Exhibition: Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery
Artist: Laura Lamb
Opening: April 5, 2013 (7pm -10pm)
Exhibition Dates: April 5, 2013 – May 4, 2013
Grunt gallery is pleased to exhibit Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery by Vancouver-based artist, Laura Lamb. The exhibition features several installations that reveal the curious fictional world of Lamb’s Performing Objects.
The artist describes Lamb’s Performing Objects as “An umbrella project including videos, installation, drawings and texts, in which all parts work together as a collage. Each fragment informs the others to evoke a fictive world of wandering performers, some human, some almost human, who through song, story and circus ravel and unravel 20th century cultural mythologies.
The concept of Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery grew from a set of song lyrics I wrote for the character Lotte Obratsov. Lotte first appeared in a set of small mixed media figures, which were in turn based on a set of drawings.”
Russian lacquerware, rusty metal household objects and clockwork mechanisms perform in Bits and Tatters, the first installment of a video trilogy. Accompanying this video is a song that Lamb wrote and produced with composer and singer, Beverly Dobrinsky.
“My work investigates the gaps and disjunctions between the frailty and clumsiness of performing objects (for example puppets, toys or masks) and their power as producers of complex and compelling narrative,” says Lamb. “It’s in these gaps where the comedic and transcendent power of objects is able to emerge.”
The opening reception for Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery will be held at grunt gallery on Friday April 5, 2013 from 7-10 pm. The exhibition will run from April 5 – May 4, 2013.
———————————————————-
Bio:
Laura Lamb was born in Kenora, Ontario, in 1955 and grew up on Lake Lulu where the family owned Lamb’s Camp, a small tourist business. She was a “red diaper baby,” meaning that her parents were communists. Kenora is not far from Winnipeg and Laura dropped out of high school in that city in 1971.
She dropped back into school in the 1980s, earning a BA at SFU Centre for the Arts, where she studied with Jeff Wall, Greg Snider and Kaja Silverman, and an MFA at the University of Victoria, studying with Fred Douglas, Roland Brenner and Mowry Baden.
Before creating the umbrella project and fictive world of Lamb’s Performing Objects, Laura created bodies of work in video and photography, which have been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally.
Laura lives and works in Vancouver. http://lauralamb.ca/
Essay:
Radio Interview:
http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2013/04/strange-songs-trust-and-treachery