The Ottawa City Project
September 4, 2008
The Ottawa City Project isn’t a tourist vision of the city. It’s meant to celebrate the gallery’s 20th anniversary and acknowledge the city and the artist community living here. Falvey is even working with mclennan on the catalogue for the show.
“[This exhibition] is more looking at some of the margins and the marginal representations of the city, a kind of alternative understanding of it as an urban space.”
Featuring works like Vera Greenwood‘s pieces of garbage with a short story about where she found it, the show is a more conceptual examination of Ottawa than simply pictures of the landscape.
In all 17 artists, who either live or have lived in Ottawa, are involved in the show. Falvey is excited to bring together artists like Greg Hill and Jeff Thomas. Combining Hill’s cereal box canoe made for the crouching native in Ottawa’s controversial Samuel de Champlain monument with Thomas’ photographic series about the eventual movement of the native is just one look into the multiplicity of identity in Ottawa.
“Ottawa’s has a particular problem because we have this weird schizophrenia—there’s the municipal government and the federal government. There’s a weird identity crises here all the time.”
The Ottawa City Project will be on display from Fri September 5th – Sun November 16 at the Ottawa Art Gallery.
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