sites around campus.  The Food series will conclude with The Lion’s Share, a new installation by Rita McKeough in which she playfully explores our relationship to eating animals.

Given the essential role that food plays in our lives as sustenance and as part of social and economic systems, it has been a common subject for artists to explore in their work. With the major changes in recent decades in the application of scientific processes and the relationship between individuals and corporations involved with food production and distribution, there have been heated debate and volumes of research on this aspect of food.  Artists have engaged with this timely and important topic in many ways. Some take the role of activist and clearly critique genetic modification or the corporatization of agricultural production. Others, like the two artists in this exhibition, explore the fascinating imagery, complex emotions, and confident assertions of authority and certainty posed by corporations and scientific discourses that emerge within, and are part of, these debates.

The title for this exhibition, Cereal Gen, is a play on words that references the subject of the works on display: “serial gen” is short for serial number generating software. In Alex Moon’s Uni-Farm project, a repurposed old dot matrix printer takes corporate branding to a new level and creates the seeds for his fictional corporation in the pattern of their logo. Moon cleverly questions the dominant assumption that technical progress intrinsically equals improvement in our health and well-being by using found objects, including old Macintosh computers, as the basis for the new-fangled devices and processes being promoted by Uni-Farm. Once the latest and greatest in technical advances, these devices and the surrounding climate of “progress at all cost” leads the employees of Uni-Farm, and the people of this fictional world to the precipice of worldwide food shortage. Moon further creates an awareness of the limitations on being current, let alone predicting the future, by using design elements straight out of a science fiction film. The colours, fonts for the text, and logo of Uni-Farm are all ordinary looking and thereby emphasize the ‘fiction’ part of science fiction.

Lyndal Osborne’s installation also takes the form of a fictional laboratory, but not one where things are going as terribly wrong as Uni-Farm’s.  The size, colour and detail of Endless Forms Most Beautiful immediately grabs one’s attention and demands closer inspection.  Up close, the work is equally visually compelling with the combination of organic and inorganic materials to create massive versions of seedpods. Osborne describes herself as an “archaeologist seeking and retrieving discarded fragments of the urban environment and the dried out remains of natures’ seasons.” Although beautiful, as the name states, the mixing of items to create the seedpods, their strong colours, and their gigantic size disrupts the fascination with scientific imagery and disturbs an uncritical acceptance of the prevalence of genetically modified food.

Cereal Gen continues in the Helen Christou Gallery with more work by Moon as well as works from the U of L Art Collection.  The Art Gallery would like to thank Bruce McKay for proposing the initial idea for the Food series. The exhibitions have been planned in conjunction with the Liberal Education Program which is currently offering a course titled “Food: A Critical Examination,” taught by McKay. As well, during this semester the new U of L Centre for Culture and Community will be presenting a speaker’s series on campus that will engage further with ideas and issues related to the social and political aspects of food.

Josephine Mills

Director/Curator

Artist Statement

In my piece, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the setting is a laboratory and the nine forms represent enlarged seedpods in the process of genetically modification. In GMO science three main techniques are employed for implanting genes into the seed cell – developing tumors, electricity, or a gene gun. In this imagined lab my forms reference these processes through the shape of the seedpod (with growths on the form), the materials used (pierced by electrical capacitors) and scientific equipment (pipets injecting DNA).

Many of the seedpods are created from actual seeds. In some cases the forms are seductive and beautiful. This represents the intellectual arguments used by the chemical companies to expand their research through the patenting of seeds (11 billion to date), gradually gaining corporate control of food production. There is also an element of the grotesque in other seedpods, suggesting a darker side to the shrinking of seed biodiversity. This hints at hidden dangers. Some genetically altered seed contains a terminator gene that ensues its infertility and lack of ability to reproduce. Could this government – patented suicide gene pollutes all crops around the world? What impact does this have on third world countries that no longer control the productivity of their own food?

The fictional laboratory created contains a small selection of heritage seeds (original, unaltered) that are set to one side. They exist as a miniaturized version of our past, something that is not available any more .The glass flasks and plastic tubing represent both an aspect of this genetic modification process and, more importantly, the interconnections we humans have with the plant world. I wish, as co-inhabitants of this earth we might agree to negotiate more checks in how far we go in our manipulation of the planet.

