National Gallery of Canada
Caught in the Act: The Viewer as Performer
Exhibition Catalogue
Caught in the Act:
The Viewer as Performer
With essays by Josée Drouin-Brisebois,
Greg Hill,
Anne-Marie Ninacs and
Stephen Horne.
English (Also available in French)
Hard cover - 256 pages
94 colour illustrations 9 x 7 inches
Code: 978-0-88884-855-0
Click here to order catalogue
Published by the
National Gallery of Canada (10/2008)
$44.95
This full-colour publication presents a collection of original essays which that examine artistic practices that engage, and even rely on, the spectator. This overview of Canadian artists working today shows that each has come to their work from a different perspective, including performance, installation, environmental art, minimal art, body art, video and relational aesthetics. In contrast to the conventional relationships between work, artist, and spectator, here, there is an emphatic declaration of the role of the participant, which becomes as, or even more important than the authorial role of the artist, and indeed, as significant as the very art object itself. Whether immersive environments, sculptures involving a bodied spectator, or encounters that promote interaction, all of these works reflect current interests in art as a participatory practice.
Artists discussed include Mowry Baden, Rebecca Belmore, BGL, Max Dean & Raffaello D’Andrea, Geoffrey Farmer, Massimo Guerrera, Rodney LaTourelle, Jennifer Marman & Daniel Borins, Kent Monkman, and Jana Sterbak. The publication also features a text project by performance artist and writer Glen Johnson (a.k.a. Hugh Briss), which offers a disturbance or interruption in the reading of the catalogue.