Oct. 08, 2008 - Issue #677: Pick Your Poison

Activist artists: Mediation

Art is in all the small things at ESPA's 10th anniversary show

The volume of objects on display at Mediation, the Edmonton Small Press Association’s 10th Anniversary show now on at ArtsHab, speaks overwhelmingly to the diversity of the Association’s work since their founding in 1998. The show is comprised of works from the ESPA’s library and archives, a comprehensive collection of prints, posters, pamphlets and zines largely, though not exclusively, originating in the social justice community.

 

There are art works in this exhibition which will look very familiar—the visual language that graphic designers and street artists have long relied on to speak to political sensibilities, such as ’30s Soviet propaganda, has been appropriated by contemporary consumer culture and as a result, the language has lost its impact. This, however, does not detract from the clever references and artistic ingenuity some of the artists demonstrate. 

 

The political is inseparable from the visual in the deeply etched faces in Meredith Stern’s print “Community Housing,” which articulates the insurmountable sorrow of lifelong poverty and an enduring concern with inequity. Appropriately, Stern references artist Käthe Kollwitz in her work, drawing on Kollwitz’s use of fine lines and monochromatic tones to animate her figures with technical depth and emotion. Framing the figures and statistics about the state of community housing give context and motive to the work.

 

Roger Peet’s stencil prints, “Export,” “Exhort” and “Extort” juxtapose context with form. Using bright candy-and-comic-book colours matched with softness in texture, Peet depicts scenes of violence and political infringement. Their texture draws your eye in; the works look velvety; the text at the top of each piece brings you back to the violent and distressing social context of the work.

 

The extraordinary and diverse collection of zines and mail art in this exhibition is worth special attention. The micro-zines of Winnepeg’s Robert Pasternak, displayed in the glass case near the back, are a good example of the diversity within the zine community. Pasturnak has created miniature zines packaged like Wrigley gum-type, or rolled into tiny scrolls. Also intriguing is the ongoing mail-art project of David Dellafiora from Australia, who has artists decorate a roll of toilet paper from their home and send it to him. He then binds the sheets into books and sends them back to the artists and small press associations like ESPA. 

 

There are many, many other types of zines on display here as well, which you can (delicately) take out and look over. The Association’s mandate to provide support and community to local small press interests is emphasized by the amount of work collected from international artists and presses over the last decade. The diversity and detail of works like Pasternak’s and Dellafiora’s give context to ESPA’s role in the small press world. Artistic Director Lyn X hopes “[visitors] will be more appreciative of small press and even have a better understanding of what small press is.” As ESPA is launching its fourth Annual North of Nowhere Expo on October 17, this is a perfect starting point for understanding. V 

 

 

Until Thu, Oct 30 (Thu 5 - 8 pm; by appointment)

Mediation

The Edmonton Small Press Association's 

10th Anniversary Retrospective

ArtsHab (10217 - 106 St)

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