They Are Making Art
October 9, 2008
The band formed a couple of years ago during a residency for artists working in conceptually influenced practices. McTrowe and Wong had once tried to write a rock opera, so they decided to start playing songs related to the research they were doing.
The Cedar Tavern Singers started with just playing live and releasing CDs. Last year they began phase one of expanding the project—producing works that are half art and half band ephemera.
For phase two at Calgary’s Stride Gallery, the pair present Art Snob Solutions, Phase 2: The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The exhibition features larger works like the text “Art is All Over” (a phrase by Iain Baxter&) painted in the Superstar Shadow font used by Garry Neill Kennedy, “music videos” which blur the line between tributes to John Baldessari or Bruce Nauman. And, of course, the exhibition will feature performances and recordings from the band, along with a series of images, objects and multiples derived from the work of Andy Warhol, Yves Klein and Hans Haacke.
The pair are excited to see how this new dimension of The Singers project works in a gallery. It can be at difficult to understand both the complex theory behind the work and whether what’s happening on stage is a joke or not. At a recent performance at the Alberta College of Art and Design student orientation they were greeted with blank stares.
“I think none of the new students understood anything that we were singing about, because they just won’t get to that art history for another semester or two,” says McTrowe. “If the audience has a BFA at least or a MFA then they’re likely to get most of the subject, but if not it’s just, ‘what the hell are they singing about? Why would they say that?’”
Not that the pair are out to alienate people. In fact, they want the opposite—to make art history more fun.
“The driving force behind this project is a sense of fun as opposed to straight face art history,” says Wong “The fun factor gets me going, and at the same time I can carry on my research in a different way.”
Art Snob Solutions, Phase 2: The Age of Mechanical Reproduction will be on display from Fri October 10 – Sat November 8 at Calgary’s Stride Gallery.
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