The Cedar Tavern Singers discussed their work and exhibition, Art Snob Solutions, Phase III: At the Hundredth Meridian, with Christopher Rohde at the Carleton University Art Gallery Oct. 16.
The exhibition, curated by Sandra Dyck, featured the works of performance artist duo Daniel Wong and Mary-Anne McTrowe who formed The Cedar Tavern Singers during a conceptual art residency at the Banff Centre in 2006.
Christopher Rohde, programmer at SAW Gallery, led the discussion with a Q&A.
“One of the things that interests me so much about the show is that it doesn’t really have a single, traditional exhibition element,” Rodhe said.
“We like the idea of using these folk forms as a counter-balance for content which is sort of like art theory, art history, which gives an entrance way for the viewer,” Wong said. “All of a sudden they have this line of theory stuck in their head.”
The Cedar Tavern Singers were commissioned to create a limited-edition EP and music video featuring key artistic moments and works from Carleton and Ottawa’s past.
The duo is known for their ability to provide an informative art history lesson in the form of a catchy song.
“You got a music video, a CD, uniforms, the activity book and then the fragrance and also the drawing contest. All of those elements are not exactly what you would expect from a conventional gallery exhibition,” Rodhe said.
The duo held a drawing contest as part of the exhibition where gallery-goers could draw their favourite piece of Canadian Art and then have it displayed.
“We want them to learn about art and so for this show in particular it was about Carleton University Art Gallery and . . . Canadian art,” McTrowe said.
“So it made sense for the drawing contest to be draw your favourite work of Canadian art.”
McTrowe said that this would make people realize how little they knew or how much they knew about Canadian art.
The artists even designed their own Canadian perfume housed in a stereotypical maple-leaf container. Its professional display led Rodhe to suggest that it could be sold at the Bay.
“We thought about the way celebrities will branch out into areas where they really have no business branching out into, like what do they know about making a fragrance? So we thought we d make it as though we are so big now that we have to have our own fragrance,” McTrowe said.
As part of their conceptual art practice and anti-object interest, The Cedar Tavern Singers challenge the viewer to re-think these ephemeral objects and how they may function in a different form.
They discussed a type of throw-away art practice in which objects, like the activity book they designed, are typically discarded after use. However, they said there is a level of permanence through their appropriation of these objects into art forms in and of themselves.
“You have something ephemeral and that you can’t throw away,” McTrow said.
“It’s like torture,” Wong replied.
