Please note that the workshop has been moved from March 15 to March 23.
This evening discussion will begin with my own beginnings - the coalescing of ideas, in my case, surrounding what was in 1974 the “new medium” of video. In preparing for Videoscape at the Art Gallery of Ontario, I had a lot of permission and very little assistance. This was well before the internet or email. There were no “curatorial studies” programs at universities. I studied art history.
But now, in hindsight, there are many ideas to consider and pathways to choose. Under discussion will be:
The importance of writing and publishing
The possible value of specializing
Remember that artists are your friends and colleagues.
Remain in touch with galleries, museums, artist-run centres
Keep your contact info up-to-date
Keep on reading and attending openings
Travel is good.
Don’t forget your friends.
Remember you are a scholar
but your work should be accessible to any intelligent, willing viewer or reader.
You are working for the artist as well as for the institution.
What you do will stay with you. And often returns much later. Stay the course.
There will be visual material and a consideration of BNLMTL 2014, L'avenir (looking forward) as a case study, with copious documentation.
Peggy Gale studied art history at the University of Toronto and Università degli Studi (Florence), and has published extensively on time-based works by contemporary artists. She was editor of Video re/View: The (best) Source for Critical Writings on Canadian Artists’ Video (with Lisa Steele, 1996), and Artists Talk 1969-1977, from The Press of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax (2004) among many other titles. More recently, she edited PUBLIC Journal 44 (January 2012) on Experimental Media. Her essay “All These Years: Early Toronto Video,” appeared in Explosion in the Movie Machine: Histories of Toronto Moving Image Culture, ed. Chris Gehman, Images Festival. An independent curator since the mid-1970s, she organized Tout le temps/Every Time (La Biennale de Montréal, 2000) and was co-curator (with Doina Popescu) for Archival Dialogues: Reading the Black Star Collection, inaugurating the Ryerson Image Centre (Toronto) in September 2012. She was also co-curator of the most recent Biennale de Montréal titled (L’avenir (looking forward), October 2014-January 2015.
In 2006, Peggy Gale was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.
