Janice Kerbel: Kill the Workers! • January 21 to April 8
Artist’s Talk: Thursday, January 19, 4 p.m. • Opening reception: Friday, January 20, 7 p.m.
Walter Phillips Gallery • The Banff Centre
Janice Kerbel has planned a bank heist, written a radio play for insomniacs, and now tells the tale of an ambitious lone spotlight in her exhibition Kill the Workers! at The Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery. The exhibition is comprised of a configuration of theatrical lighting and its title draws reference from a back stage term which signals the dimming of a theatre’s house lights in order to draw attention to events on stage.
Originally commissioned by London’s Chisenhale Gallery and Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe, Kill the Workers! uses a cue script for a set of theatrical lights whose movements conjure images of a journey of struggle and triumph. Changes in beam intensity, colour, pattern, and direction allude to a narrative progression in the composition.. The exhibition re-establishes the audience’s relationship with one of the more abstract features of the theatrical medium, the lighting design.
Janice Kerbel, a Canadian artist who has lived and worked in London for the past 15 years, is a graduate of Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, and of Goldsmiths College, University of London. Her work often explores the relationship between reality, imagined ideals, and illusions. For her 1999 work Bank Job, she staked out a London bank to plan a robbery, including a map of all CCTV positions and getaway routes to a hideout in rural Spain. In 2006 her radio play for insomniacs Nick Silver Can’t Sleep, was broadcast on BBC. Kerbel’s recent solo exhibitions include Art Now (2010), Tate Britain, London and 1st at Moderna (2006), Moderna Musset, Stockholm.
A forthcoming catalogue on her work will be published by the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, Toronto, and Badischer Kunstverein in collaboration with Walter Phillips Gallery.
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