SORRY POLITICIANS (Berlin) (2014)

I first began collecting newspaper apologies after finishing my dissertation the topic of pain and peoples responses to it in 1999. For over a decade, I followed the media spectacle of public apologies, gathering images and quotes from the mouths of CEOs, politicians, sports stars and others. Some of these apologies are of major historical significance while many are salacious in nature and of little public consequence. SORRY aims to distinguish what is important from what was not in this blur of fleeting media moments.

For this exhibition at Emerson Gallery (Berlin), I focused the series on apologies made by politicians as the gallery was with in view of the Reichstag government building. You can read the list of their specific apologies here. 

Prior to 2014, SORRY was exhibited at MacMaster Museum of Art (Hamilton, ON), Saint Mary's University Art Gallery (Halifax, NS), the College of Fine Arts (Sydney, Australia), the Yukon Arts Centre (Whitehorse, YT) and the Platform Centre (Winnipeg, MB). Four SORRY publications share a larger breadth of this collection of mouths and their correlating apologies.

SORRY POLITICIANS is part of my larger body of work around public apologies which includes my iterative WE ARE SORRY (2009-2013) work and Budget Cuts (2012).