Allison Hrabluik: The Splits
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Kenderdine Art Gallery 51 Campus Dr, 2nd level, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A8
Allison Hrabluik, “The Splits,” 2015
video still, 15:00 minute digital video. Directed by Allison Hrabluik. Director of Photography, Dave Ehrenreich. (courtesy of the Gallery)
Allison Hrabluik’s video work The Splits, intersects documentary and fiction through a series of performances that demonstrate the skills of disparate talents, ranging from tap dancers, gymnasts, skippers, and other everyday artists of the bodily gesture. Performed on the stage of a community centre, the acts are now recontextualized by their presentation as a video installation in the gallery space. The culmination of a community centre’s stage, crisp audio and the close cropping, become devices that connect what might otherwise be a random grouping of people, isolating and highlighting their actions. The result is a form of abstract storytelling in which a generalized survey of practiced human movement reveals a narrative of characters, “giving way to a carnivalesque collectivity, competitive eating and hula hooping become interchangeable expressions of humanity."
The cast includes real-life performers whose skills range from the mundane to the extraordinary: a singer, a pizza dough thrower, speed skippers and dog trainers. Scissors clip, a rope whirs, the sound of a mouth harp interrupts an operatic scream.
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