Althea ThaubergerBRITISH COLUMBIA: A Memory Lasts Forever, a
co-production of the Berkeley Art Museum and Presentation House
Gallery, April 30-June 5, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver,
and July 14 - August 21, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria, as
part of the nationally touring Sobey Art Award exhibition.
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| Althea Thauberger |
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Althea Thauberger began her art practice as a photographer and now
produces primarily film and video. Born in 1970 in Saskatoon, she
currently lives in Vancouver. Thauberger has exhibited extensively
since graduating with an MFA from the University of Victoria in 2002,
and she has already gained international critical acclaim. In 2004 she
was one of five artists short-listed for the Sobey Art Award, the
pre-eminent prize for young Canadian artists.
Thauberger’s artworks are often concerned with the social document and
self expression, and allude to popular forms of music and drama. In
addition to contemporary modes, her influences include the histories of
painting and photography. Her portraits of social landscapes tend to
locate people in natural settings, as in the recent work, Songstress,
and a new project set in a remote wilderness community of
tree-planters.
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Althea Thauberger: A
Memory Lasts Forever, 2004, production stills, DVD installation
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Thauberger’s subjects are often adolescent girls in emotional states
ranging from abjection to euphoria, as with the latest media work, A Memory Lasts Forever. This piece
is a collaboration with Jessica Griffiths, Gemma Isaac, Kaoru
Matsushita and Natalie Needham, the performers who developed their own
characters, costumes, script and songs from improvised sessions. “Their
teenage energy became an important part of the work,” says the artist.
Here a story about confronting death is told in four different ways,
expressed through the anxieties and fantasies of teenage girls. The
narrative is driven by the evocative power of song, which the artist
sees as “the most immediate and ultimate way of expressing yourself
artistically…. singing affirms the desire for communication.” Filmed in
a North Vancouver home, the piece is cinematically lit and shot as a
stage production played out in real time. The contrived footage
resembles soap opera, music video, slasher movies and musical theatre.
Typical of her videos that feature improvised performances by amateurs,
the film seems to constantly shift between a sense of fiction and
documentary realism.
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| Althea Thauberger: A
Memory Lasts Forever, 2004, production stills, DVD installation |
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Thauberger’s collaborative processes empower the performers. “The
unexpected things that other people bring to the work become crucial to
the content – they develop ideas in ways that I would never be able to
myself.” Two new projects involve collaborations with community choirs,
a devotional choir in Montreal and a choir of military spouses in San
Diego who will write their own music. “For these projects, I am working
not only with the musical content but in the social and spectacular
aspects of performance.” In this way, she takes aesthetics into
everyday life and becomes an instigator of social interaction. - Helga Pakasaar
Represented by:
Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Vancouver.
Helga Pakasaar is Curator at Presentation House Gallery, North
Vancouver.
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