UPDATE: Chris Lloyd has a show on at the Art Gallery of Calgary right now (up until June 12). Go see it!
Chris Lloyd is still writing to the Prime Minister of Canada. I met Lloyd in Halifax in 1999, when the project was already underway, and we published one of his letters in Lola magazine that summer (although his website states an official start date of January 1, 2001). Lloyd's letters have been online since 2003. The diaristic style may seem unremarkable in the present day morass of blogdom, but this guy is a kind of pioneer in this strange, now common, activity of transmitting your personality, avatar-like, into a public realm. By mailing trivia about his life to the Prime Minister and announcing that fact in art galleries and magazines, Lloyd was an early adopter of that funny humble/arrogant stance of the small-time, self-made celebrity. I like the project for its extreme Canadian-ness. In this little country, it almost seems plausible that the Prime Minister might actually give a shit about the life details of his people. The fantasy is comforting and claustrophobic at the same time. Of course, I don't think Lloyd has had any discursive response from any of the PM's over the years, but he continues on as if in dialogue. Here's a quote from Friday's post:
Today is Good Friday; do you have any special plans? Any church services? Do you spend the weekend with your family? Are you a member of any secret societies? How was your visit with Bush? I saw you on the front page of the National Post and bought a copy from a newspaper box. I figured since I usually don't read the 'Post I'd just keep the cover page to use in a painting, so I left the rest of the paper in the box. It wasn't until later in the day I remembered that there was an article in that edition about my show. So I bought another copy. The article by Julia Dault isn't half bad.
I've been a little busy this weekend, it being easter and all... but I did manage to make it to see Chris' show at the AGC. That gallery is a bit corrupt so I was really surprised to find out that they were showing Lloyd's PM project. Calgary is a steaming ditch of a place filled with horrible money-hungry careerist scumbags and the AGC sits downtown, right in the middle of it all, without a single artist on its Board of Directors. Chris' show (the first new show in several months) is terribly refreshing and poignant. He came over for dinner on Friday before going out to the ARC openings around town and really impressed me with his ease and humble attitude in regards to his project. He asked if he could buy a copy of the globe and mail I had put aside for recycling just for the image of the PM on the front cover. He told me that the vest the PM was wearing in the picture was the same as the one he wore while in SE Asia and that he really liked the little black terrier walking behind G. Bush. I really hope people in Calgary go to see the show.
Hey thanks Bunnie. I knew he was having a show there but didn't realise it was on right now. I made an update.
Howdy!
Can anybody email me a copy of the article in today's Nat Post? Please? and thanks!
Howdy!
If anybody is interested I got a copy of the article. And it is a mighty fine one from Ms. Julia Dault. If anybody is interested it is below. Also, Mr. Lloyd is having another show here in town starting on Friday. Galerie Espace, 4844 Saint Laurent.
Dear Paul: What happens when art and politics collide?
National Post
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Page: B6
Section: Avenue
Byline: Julia Dault
Source: National Post
DEAR PM...
Chris Lloyd
Art Gallery of Calgary to June 12
- - -
There are things that require daily attention: eating, sleeping, and, if you're good, flossing. Montreal-based artist Chris Lloyd has an additional task -- every day he must write a letter to our dear Prime Minister. Sometimes angry, other times humorous, most often filled with descriptions of his daily life, these letters are part of Lloyd's four-year-long project Dear PM... now on display at the Art Gallery of Calgary.
"I started it mostly out of boredom," admits Lloyd, who in 2001 was stuck at a dead-end job at a laundromat and scraping his way through art school when he conceived of the idea. "I guess I had a lot of time on my hands," he says.
For Lloyd, who always felt politics were a bit of a spectator sport, this intimate correspondence with the PMO was a way to both record his own life's progress while playing with the notion of government and effectuality or, more accurately, ineffectuality.
"In sending these letters to the real and symbolic head of state, I am playing with contradictions," he explains. "Between trickery and seriousness, work and play, art and bureaucracy."
