Libby Hague’s installation is to be viewed as a psychological self-portrait that traces patterns of influence as they move between creative life and private life. The themes that often recur in Hague’s work risk and luck, disaster and rescue are transposed into an approximate timeline of the complicated and contradictory textures of her life. Here is the beginning; the forgotten things; the boredom; the family dynamics; the accidents; the patterns; the nightmares; the sex; the love; the fun.
The exhibition will consist of an immersive woodcut installation including the Toronto premier of Hague’s pleated paper structures. In addition, abstract puppet sculptures will be suspended from tracks on the ceiling. These puppets are to be reconfigured by the gallery audience, moving around but never going away, accumulating like our personal history.
Part creature and part object, the puppets are made to stand and sit. Then they stand and sit again, in a lower-case ideal of continued effort. By moving them, we give them a half-life that engenders in us a strange empathy and impatience. They test our patience with their repeated and almost inevitable failures; they test our optimism with their inability to learn or show gratitude. Together they speak to the isolation and interconnection of beings.
As part of the YYreZidency program, the lengthy duration of the show will allow for several interventions and performances to take place within the gallery; the anticipated super-energy combo of sculptural drama and live human performance. The interventions/performances are scheduled for Saturday afternoons from 1:00pm-3:00pm with open rehearsals happening any time during regular gallery hours. A variety of documentation will be made and presented as a small video series through the social media outlet YouTube.
Documentation: Allan Kosmajac
Documentation
Essay
Libby Hague: The Thread That We Follow by Michelle Jacques
Comprised of woodcut prints, shaped and pleated paper elements, and puppets that the audience is invited to move around via a system of wire tracks, the impression conveyed by the installation is of a story that both unfolds as a narrative around the perimeter thus implying the progression of time while it also exists as an absorbing and immersive experience in the present moment.
Artist Bios
Libby Hague
Libby Hague is a Toronto-based visual artist who works primarily in print installation. She recently held solo exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, ON), Galerie Circulaire (Montreal, QC), La Centrale (Montreal, QC), the Durham Art Gallery (Durham, ON), and at the Art Gallery of Mississauga (Mississagua, ON). She has traveled internationally to install her work in the International Paper Art Exhibition and Symposium, Chung Shan National Gallery (Taipei, TW), Miner for a heart, curated by Yael Brotman for Impact 7 (Melbourne, AU), and for IPCNY’s New Prints 2011/Autumn (New York City, USA). Hague was the recipient of the 2009 Open Studio National Printmaking Award. She is represented in many public collections including the Muse du Qubec , Confederation Center, Anderson Collection, University of Buffalo, Bank of Montreal and the Donovan Collection at the University of Toronto. www.libbyhague.com