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G.L.A.M. BATS is a lounge-comedy experiment and joint effort between some of Sackville and Halifax's finest. A once in a lifetime experience.
“I’ve heard of them before,” says Halifax artist Mitchell Wiebe, “I hear they’re pretty off-beat. It should be good."
Graeme Patterson Secret Citadel AGNS 2014
Graeme Patterson is coming to visit our class this Friday! Here’s a video from his YouTube channel, showing Grudge Match installed in gallery along with the built model that the stop motion animation was shot in. Fantastic to see the scale and the custom built sets in relation to the final animation!
Graeme Patterson
Monkey and Deer
The Secret Citadel - Graeme Patterson
The first thing that hits you when you walk into Graeme Patterson’s “Secret Citadel” Installation at the Art Gallery of Hamilton is the dark ambience the space possesses; much different from the bright upbeat atmosphere in the other exhibitions. Now that I understand his work I see the reason why, it took me from my normal chatty mood and put me in a quiet, sombre mood, with a hint of seriousness. The tour guide adopted an almost reverencing attitude towards the installation and I immediately became interested.
The ‘Secret Citadel’ is an installation built out of Graeme Patterson’s memories on friendships with his male friends at different stages in his life starting with his childhood best friend. There are four units to this installation, each individually recreating a period in his relationship with his friend at the referenced time.
The life-sized cougar in orange (his friend) and bison in blue (representing the artist) hanging on the right wall noticed as soon as you walk into the space are the featured in his first unit is called ‘the mountain’. This installation consists of 3 pieces; two miniature houses separated by a miniature ice capped mountain with a mini studio under it. ‘The mountain’ focuses on the childhood memories of the friendship the artist had with his best friend represented by miniature handmade figurines of the bison and cougar shown in a stop motion animation projected on miniature screens within the sculptures. The dream studio under the mountain was connected to both houses by a wooden tube that was removed when his best friend moving away to signify a break in their relationship.
The second and third units of this installation are the ‘Camp Wakonda’ and ‘Grudge Match’ respectively. Camp Wakonda as the name suggests contains a miniature hand made camp houses sitting on hand made life-sized bunk beds which I believe represents his middle school memories of the experiences he had. Here we can see a miniature bus crash with miniature fire and flames, it’s interesting to see and react to these experiences. The ambience of the room coupled with the structure of the installations allow the viewer to become engrossed in these art works, in order to see the ‘Camp Wakonda’ car crash, you need to stoop a little bit which after a while becomes uncomfortable, in a way, you can share in the uncomfortable car crash experience in a unique way.
Growing up with four brothers and no sister, I was the sporty soccer-playing tomboy who was always around boys, had all male friends and couldn’t understand Barbie dolls, nail polish or girl talk so this next unit evoked nostalgic memories of my middle-early high school experiences. The ‘Grunge Match’ unit consists of a high school gymnasium accompanied by a blue locker room, weight room, dirty toilets and showers, and a coach's office on two bunk beds. On the adjacent wall there is a stop motion of two people; one in blue which I interpret to be him as the bison and the other in orange which represents the cougar. These two figures are wrestling which in my opinion represents the customary high school rivalry between teams and cliques. This according to the artist originates from his personal experience as a high school wrestler and exists as a part of a larger body of work investigating boyhood, communication and this generation.
The final unit to this installation is ‘Player Piano Waltz’, a grand piano with sort of a cupboard made into a hotel with rooms and bathrooms and bar with miniature tumblers and drinks and miniature bartender to complete the look. This installation is interactive and loony operated but silly me didn’t have a loony so sadly, I didn’t get to see everything this unit had to offer. Just from the surface information gathered, I can tell this is the time of his youth, probably his college/university level and his experiences at that point in time.
Each individual unit addresses a period of growing up, from childhood to adulthood and our experiences in these different life stages are mirrored in his memories. Through his art works we can almost see ourselves going through the motions he went through growing up, we all lost friends, or moved away from friends, we all had fights, that childish rivalry (McMaster vs. Western Ontario ‘ha-ha’) between teams whether serious or not is a part of growing up as we are all trying to find our place in the world and society and then adulthood with everything that comes with it.
Don’t forget to take a loony to the AGH so you can experience the ‘Player Piano Waltz’. Send me a message or comment on this post, let me know what it entails. As usual, links below and media in section 2
link to Graeme Patterson's website - http://www.graemepatterson.com/Introframeset.htm
Link to Graeme Patterson in the AGH - http://www.artgalleryofhamilton.com/ex_current.php
The Mountain
Graeme Patterson
Graeme Patterson, Taming the Wild - Fantasy, 2008
→ GRAEMEPATTERSON.COM