Lyndal Osborne

Green Thumb (Food Series)

Helen Christou Gallery
July 29 – September 8, 2011
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Opening the Food series, this exhibition from the U of L collection will include a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures depicting vegetation both wild and tamed. Artists: Raoul Dufy, Gathie Falk, Gershon Iskowitz, Tony Urquhart and others.

Curatorial Statement

The artworks selected from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection for Green Thumb depict the initial stages of verdure, where seeds germinate, leaves unfurl, and vegetation grows both wild and tamed. These works examine the colour, shape and texture of foliage, flowers and branches in a variety of media. Though we consume only a select portion of the crops produced by our environment, the organisms and animals that are nourished by all varieties of natural growth are crucial to the sustainability of our ecosystem and our longevity as a species. Perhaps the emotional connection many of us feel with time spent puttering in our gardens comes from the innate knowledge that plants produce our oxygen; greenery is synonymous with life. The repetitive processes necessary to foster and perpetuate green growth allow the gardener to work in a meditative state, temporarily removed from the steel and concrete of urban living.

Though these romanticized visions of human-nature interaction inspire beautiful artworks, the connection between vegetation and capitalist enterprise should not be downplayed when examining the social, cultural, and political issues that shape our use of natural resources. Both Lucius O’Brien and Kathleen Daly’s historical depictions of human-powered logging practices stand in contrast to the contemporary reliance on mechanized deforestation to meet commercial demands. The proliferation of recent scholarly studies, media articles and films focusing on the environmental and medical ramifications of our factory-based food production and distribution system demonstrate the need to question the quality and practicality of the “natural” things we consume.

Green Thumb is the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery running from June to December 2011 that will explore social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. The Food series will also include a public-site project, a publication and cross-disciplinary research and performance projects across the UofL campus. Green Thumb continues in the UofL Main Gallery from July 29 – September 8, 2011.

Jane Edmundson

Green Thumb (Food Series)

Main Gallery
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Opening the Food series, this exhibition from the U of L collection will include a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures depicting vegetation both wild and tamed. Artists: Raoul Dufy, Gathie Falk, Gershon Iskowitz, Tony Urquhart and others.

Curatorial Statement

The artworks selected from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection for Green Thumb depict the initial stages of verdure, where seeds germinate, leaves unfurl, and vegetation grows both wild and tamed. While some of the included works illustrate fruits and vegetables familiar to most diets (McNicoll’s ‘Apple Time’ and Falk and Cicansky’s cabbages), most examine the colour, shape and texture of foliage, flowers and branches. Though we consume only a select portion of the crops produced by our environment, the organisms and animals that are nourished by all varieties of natural growth are crucial to the sustainability of our ecosystem and our longevity as a species. Perhaps the emotional connection many of us feel with time spent puttering in our gardens comes from the innate knowledge that plants produce our oxygen; greenery is synonymous with life. The repetitive processes necessary to foster and perpetuate green growth allow the gardener to work in a meditative state, temporarily removed from the steel and concrete of urban living.

Though these romanticized visions of human-nature interaction inspire beautiful artworks, the connection between vegetation and capitalist enterprise should not be downplayed when examining the social, cultural, and political issues that shape the contemporary food production system. Baxter&’s multimedia installation, CO2 Landscape – Homage to Chico Mendes, employs the story of an Amazonian rubber tapper turned environmentalist who was assassinated by ranching entrepreneurs to illustrate the conflict between sustainable harvesting practices and corporate land exploitation. The proliferation of recent scholarly studies, media articles and films focusing on the environmental and medical ramifications of our mechanized, factory-based food production and distribution system demonstrate the need to question the quality and practicality of the “natural” things we consume.

Green Thumb is the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery running from June to December 2011 that will explore social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. The Food series will also include a public-site project, a publication and cross-disciplinary research and performance projects across the UofL campus. Green Thumb continues in the Helen Christou Gallery from July 29 – September 8, 2011.

Jane Edmundson