Opening
Wednesday, August 30, 5:30 – 7:30 pm

Conversation

Saturday, September 9, 2 pm

A conversation between Philippe Hamelin, Michèle Thériault, and Ji-Yoon Han

Artist Philippe Hamelin, the curator of the exhibition Michèle Thériault, and art historian and author Ji-Yoon Han discuss the works presented, the artist’s practice, and the questions and issues it raises, as well as other topics surrounding Carnations while walking through the exhibition.

In French

A video of the conversation is available in the Audio | Video section.

Local Records

Thursday, September 21, 2:30 pm – 4:30 pm

The Feather Book of Dionisio Minaggio, 1618

Carla Benzan, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, McGill University

Location: Rare Books and Special Collections, McGill Library
4^th floor – 3459 rue McTavish

Workshop led by Carla Benzan on histories of making images of nature with materials drawn from nature and our fascination with the boundary zone between the human and animal.

The interface between human and animal is literally raised on the surface of a seventeenth-century “Feather Book” depicting over one hundred birds along with a cast of human figures all composed through the intricate application of real feathers and bird skin on the page. Blurring the boundary between the ‘real’ and ‘representation’, this intriguing object prompts questions about the role of materiality, affect and embodiment in knowledge formation. Produced in 1618 by Dionisio Minaggio, the Chief Gardener of the Spanish State of Milan, the Feather Book couples the objectivity of scientific illustration in its representations of regional birds with portraits of known stage actors in their signature roles. Techniques employed draw influence from Central American feather decoration as encountered through the sixteenth-century European market after contact, as well as the popular tradition of Italian ‘pietra dura’ where detailed landscapes are set out in inlaid stone. Troubling the act of mimesis with the presence of the real, these feather collages bring to question the specious divide between nature and artifice. This workshop explores the intersection of bodily, emotional and conceptual work that is demanded of viewers who confront such imagery.

Carla Benzan is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at McGill University who has published on contemporary, modern and early modern art. Her past and present research investigates the status of sacred images and new strategies of illusionism in the sculpture, painting, and printed images of northern Italy after the Council of Trent. Since completing her PhD dissertation on the Sacro Monte of Varallo at the University College London, Carla has been a Teaching Fellow at UCL and a Lecturer and Visiting Scholar at the University of Essex.

Local Records is a program that pairs exhibitions with relevant archival holdings in Montreal. Animated by a guest researcher each seminar coordinates encounters and discussions around a selection of primary documents, offering a local lens through which to consider the exhibition and a point of departure for new research.

Tour in Arabic

Tuesday, October 3, 5:30 pm

Tour in Arabic by Emma Haraké (MA student, Art Education, Concordia University)

Throughout the year the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery offers commented tours in a number of languages. Guides introduce and address the principal concepts behind the exhibition before focusing on a few select works. Tours are free and open to anyone interested in discussing and learning more about contemporary art.

Response

Thursday, October 12, 5:30 pm

“Animation Incarnate, or, Blossoming in the Flesh”

A lecture by Thomas Lamarre, James McGill Professor in East Asian Studies and Associate Professor in Communication Studies, McGill University.

Philippe Hamelin’s use of animation in Carnations invites three lines of speculative inquiry into animation creation. First, how is it that animation turns so readily into media environments, expanding and augmenting the audiovisual and inviting movement through it? Second, how is it that animated objects not only come to life but also become like persons, with personalities and personal dramas? Finally, his evocation of haiku opens a reconsideration of space-time relations, for the haiku is neither image nor story yet moves between the two, providing a loop that enmeshes with other loops. Pursuing these three lines of inquiry with examples drawn from the works in the Carnations exhibition, I wish to expand on the generative paradox at the heart of Hamelin’s work, captured succinctly in the pivot-word carnation: how do flowers of meat grow, and where?

Thomas Lamarre teaches in East Asian Studies and Communication Studies at McGill University. He is author of numerous publications on the history of media, thought, and material culture, with projects ranging from the communication networks of 9th century Japan (Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archaeology of Sensation and Inscription, 2000), to silent cinema and the global imaginary (Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki Jun’ichirô on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics, 2005), animation technologies (The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, 2009) and on television and new media (The Anime Ecology: A Genealogy of Television, Animation, and Game Media, 2018).

At the Gallery

A video of the lecture is available in the Audio | Video section.

CARNATIONS

August 30 – October 21, 2017

Curator: Michèle Thériault