Force Feeding Works
Diana Thorneycroft is an artist that I found while trolling the Internet looking for art that I really connected with. By act of fate, she is the first artist in my early research (like last week)to make the champion file.
It was one of her Dollmouth pieces that caught me. Profoundly beautiful in their freshness and light, but disturbing with the juxtaposition of innocence and sexuality. She had me at first glance.
When an opportunity came to see a show of her work this weekend at the McMichael Art Gallery of all places, I had to go and see if what I think I saw on line was true.
I am embarrassed to say that in my more than twenty years living in Toronto I had not yet been to this gallery. Truth is I’m not very excited by the Group of Seven. Yes, they are important Canadian works that put Canadian art on the map blada blada…
Much to my chagrin, the exhibition of Thorneycroft’s work: Group of Seven Awkward Moments Series was at the back of the gallery. One could not view her work without first having to march through four or five rooms and hundreds of works by The Group of Seven.
And I have to say that it really wasn’t all that bad. There was some truly beautiful work in the collection. Some stunning depictions of light and colour doing justice to the beauty that is Northern Ontario. Love letter in paint to our country. The reverence that people have for this much beloved Canadian work was closer to the bone due to the force fed viewing.
In essence, this was prep for Thorneycroft’s show that was in many ways a send up of this iconic Canadian Art. However, the punch that the work should/could have carried was muted by the descriptive text that met you at the start of the show, basically a disclaimer explaining that the art is inspired by the Group of Seven and does not intend disrespect. An obvious attempt not to enrage the whole raison d’etre for the gallery. However, the gallery is evidently aware that throwing some dirt at works dusty with time, was a smart move on the gallery’s behalf. It got me to shell out fifteen bucks and possibly others like me.
Diana Thorneycroft, Group of Seven Awkward Moments (In Algonquin Park), 2007. Colour photograph, 40×50″.
Overall, the show was a treat. It was subversive while being truly playful and funny at the same time. Two of my favorite combinations in any form of art. It’s rare to see people actually laughing at an art show, but I witnessed it twice.
The museum context took away some of the works edge for me by explaining the pieces (their was even a video of the arts explaining her process in creating her pieces) and maybe this was why I favoured the more subtle and mysterious pieces over the fairy tale pieces which I found too simplistic and even gratuitous.
“Fatal Accident Near Ski Tracks” in which Santa and Rudolf are unconscious and bleeding from a bad accident with a tree, made no sense to me and I had that feeling I had seen it before. “White Pine and The Group of Dwarfs”, in which Snow White arrives to visit the dwarfs in her canoe equipped with S&M paraphernalia, seemed to be risque just for the sake of doing so. Although, here I can give her some slack, because it’s funny to compare the Group of Seven with the even more famous Seven Dwarfs and I share Thorneycraft’s suspicion that more was going on between Snow White and those dwarfs than the Disney movie was willing to let on.
More successful pieces were “Nickel Belt Trailer Park” and “Northern River” because the menace underneath the scenes were not at first obvious and that is where the delight lies. ”Byng Inlet” worked in a similar manner, lulling me in with the happy people enjoying the great outdoors, while seemingly unbeknownst to them in the under lit foreground, the body of a man floating in the water face down sans pants. I liked this piece less when I found out that it was the third of a triptych explaining the mysterious death of Tom Thomson. I would rather have left the mystery of the dead man to the imagination.
My favorite piece was probably also the one most conscious of its inspiration. “Davis Straight” shamelessly uses the Lawren S. Harris work of the same name as a backdrop. Thorneycroft’s only addition is two figures dressed in red floating on a small ice flow. They have nowhere to go, and the water surrounding them is vast and dark. Harris’s trademark white mountains hover in the background ominously. It’s both breathtaking and unsettling.
After seeing her work in the flesh do I still want to champion Thorneycroft’s work? You bet, but I would prefer that the Coles Notes were left behind and instead, we were left to wonder exactly what it was she was trying to say and let us decide if we should be offended or not.