Lloyd's letters range from journal-like entries ("Dear Paul... Had a productive day. Well planned and well executed. Woke fairly early, as Claudine had to work at the bookstore at 10 a.m.") to direct friend-like affection ("Dear Paul... You were all over the French dailies yesterday... so I've started a couple paintings... they are both sort of Nixonesque... gotta go finish scrounging up a lunch) to political outrage in reaction to Martin's statement regarding the deaths of the four RCMP officers in the Rochfort Bridge raid ("Dear Paul... why not write with depth and emotion? Why not write to describe what concrete steps will be taken? If you don't really say anything when you write and 'release a statement' then why write anything at all?"). Lloyd will be installing the nearly 1,700 letters on an entire gallery wall. And, of course, because his apparently addictive correspondence will continue throughout the exhibition, the installation will grow daily, much like a toddler or Chia-Pet.
Accompanying the letters are nearly 30 of Lloyd's paintings, all of them portraits of the previous Prime Minister based on photographs clipped from the front pages of national newspapers. Not only does he replicate the expression and activities of our fearless leader in paint and pencil, he also uses the headlines and photo captions to contextualize his images. Scenes like After the Applause, Manley wonders if PM did enough to mend fences with U.S. and PM Bids farewell to APEC leaders and talks business with Bush show Jean Chretien hobnobbing, the texts sometimes but not always corresponding with the image.
Also included in Dear PM... is a video installation called Office/ Bureau that Lloyd cheekily refers to "yet another form of stalking." The video tracks his surveillance of Paul Martin's constituency office in a strip mall in La Salle, Que., something that Lloyd felt was necessary to trace the presence (or absence) of his government's leader and representatives.
Of course he reported it all back to Martin: "Dear Paul... I felt the video shoot was a success... A bit of a commute; all the way to Angrignon, end of the green line, then a bit of a wait for the #106. A woman standing behind me was quite irate about the wait, especially since there was a #106 idling behind the line for a good 20 minutes. I guess that is the system; drivers leave and get on idling buses all the time. Is this idling bus business in accord with Kyoto?"
With Dear PM... Lloyd is examining big ideas like the roles of government, the artist, bureaucracy and consumerism through small, touching details of daily life with near Dadaist flair.
The question is whether Lloyd's absurdist dedication is reciprocated. "I occasionally get responses," he explains, "and they have enough grammatical twists and specificity to prove there are humans reading [my letters]. Of course, I don't know who they are."
In direct opposition to the impersonal PMO is Lloyd's blog, the very personal online archive of Dear PM with holdings of all
of the letters sent since 2003 (http://dearpm.blogspot.com/). With only minor editing -- he confesses to taking out details he'd prefer his mother not know -- the blog is a window into both his and Martin's "intimacy" and his own progress as an artist.
The only problem with Dear PM...? There is no end in sight.
"It's a literal recording of time. I really see no end to it," says Lloyd with a small sigh. For now at least, it looks like Lloyd will write on. "Soon it will be five years," he pauses, "that feels like a good, round number. But then again, I might just keep going." -- Julia Dault
Illustration: * Colour Photo: After the applause, Manley wonders if PM did enough to mend fences with U.S. * Colour Photo: Chris Lloyd's installation of letters to the Prime Minister in the Archie Key Gallery., Installation shot by Gary Castle from previous show at Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
Idnumber: 200503240148
Edition: All But Toronto
Story Type: News
Note: Located at 117 - 8th Ave. S.W. Calgary 403-770-1350.
www.artgallerycalgary.org. The official opening reception will be on April 8
at 7 p.m. Paul Martin can be reached at pm@pm.gc.ca
Length: 814 words
Thanks, Zeke.
Hi Sally, thanks for the kind words about the Dear PM project. I'm currently in Toronto thinking of different places to expose parts of the project. Lately, as I did in the TRAFIC exhibition way up in the woods of northern Québec, I have been playing around a lot with the form of the project; burying letters, planting rosebushes and Pandora's Boxes, installing suits à la Joseph Beuys, making paper airplanes and crunched up paper balls of all the letters, making performances and videos, in general, having fun with the stuff. I'm moving back to southern New Brunsick in the fall to begin work as the director of a brand spanking new artspace called Third Space Gallery / Galerie Tiers Espace, and when I hit the east coast again I plan to drop every single letter into bottles into the sea. Some may see this as unwanton litgtering, but really, who doesn't love getting a letter in a bottle? Who knows where these suckers might show up. Great fun!
nice. I like the letters-in-a-bottle development. The concept is so old world/global village.
|
UPDATE: Chris Lloyd has a show on at the Art Gallery of Calgary right now (up until June 12). Go see it!
