One-Off Works and Gallery Performances

Practicing Dialogues, January 2010

• Galerie Corrid'Art CompagnieF, Montreal, QC, as part of opening for solo exhibition

In the context of the opening of my solo exhibition, (Being) One Thing at a Time at Galerie Corrid'Art in Montreal, the Collectif TouVA (myself, along with Anne Bérubé and Sylvie Tourangeau), presented a short performance about passages and transformation.

Supreme Leg Elixir, September 2008

• Marché au puces, Place de la Joliette, Marseille, France as part the festival Préavis de désordre urbain
  

One of a series of performances done during the annual Préavis, this offering put invited artists to the test: the festival created duos at random, asking us to swiftly come up with a new performance. In collaboration with Czech artist Jiri Suruvka, we made Supreme Leg Elixir! Using the notion of recycling as a starting point, we brewed a fine new beverage from scraps of fruits and vegetables and in a public market, auctioned off our wares.

Flea Market (Stuff I), September 2008

• Marché au puces, Place de la République, Sète, France, as part of the festival Infr'Action
  

  

Working with fellow Montreal artist Sylvie Cotton, we presented a table of random, personal objects that we drew and re-drew - not offering our objects for sale but interpreting these quotidian, seemingly banal pieces for the market-goers to also reflection upon. Very quickly we accumulated a mass of drawings: simple sketches that highly personalized our boring old objects - imbuing each of them with another layer of importance and significance. One person's junk is another person's treasure. Or, in this case, my junk is important because it's mine and I treasure it. 

Untitled (parking tickets), August 2003

• Parc Alphonse-Télesphore-Lépine in Montreal, QC, as part of a Galerie B-312 performance evening

Attached my five scale-model SUVs by string to my neck, wrists and ankles. The ones I will never ever own, the ones that I am slowly in the process of exploiting and destroying. Issued infraction tickets to the park-goers and showed, by example, that your stuff really drags you down.

Storefront, May 2003

• Clothing store, Edmonton, AB, a site-specific performance presented during the annual festival, Visualeyez, hosted by Latitude 53 Society of Artists.

One of a trilogy of performances that I undertook during this festival, this storefront tableau vivant presented the humans as naked apes. Each of us sat with a mini SUV as our individual table serving. A large highway-like chocolate cake rested in the middle of the table, set upon poplar tree branches. We destroyed the branches (going off-roading on the table) and dealt with the highway-cake. This performance was done with the additional participation of Paul Couillard, T.L. Cowan, Chelley Nighttraveller, and Stephan Little.

Evidence III (Some French Fries With That Mr. President?), April 2003

• Gallery Para Globe, Tokyo, Japan, as part of the four-person exhibition Invisible Others

Putting forth rows and rows of french fries standing upright in their signature red boxes, this neat and tight formation confronted the audience. The audience members – armed with cutlery distributed from my cutlery dress – were ordered to drop their weapons, effectively making them defenceless in the face of the MacDonald's army. Then the attack.

Untitled (Captain Snooze), April 2003

• Captain Snooze, Melbourne, Australia

What happens when five people go shopping for one bed? A direct lead-up to the performance series (Being) One Thing at a Time, this site-specific intervention bluntly attempted to disrupt quotidian behaviours and expectations within a place of business.

Untitled (PFK vs. Buffalo), October 2002

• Site-specific intervention at the corner of Sherbrooke and Decarie, Montreal, QC

Commenting through direct action on the ubiquitous and blantantly sexist Jeans Buffalo ad residing permanently at this Montreal street corner. Is "acceptable behaviour" in advertising considered acceptable in real life?

Untitled (corner of four fountains), June 2002

• Site-specific intervention at the Corner of Four Fountains in Rome, Italy

An attempt to re-activate the four emptied fountains residing at that site and to become – if only for a brief moment – a human fountain. This performance, which explored the body as water/as related to architecture, was done in collaboration with Sylvie Cotton.

Today I Ate, April 2002

• Galerie 303, Montreal, QC, presented at the vernissage for the photo/artist-book-based solo exhibition of the same name

A gallery-space tableau vivant examining consumerism, desire, control and restraint – and in particular, women's relationships to these issues. Four women, naked, sat for one-and-a-half hours, wrists (and other various body parts) bound with measuring tapes, holding pocket-size diet books, eating (or attempting to eat) rice cakes from a two-foot rice cake tower placed at the feet. With the participation of Marta Cooper, Louise Dubreuil, and Christine Lebel.

Operation Cake Walk, October 2001

• Anticorps, Montreal, QC, a site-specific performance presented during ReciproCité, a three-city performance exchange between Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver

A post-September 11th store-front tableau vivant addressing issues of control, consumerism and privilege. In a starkly lit environment, six nude caucasian people played The Game of Risk. "Moves" were made by eating forkfuls of a large piece of chocolate cake placed at each person's table-setting. A whole, un-touched cake sat pristinely in the centre of the table – hence in the middle of the game and on top of the world. With the participation of Sylvette Babin, Stephen Cacclin, Paul Couillard, Louise Dubreuil and Tagny Duff.