Earnest Reverie
Andrew Harwood . Laura Kikauka . Lynne Heller . Bonnie Lewis
Curated by Meghan Bissonnette, Anastasia Hare and Colleen O’Reilly
This exhibition centres on the theme of Camp. As an aesthetic sensibility, Camp can be outrageously gaudy, luxuriously beautiful, conceptually sophisticated or a combination of these qualities. Camp takes many forms, from glitzy to kitschy, and encompasses both fantasy and thoughtfulness. It is idiosyncratic and at times marked by an absorption in the highly decorative. In the words of Susan Sontag, in her essay “Notes on Camp,” published in 1964, artists who use Camp tend to be “serious about the frivolous, [and] frivolous about the serious” (note 41). Sontag declared that Camp as an aesthetic is both disengaged and apolitical, even going so far as to state that Camp is neutral with respect to content. However, Camp also deals with sober issues: it treats its subjects with utmost sincerity. Inspired by Sontag’s description of Camp, we set out to find contemporary artists that employ some element of the fantastic in their work. We pose the question whether Camp is an apt description for the art of Andrew Harwood, Lynne Heller, Laura Kikauka and Bonnie Lewis. Their art appears to be playful, decorative and fanciful — far removed from any kind of political stance. At the same time, they treat serious issues such as sexuality, gender, consumerism, technology, and the politics of aesthetics.
The artists of Earnest Reverie demonstrate an interest in the outrageous, a love affair with materials and objects, and a passion for thinking beyond the sensible in their work. The vivid colours and playful patterns expand out and take over, inspiring the mind's eye. The works decorate and accentuate the fun and funky public spaces of the Drake Hotel, a place where imagination is encouraged and surprises are welcomed.
Lynne Heller’s Pillflower Animation plays on a monitor in the vestibule. The flowers are composed of digital images of pastel-coloured pills, and are soft and calming, yet dynamic and hallucinatory, almost kaleidoscopic. The miniature pills, like seeds that have flowered, become patterns through accumulation. Lush flowers fade in and out in a loop, along with kitschy music that sounds like it would accompany a 1950's advertisement. Heller’s Pillflower Bouquet, a sculpture located in the reception area, is a three-dimensional re-creation of the scanned and digitally manipulated medicinals.
Bonnie Lewis’s paintings exude a similarly meticulous, pristinely youthful and melodious quality. Her choice of subject matter stems from personal collections of vintage toys and Madonna and Buddhist deity figurines. The elaborate approach to imaginary characters in her Fairy Tales elevates them to an unusual level of solemnity. In her paintings, an eclectic mixture of references to the familiar imagery of childhood stories exist in an ambiguously defined space that resembles a dreamscape.
In line with Lewis’s strategy of appropriating accumulations of everyday visual codes and narratives, Laura Kikauka utilizes everyday utilitarian objects transforming them into outrageous “things” unwilling to function according to trite, prescribed uses. Kikauka deliberately embraces a kitschy over-the-top aesthetic in her works by combining craft materials, toys, costume jewellery, old furniture and thrift-store finds. Her work recalls the simultaneous embrace and subtle critique of bourgeois values that can be found in “Camp” art and literature of the past.
Andrew Harwood demonstrates a similar passion for materials and for the performative potential of textures, fabrics and objects. In the upper staircase hangs a sampling from Bikes, a series of cardboard motorcycles encrusted in glitter and sequins, and C.B. Lingo, a series of small canvases covered with gingham and denim, featuring sequined phrases referencing truck driver culture. The View From Davey Jones’ Locker #2, displayed in the lower staircase, is a painterly web of hot glue, sequins and sparkles, suggesting an underwater landscape. The use of materials that do not conform to a fine art tradition create an exciting reversal of the art-viewing process and call into question the desire for a universal set of aesthetic codes. Harwood’s trademark humour and skill for wry social commentary through the use of the decorative can also be found in his Expo Bra series displayed in the Café. Here images of Expo ’67 architecture are collaged into the shapes of busty brassieres.
The use of fantasy in the aesthetic of Camp, whereby patterns influence and induce, and people and places have the capacity to take on identities, gives familiar signifiers the chance to have effects that are outside our normal frame of reference. In this way, Camp is subversive. Demonstrating a well-known strategy of escape, Heller uses Second Life as a canvas and artistic tool to explore the process of imagining one’s identity. Heller narrates through a Second Life avatar, and appropriates the aesthetic of the virtual world as material for a comic book. The performance of one’s ‘self’, and the affect of these actions on our sense of identity, as well as on the formation of societal expectations and interpersonal relationships, is an essential part of Camp and its artistic value. The immersive environment of Second Life could be compared to other locations in our lives in which so-called ‘reality’ is supplanted by liminal space where one is freed to test different possibilities.
Bonnie Lewis’s Fairy Tales also demonstrate this interest in fantasy, as well as speaking to the issue of gender, another theme that has historically been connected to Camp. The Fairy Tales series draws on what are typically understood as girls’ childhood stories, and renders whimsical imagery into layered palimpsests. Lewis’s fairy-tale works inspire questions about the role of fantasy in the creation of cultural narratives as the paintings are suspenseful and foreboding and reject the “happily-ever-after” narrative in which the prince rescues the princess in distress. Similarly, Lynne Heller’s avatar Nar Duell is courageous and resilient. Her costumes play on feminine stereotypes, re-creating ideals and personal life quests. Conversely, Heller’s Pillflower Animation offers a menacing view of feminine roles. The colour and music chosen recall 1950s domestic life, in which the housewife is at the centre. Paired with the dancing pills, the video conjures associations with self-medication. Also in line with this rejection of the expected, Andrew Harwood’s Bikes and C.B. Lingo play with conventional gender distinctions. They draw on traditionally masculine voices in relation to motorcycles and transport trucks – masculine tools which are often personified as females. The works use masculine language but are constructed out of craft materials that have feminine associations.
While the merging of common codes of reality and fantasy, femininity and masculinity, fine art and craft are not new phenomena, the artists represented in Earnest Reverie call attention to these aspects of Camp. The artists’ choices regarding media and use of appropriation are declarative of their positions on social roles, gender and identity. The artists may not take an overt stance, but their choice of materials and cultural references emit subtle messages, emerging in waves of pattern, texture and rich imagery.
Special thanks to Art Gallery of York University, MKG 127, Edward Day Gallery and Paul Petro Contemporary Art for their gracious support of this exhibition.