Chris Lloyd is still writing to the Prime Minister of Canada. I met Lloyd in Halifax in 1999, when the project was already underway, and we published one of his letters in Lola magazine that summer (although his website states an official start date of January 1, 2001). Lloyd's letters have been online since 2003. The diaristic style may seem unremarkable in the present day morass of blogdom, but this guy is a kind of pioneer in this strange, now common, activity of transmitting your personality, avatar-like, into a public realm. By mailing trivia about his life to the Prime Minister and announcing that fact in art galleries and magazines, Lloyd was an early adopter of that funny humble/arrogant stance of the small-time, self-made celebrity. I like the project for its extreme Canadian-ness. In this little country, it almost seems plausible that the Prime Minister might actually give a shit about the life details of his people. The fantasy is comforting and claustrophobic at the same time. Of course, I don't think Lloyd has had any discursive response from any of the PM's over the years, but he continues on as if in dialogue. Here's a quote from Friday's post:
- sally mckay 3-28-2005 6:22 pm
I've been a little busy this weekend, it being easter and all... but I did manage to make it to see Chris' show at the AGC. That gallery is a bit corrupt so I was really surprised to find out that they were showing Lloyd's PM project. Calgary is a steaming ditch of a place filled with horrible money-hungry careerist scumbags and the AGC sits downtown, right in the middle of it all, without a single artist on its Board of Directors. Chris' show (the first new show in several months) is terribly refreshing and poignant. He came over for dinner on Friday before going out to the ARC openings around town and really impressed me with his ease and humble attitude in regards to his project. He asked if he could buy a copy of the globe and mail I had put aside for recycling just for the image of the PM on the front cover. He told me that the vest the PM was wearing in the picture was the same as the one he wore while in SE Asia and that he really liked the little black terrier walking behind G. Bush. I really hope people in Calgary go to see the show.
- bunnie (guest) 3-29-2005 12:51 am
Hey thanks Bunnie. I knew he was having a show there but didn't realise it was on right now. I made an update.
- sally mckay 3-29-2005 1:20 am
Howdy!
Can anybody email me a copy of the article in today's Nat Post? Please? and thanks!
- Zeke 3-29-2005 2:09 am
Howdy!
If anybody is interested I got a copy of the article. And it is a mighty fine one from Ms. Julia Dault. If anybody is interested it is below. Also, Mr. Lloyd is having another show here in town starting on Friday. Galerie Espace, 4844 Saint Laurent.
Dear Paul: What happens when art and politics collide?
National Post
Thursday, March 24, 2005
Page: B6
Section: Avenue
Byline: Julia Dault
Source: National Post
DEAR PM...
Chris Lloyd
Art Gallery of Calgary to June 12
- - -
There are things that require daily attention: eating, sleeping, and, if you're good, flossing. Montreal-based artist Chris Lloyd has an additional task -- every day he must write a letter to our dear Prime Minister. Sometimes angry, other times humorous, most often filled with descriptions of his daily life, these letters are part of Lloyd's four-year-long project Dear PM... now on display at the Art Gallery of Calgary.
"I started it mostly out of boredom," admits Lloyd, who in 2001 was stuck at a dead-end job at a laundromat and scraping his way through art school when he conceived of the idea. "I guess I had a lot of time on my hands," he says.
For Lloyd, who always felt politics were a bit of a spectator sport, this intimate correspondence with the PMO was a way to both record his own life's progress while playing with the notion of government and effectuality or, more accurately, ineffectuality.
"In sending these letters to the real and symbolic head of state, I am playing with contradictions," he explains. "Between trickery and seriousness, work and play, art and bureaucracy."
Lloyd's letters range from journal-like entries ("Dear Paul... Had a productive day. Well planned and well executed. Woke fairly early, as Claudine had to work at the bookstore at 10 a.m.") to direct friend-like affection ("Dear Paul... You were all over the French dailies yesterday... so I've started a couple paintings... they are both sort of Nixonesque... gotta go finish scrounging up a lunch) to political outrage in reaction to Martin's statement regarding the deaths of the four RCMP officers in the Rochfort Bridge raid ("Dear Paul... why not write with depth and emotion? Why not write to describe what concrete steps will be taken? If you don't really say anything when you write and 'release a statement' then why write anything at all?"). Lloyd will be installing the nearly 1,700 letters on an entire gallery wall. And, of course, because his apparently addictive correspondence will continue throughout the exhibition, the installation will grow daily, much like a toddler or Chia-Pet.
