Project Channel
Talk To Me
February, 2012

Curated by Josephine Mills
Video courtesy of Vtape

Talk to Me is the inaugural set of videos for the U of L Art Gallery’s Project Channel satellite space for video. Featuring work by Canadian and international artists, all of the video works in this curated selection address identity and self-representation as well as connect to the DIY and viral possibilities of recent technology that have lead to an explosion of personal stories and images being widely available through YouTube and social media.

With the video works in Talk to Me, some explore the performative aspects of the goofy and banal antics that are posted to the internet, such as Heather Keung’s acrobatics in “Bending over Backwards” and “Upside Down – Downside Up” or Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay’s “Subtitled”. Deirdre Logue takes these small, everyday moments to a new level of absurdity in the compilation “Why Always Instead of Just Sometimes”. Alison M. Kobayashi’s brilliant “Lose Yourself” captures the play with gender and sexuality involved in re-staging a popular video, “From Alex to Alex”, based on a found love note, creates the excruciating discomfort of encountering details about other people’s lives that should be kept private.

Other works in Talk to Me are serious explorations of identity in relation to social and political concerns such as Kevin Lee Burton’s personal narrative in “Meskanahk (My Path)” about finding his way in life as a young man of both Cree and non-Aboriginal heritage. Lesley Loksi Chan’s deceptively simple “Curse Cures” and “Dear Sister” use the most basic video techniques to create powerful, poetic reflections on her family history and sense of self.

Martha Wilson’s “Selected Works by Martha Wilson,” a collection of her work from the early 1970s and Suzy Lake’s “The Natural Way to Draw” provide historical context for the contemporary works and give a sense of the kinds of imagery and techniques used to explore similar ideas when video was first developed as an art form.

– Josephine Mills, Director/Curator, U of L Art Gallery