Thursday, December 11, 2014

The End of the Beggining: McCord Museum



THE END OF THE BEGINNING - Le Début de la fin

December 12, 2014 - March 15, 2015

The McCord Museum, as part of its Artist-In-Residence Program, is presenting an installation and a video work created by a Montreal artist Frédéric Lavoie who selected objects and images from the Museum's collection. His work offers a highly personal interpretation of the Museum's collection. 



Frédéric Lavoie has been given complete freedom to explore at length the McCord Museum's Notman Photographic Archives, ethnological and archaeological objects, costume and textiles, decorative arts and paintings, prints and drawings. He decided to create a work that examines the strange nature of our relationship with objects from the past. "I approached the McCord Museum collection from the perspective of post-apocalyptic fiction. The traces of events like war, natural disasters and epidemics in its archives led me to a cross-curricular exploration of the various collections that focussed on the diverse nature of the types of objects preserved at the Museum. The final work is presented as a video narrative constructed from the remains of a fallen civilization."



Some of the objects selected by the artist are displayed in showcases and trace the film's narrative. To shoot the video, in addition to working with images from the collection, Frédéric Lavoie made copies of several objects with the help of other visual artists.



The basic idea of the exhibition is that the history repeats itself, and the end of one phase becomes the beginning of the next historical reality which yet proceeds in the same circular manner as the one preceding it. Their are many allegorical comparisons from the present and even imagined future to the North American past events and realities.



Click on any image to enlarge it.
Hover your mouse over images to see credits.

For more information visit the McCord Museum's website:
http://www.mccord-museum.qc.ca/en

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