Accompanying the letters are nearly 30 of Lloyd's paintings, all of them portraits of the previous Prime Minister based on photographs clipped from the front pages of national newspapers. Not only does he replicate the expression and activities of our fearless leader in paint and pencil, he also uses the headlines and photo captions to contextualize his images. Scenes like After the Applause, Manley wonders if PM did enough to mend fences with U.S. and PM Bids farewell to APEC leaders and talks business with Bush show Jean Chretien hobnobbing, the texts sometimes but not always corresponding with the image.
Also included in Dear PM... is a video installation called Office/ Bureau that Lloyd cheekily refers to "yet another form of stalking." The video tracks his surveillance of Paul Martin's constituency office in a strip mall in La Salle, Que., something that Lloyd felt was necessary to trace the presence (or absence) of his government's leader and representatives.
Of course he reported it all back to Martin: "Dear Paul... I felt the video shoot was a success... A bit of a commute; all the way to Angrignon, end of the green line, then a bit of a wait for the #106. A woman standing behind me was quite irate about the wait, especially since there was a #106 idling behind the line for a good 20 minutes. I guess that is the system; drivers leave and get on idling buses all the time. Is this idling bus business in accord with Kyoto?"
With Dear PM... Lloyd is examining big ideas like the roles of government, the artist, bureaucracy and consumerism through small, touching details of daily life with near Dadaist flair.
The question is whether Lloyd's absurdist dedication is reciprocated. "I occasionally get responses," he explains, "and they have enough grammatical twists and specificity to prove there are humans reading [my letters]. Of course, I don't know who they are."
In direct opposition to the impersonal PMO is Lloyd's blog, the very personal online archive of Dear PM with holdings of all
of the letters sent since 2003 (http://dearpm.blogspot.com/). With only minor editing -- he confesses to taking out details he'd prefer his mother not know -- the blog is a window into both his and Martin's "intimacy" and his own progress as an artist.
The only problem with Dear PM...? There is no end in sight.
"It's a literal recording of time. I really see no end to it," says Lloyd with a small sigh. For now at least, it looks like Lloyd will write on. "Soon it will be five years," he pauses, "that feels like a good, round number. But then again, I might just keep going." -- Julia Dault
Illustration: * Colour Photo: After the applause, Manley wonders if PM did enough to mend fences with U.S. * Colour Photo: Chris Lloyd's installation of letters to the Prime Minister in the Archie Key Gallery., Installation shot by Gary Castle from previous show at Art Gallery of Nova Scotia
Idnumber: 200503240148
Edition: All But Toronto
Story Type: News
Note: Located at 117 - 8th Ave. S.W. Calgary 403-770-1350.
www.artgallerycalgary.org. The official opening reception will be on April 8
at 7 p.m. Paul Martin can be reached at pm@pm.gc.ca
Length: 814 words
- Zeke 3-30-2005 5:19 am
Thanks, Zeke.
- sally mckay 3-30-2005 7:06 am
Hi Sally, thanks for the kind words about the Dear PM project. I'm currently in Toronto thinking of different places to expose parts of the project. Lately, as I did in the TRAFIC exhibition way up in the woods of northern Québec, I have been playing around a lot with the form of the project; burying letters, planting rosebushes and Pandora's Boxes, installing suits à la Joseph Beuys, making paper airplanes and crunched up paper balls of all the letters, making performances and videos, in general, having fun with the stuff. I'm moving back to southern New Brunsick in the fall to begin work as the director of a brand spanking new artspace called Third Space Gallery / Galerie Tiers Espace, and when I hit the east coast again I plan to drop every single letter into bottles into the sea. Some may see this as unwanton litgtering, but really, who doesn't love getting a letter in a bottle? Who knows where these suckers might show up. Great fun!
- Lloydly (guest) 7-23-2005 12:17 am
nice. I like the letters-in-a-bottle development. The concept is so old world/global village.
- sally mckay 7-23-2005 7:12 am