With Apologies and Brushstrokes (2001)

With Apologies and Brushstrokes was a collaborative installation with Garry Neill Kennedy exhibited at The Bathroom Gallery (Halifax) from July 13th - August 5th, 2001.

The Bathroom Gallery was in a house rented by NSCAD students which had exhibitions from time to time. Garry and I were invited to do something there so we came up with two site-specific works for the occasion. 

Garry decided to feature products that had brushstroke marks as part of their visual branding so he focused on items with gestural swirls, squiggles, smears and splashes on their packaging. He sourced all his products from one near by Shoppers Drug Mart location, gathering nail polish, diapers, hair care, creams, cleaners, makeup, and hygiene products. Then, using velcro fastening, he dotted the walls of the bathroom with these items to create a wall papering effect. 

At the time, I was collecting public apologies so when the invitation came to work in a bathroom I began thinking about the apology as a cleansing or purging of the wrongdoing on the side of the apologizer. To nod to this cleaning action, I decided to use towels and a face cloth as my material foundation. The towels were machine embroidered with apologies taken from stories in the media at the time. However, once these words were on the towels, outside of their narrative context, the phrases began to hang as empty signifiers. I selected towels with two colours, and let the apologies run across the front, nodding towards a shift in vocal/emotional tone as you read back and forth from colour to colour.