New and Recent Exhibitions
Going to Seed
Opening at Hornby Island Arts Coucil, August 7th, 7-9pm
Show will be on August 4th - 16th, 11am - 4pm (Tuesday to Sunday)
(Location is behind Hornby Community Centre and the Credit Union)
The Martin Bachelor Gallery: Mojos + Familiars + Fetishes
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Review by Kate Juniper, Se-zes-sion February 4, 2015
Ted Goodden; Jo Lechay; Ann Newdigate at the The Martin Bachelor Gallery in Victoria B.C. January - February, 2015
Mojo [moh- jo] / noun: an object, as an amulet or charm, believed to carry a magic spell.
Familiar [fuh- mil- yer] / noun: an animal that embodies a supernatural spirit and aids a witch in performing magic.
Fetish [fet-ish] / noun: an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit.
The Martin Bachelor Gallery on Cormorant Street is full of faces. Like a crowd in an old Victorian courtroom, they seem silently to crow at you from their stations above. From the doorway those on your right, redolent of African tribal masks, demand your attention like naughty children. On the left they stare disapprovingly down their long Edwardian noses from stiffly embroidered portraits, or blindly from behind grey-green death masks. In the centre of the room small, muscular bronze men flex their bodies upon stakes in positions reminiscent of ancient Greek athletes. The room contains huge swathes of history, but the art belongs to the present: each of the artists is working today.
First impressions might be enough to scare one away if Jo Lechay’s mojos weren’t also delightful. They hang, translated by Goodden into stained glass form, upon the windows of the neon lit gallery front, baring their teeth. Inside their painted familiars- Lechay’s originals- watch your approach ambivalently. Thick black lines delineate their loosely composed but strongly defined boundaries, redolent of hyper-colourful Picasso sketches. Some scrunch their brows and bare their teeth in experimental contortions, others grin and drool at you in bleeding paint and colour. Redolent of children’s paintings and African masks, they are at once demonic and playful: they have earned their own lives. What they might do with them is a troubling question.
On the left side of the gallery Anne Newdigate’s textile portraits present a different kind of intimidation. Her faces, contained within small white boxes, are at once austere and fragile: a strange and interesting collection that pairs two death masks with three handsome would-be protagonists befitting an Austen novel. In between them is a much larger portrait of a woman who inhabits a more immediate time. Newdigate gives little away, either through the art itself or her accompanying statement. Regardless, the portraits are interesting, and evoke the history of the ‘fetish’ as it existed in its Victoria heyday, when a token of a loved one was all you might have of their company for long months, and when death meant a final opportunity to capture the likeness of a loved one. The most engaging are the infantile death masks - almost identical, withered and evocative of the strange little mummies dredged up from a peat bog- they are curios, alien and yet familiar in an uncomfortable way.
In the centre of the room Ted Goodden’s muscular little men align themselves on javelin-like stakes. Orderly but tenuously balanced, they are strong figures completely vulnerable to their surroundings- dwarfed by the room on their spindly plinths- at once substantial and precarious, much like the 12 steps they are named for. “The 12 Step Program… probably one of the most influential spiritual movements of our time… [is] completely lacking in iconography. My work tries to embody the everyday magic that characterizes the personal transformations I have experienced.” This is Goodden’s intent, and these charming and brave characters gain a great deal of value from their creator’s conceptual foundations, which alters them from endearing works of sculpture into a moving representation of personal growth and self-rescue.
Goodden’s statement enriches each of the artists’ works and provides a depth of insight and intellectual analysis only appreciable by experiencing it yourself. I highly recommend you do so, and do it quick- the Martin Batchelor Gallery has a new show up on Saturday February 7th!
http://sezession.squarespace.com/blog/2015/2/3/mojos-familiars-fetishes
Ted Goodden; Jo Lechay; Ann Newdigate at the The Martin Bachelor Gallery in Victoria B.C. January - February, 2015
Mojo [moh- jo] / noun: an object, as an amulet or charm, believed to carry a magic spell.
Familiar [fuh- mil- yer] / noun: an animal that embodies a supernatural spirit and aids a witch in performing magic.
Fetish [fet-ish] / noun: an object regarded with awe as being the embodiment or habitation of a potent spirit.
The Martin Bachelor Gallery on Cormorant Street is full of faces. Like a crowd in an old Victorian courtroom, they seem silently to crow at you from their stations above. From the doorway those on your right, redolent of African tribal masks, demand your attention like naughty children. On the left they stare disapprovingly down their long Edwardian noses from stiffly embroidered portraits, or blindly from behind grey-green death masks. In the centre of the room small, muscular bronze men flex their bodies upon stakes in positions reminiscent of ancient Greek athletes. The room contains huge swathes of history, but the art belongs to the present: each of the artists is working today.
First impressions might be enough to scare one away if Jo Lechay’s mojos weren’t also delightful. They hang, translated by Goodden into stained glass form, upon the windows of the neon lit gallery front, baring their teeth. Inside their painted familiars- Lechay’s originals- watch your approach ambivalently. Thick black lines delineate their loosely composed but strongly defined boundaries, redolent of hyper-colourful Picasso sketches. Some scrunch their brows and bare their teeth in experimental contortions, others grin and drool at you in bleeding paint and colour. Redolent of children’s paintings and African masks, they are at once demonic and playful: they have earned their own lives. What they might do with them is a troubling question.
On the left side of the gallery Anne Newdigate’s textile portraits present a different kind of intimidation. Her faces, contained within small white boxes, are at once austere and fragile: a strange and interesting collection that pairs two death masks with three handsome would-be protagonists befitting an Austen novel. In between them is a much larger portrait of a woman who inhabits a more immediate time. Newdigate gives little away, either through the art itself or her accompanying statement. Regardless, the portraits are interesting, and evoke the history of the ‘fetish’ as it existed in its Victoria heyday, when a token of a loved one was all you might have of their company for long months, and when death meant a final opportunity to capture the likeness of a loved one. The most engaging are the infantile death masks - almost identical, withered and evocative of the strange little mummies dredged up from a peat bog- they are curios, alien and yet familiar in an uncomfortable way.
In the centre of the room Ted Goodden’s muscular little men align themselves on javelin-like stakes. Orderly but tenuously balanced, they are strong figures completely vulnerable to their surroundings- dwarfed by the room on their spindly plinths- at once substantial and precarious, much like the 12 steps they are named for. “The 12 Step Program… probably one of the most influential spiritual movements of our time… [is] completely lacking in iconography. My work tries to embody the everyday magic that characterizes the personal transformations I have experienced.” This is Goodden’s intent, and these charming and brave characters gain a great deal of value from their creator’s conceptual foundations, which alters them from endearing works of sculpture into a moving representation of personal growth and self-rescue.
Goodden’s statement enriches each of the artists’ works and provides a depth of insight and intellectual analysis only appreciable by experiencing it yourself. I highly recommend you do so, and do it quick- the Martin Batchelor Gallery has a new show up on Saturday February 7th!
http://sezession.squarespace.com/blog/2015/2/3/mojos-familiars-fetishes