Portrait Project

2012, Matt Donovan & Hallie Siegel

With original poetry by Gregory Betts, Christian Bök and Vanessa Place

Portrait Project forms one part of our exhibition titled Petits Genres, a return to our earlier text-based work that seeks out links between different forms of artistic representation – in this case: painting, sculpture and the printed word. Each artwork in the exhibition is a reinterpretation of the petits genres of painting, referring to the ‘hierarchy of genres’ that was used to rank the various art forms in terms of their prestige and cultural value as 16^th century artists struggled to gain acceptance of their particular art forms within the academies of Europe. In painting, allegorical, religious, mythological and historical works that contained a moral or intellectual message were thought to be of highest order, and were referred to as the grands genres. Portrait painting, landscapes, and still life were considered lesser works, and were referred to as the petits genres. In the 19^th century, the Realists and Impressionists began to reject the status quo, seeking instead to depict average people and moments of everyday life. It was then that the petits genres came into their own.

The exhibition builds on our “History Machines” collection: contemporary artifacts that are both forward-looking and historically inspired, and that are primarily concerned with how ideas resurface again and again on the cultural landscape. Portrait Project is an installation of three wooden printing devices and their prints, with original commissioned poetry from three contemporary poets: Gregory Betts, Christian Bök, and Vanessa Place. Each wooden device is cylindrical, with handles for rolling, and its surface is cut for printing a single looping poem with no formal beginning or end. Prints of each poem complete the installation.

Each of the poems in Portrait Project paints a different portrait of the human condition… in Petis Gens, Gregory Betts responds to Landscape, the main artwork in the exhibition, which itself features a vivid “word painting” of a dust storm adapted from Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; in I am a Man, Vanessa Place collects snippets from men trolling internet chat rooms to assemble an ironic and humourous “self-portrait in the negative”; and in March of the Nucleotides, Christian Bök uses only the letters employed in the genetic code to create a portrait of the smallest molecules in the human body.

Our Collaboration

We think of our pieces as artifacts of our conversations; they are what emerge from many hours of tossing ideas back and forth. One of us will come across something interesting … maybe an historical text … maybe an aesthetic idea, and will present it to the other, who, in turn modifies it and gives it back. Eventually threads of many interrelated conversations are woven together into a single, synthesized concept. We iterate, reiterate – doing research, drawing sketches, building models, and pushing the idea and each other – until we are both satisfied with the result. As our ideas are conceptualized, and the narrative of each piece becomes clear, we begin physical production. Matt brings an intuitive sense of 3-dimensional space and an in-depth knowledge of materials to our collaboration. Hallie brings a sensibility of the 2-d in the form of text, typography and graphics, as well as a passion for history and literature. We enjoy playing off each others’ strengths, and our best work is a seamless blend of our contrasting skill sets: 2d and 3d, text and sculpture, narrative and gesture. We know a piece is ‘finished’ when we can no longer see the lines that distinguish Hallie’s work from Matt’s and vice versa.

About the Poets

Gregory Betts is the author of If Language (2005), a collection of paragraph-length anagrams, The Others Raisd in Me (2009), 150 poems plundered from Shakespeare’s sonnet 150, and Haikube (2006), a previous poetry-sculpture collaboration with Matt Donovan and Hallie Siegel. He is the Director of the Centre for Canadian Studies at Brock University.

Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence. Bök teaches English at the University of Calgary.

“Vanessa Place killed poetry.” unk. via Twitter