SIGHTINGS is a program of satellite exhibitions initiated by the Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery in 2012 to examine how we comprehend the exhibition space and the modes of display of artworks. This project refers to four pioneering essays written by the Irish critic and artist Brian O’Doherty between 1976 and 1981 – published together in 1986 as Inside the White Cube: The Ideology of the Gallery Space. In these essays O’Doherty theorized certain issues linked to a modernist conception of the exhibition space that he called the “white cube,” neutral and adaptable; this conception has remained current because it still defines a large number of galleries today. SIGHTINGS was developed to emphasize the persistence and false neutrality of the white cube and provide an experimental platform for artists and guest curators to generate new strategies of display and to test the limits of its adaptability.
A first series of projects were realized by students from the Faculty of Fine Arts. The current series of projects features artists and curators from the larger art community.
SIGHTINGS is located on the ground floor of the Hall Building at 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West
October 30, 2014 – January 25, 2015
An installation by Myriam Yates
The Sightings satellite exhibition program was designed to invite artists and participants in the visual arts to reflect on issues related to the white cube as a modernist conception of exhibition space. Concordia University’s Henry F. Hall Building, in which the satellite exhibition module is situated, was built in the 1960s in modern, cubic style, and featuring a refined architectural envelope composed of prefabricated concrete panels. At the time of its construction (1964–66), the new Sir George Williams University (renamed Concordia University in 1974) building was intended to house everything a university should offer: departmental facilities, offices, classrooms, auditoriums, laboratories, libraries, an exhibition space, a theatre, a garage, and a public area – where Sightings is installed.1
Sightings is a transparent cubic exhibition module situated in the building’s lobby, through which students, professors, support personnel, and guests pass. Around the cube are several elements allowing for circulation: revolving doors create a transition from outside to inside the building. A line of columns supports the mezzanine that overhangs the lobby. One end of the lobby contains a series of bronze busts and a commemorative work by Eduardo Aquino, Johanne Sloan and Kathryn Walter composed of granite tables, cement blocks, a light structure, and a tree in a container. At the other end, stairs descend into an underground labyrinth, and facing the cube a wide staircase, flanked by escalators, provides access to the mezzanine. In fact, these escalators were one of the modern attractions highlighted when the building was inaugurated. Floor-to-ceiling glazing forms the ground-floor façade on which article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, addressing the right to education, is displayed in several languages. Often, people waiting for others near the Sightings cube lean against a cube-shaped, white container that contains a tree. This tree is also part of the commemorative work situated at the other end of the lobby.
During my visit to the site, I was struck by the number of users who, as they enter the building, have their eyes fixed on a small screen (usually a smartphone) and seem to be indifferent to their environment. As I am interested in issues related to public space, modern architecture, and the transformation of urban spaces, I decided to work on a reflection of the context in which Sightings is installed.
My practice usually takes the form of videos, which I present in large format in dark spaces. Sightings, with its white edges and transparent Plexiglas faces, differs radically from the environments within which I usually project images. The stillness that the cube creates in the motion-filled space and its properties of mise en scène in a university context led me to propose an installation articulated around the idea of the study room with furniture commonly called mid-century modern, referring also to the time when the building was erected. Free of electronic apparatuses, this small study room is intended to contrast with today’s learning context. As I was doing my research, however, I digressed and turned to the furniture of the Bauhaus. The great propensity of this movement for research and engagement appeared to me to offer the ideal principles to highlight in Sightings, as an experimental space.
I chose to reproduce a documentary photograph of the Bauhaus school in which design, photography, and theatre converge:2 sitting in a chair designed by Marcel Breuer, a female figure wearing a theatre mask reaches out to us.3 I reproduced the image in black and white on a banner that I placed in the cube, along with a relatively recent copy of the Wassily chair on which the person in the image is sitting. At the same time, I searched for furniture at the university in order to introduce a piece that comes from the institution itself into the cube. In a storage space, I found a veneered wood desk made in Canada, probably dating from the 1960s, that had been cast aside – replaced by a more recent model. Finally, a black carpet on the floor unifies the composition and lightens the museological aspect of the installation. Thus, various temporalities are superimposed within this mise en scène related to the readymade. With this grouping, I am trying to evoke the values of emancipation, avant-garde, and social and political awareness associated with the Bauhaus movement, as well as hoping to reflect the university context and the place that the arts and culture occupy in the spaces that we spend time in.
Myriam Yates
Translation by Kathe Roth
1. Anja Borck, “Seen But Ignored: Concordia University’s Henry Foss Hall Building in Montréal,” JSSAC | JSÉAC, vol. 34, no. 2 (2009): 61–74.
2. Photograph by Erich Consemüller, Bauhaus scene, 1926, private collection in Bremen Club chair (or Wassily chair) by Marcel Breuer, 1925.
3. Lis Beyer, student at the Bauhaus, or Ise Gropius, who worked at the Bauhaus and was married to Marcel Gropius, with a theatre mask by Oskar Schlemmer.
Visual artist Myriam Yates has a photography and video-based practice, which tends towards a documentary approach, exploring the tenuous relationship between public and private space, following the shifting relationship between architecture and its inhabitants. Yates’ holds two BFAs and an MFA from the Université du Québec à Montréal. Her work has been shown at events such as Buenos Aires International Documentary Film Festival (2013), Kassel Dokfest (Kassel, Germany, 2012), Images Festival (Toronto, 2012), Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal (2007), Rencontres internationales Paris/Berlin/Madrid (2007-2012-2013-2014) and the Regina Festival of Cinematic Arts (2005). It has also been featured in individual and collective exhibitions: a solo at the Foreman Art Gallery (Bishop’s University, 2013), a duo show at CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art (NY, 2012), The Québec Triennale at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2011), Manifestation internationale d’art de Québec (2010), Optica Centre for Contemporary Art (Montréal, 2009). In 2004, she attended the Banff Centre to participate to the IntraNation thematic residency program. Prizewinner of the Cyberpitch contest (Festival du Nouveau Cinéma, Montréal 2004), she has also presented at the Banff Centre’s New Media Institute’s Interactive Screen lectures. She recently completed a four year mandate as the artistic director and programming coordinator of Sporobole, a centre for contemporary art in Sherbrooke (Québec). Her work is included in the collections of the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, the law firm Fasken Martineau DuMoulin and the Cirque du Soleil. A review of her work appeared in Issue 29 of the magazine Prefix Photo.