sally mckay and lorna mills

Lorna Mills and Sally McKay

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This is a montage of our recent "exhibition in progress" at the Art Gallery of Sudbury. I apologise to curator Corinna Ghaznavi and fellow artists Gordon Hicks and Rebecca Diederichs for the poor quality of these snapshots... believe me the art looked great. The day was open and fun with lots of good discussion. Those folks in Sudbury know a lot about science and art! I showed video on two screens, and lots of working sketches on bulletin boards. I collected drawings of neutrinos from people who had time to stop and hang out. Gordon had a spinning loop projected that he tweaked and teased into all kinds of shapes throughout the day. Rebecca made a collage on the spot with images she generated on the computer, prodding at the question of what happens when neutrinos pass through matter. There were also lots of balloons popping. The Schroedinger's (Balloon) Cat project was an excellent ice breaker. Each balloon had a cat sticker inside, half of them live cats, half of them dead cats. Here's how our sign read:

The Black Box

A cat is sealed in a box
There is a jar of cyanide in the box
A hammer hangs on a random trigger, based on subatomic event, poised to smash the jar
When we look in the box, we determine whether the cat is alive or dead, (collapsing the wave function)
Until we look in the box, the cat is both alive and dead

The Balloon

A cat is sealed in a balloon
The cat is both alive and dead until we take a measurement
Collapse the wave function by POPPING THE BALLOON and determine whether the cat is alive or dead

This process of workshopping an art show is really great. Its inspiring to see how much our three very different modes of working intersect. I'm looking forward to the exhibition a lot (coming soon to Sudbury and Kingston). I am also working on a performance and a website that will be satellite projects to the main exhibition. An old draft version of the website is here. At the moment, the narrative is both too conclusive and misguided, all the best stuff is left out, and the pages are confusing. Yike, I've got a lot of work to do!

In the interest of privacy I won't name the folks in the pictures above. But thanks so much, you were all great!

Famous conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner, quoted from a 1972 talk published in Artists Talk, edited by Peggy Gale, (Halifax: NSCAD Press) 2004, p.94

"Guerilla theatre is probably the most elitist, most dangerous form of political response known, because it's generally done by comfortable middle-class people and imposed upon working-class areas. The one thing in working-class areas that's the most highly prized is peace and quiet, because the econonmic conditions really are not conducive to it. When a middle-class person is propagating quote unquote, liberation—which is a vile word, because it means that you're better than the person you are liberating—he marches into working class neighbourhoods saying, 'Liberate yourself, man, set yourself free....' The poor bastard gets up, he's worked all night, and looks out the window and says, "Could you please keep quiet," and they say, "Fuck off man, you're just uptight." That's guerilla theatre. And he's totally justified in taking a shotgun and shooting him."

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