Luke Johnson: There Were Nothing But Pedigrees All Around Us

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Luke Johnson, "There Were Nothing But Pedigrees All Around Us," 2021

details from commercially printed postcards of images retrieved via Wikimedia Commons, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Luke Johnson: There Were Nothing But Pedigrees All Around Us

Opening Reception | November 26 at 7 PM

Pedigrees recall a well-documented record of succession leading to the present day. The pedigrees that built the Southern Alberta Art Gallery are written into its buildings, exhibitions, collections, and publications. Originating with a grant from wealthy steel magnate Andrew Carnegie over one hundred years ago, the spirit of Lethbridge’s first purpose-built library is kept alive through SAAG’s own art-focused public library. In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of Lethbridge’s Carnegie library building on January 23rd, 2022, artist Luke Johnson re-examined SAAG’s publication history, experimenting with tangential image research among its holdings.

Beginning with a dozen SAAG publications from 1979 to 2012, Luke Johnson found mentions of their titles, or those same arrangement of words, in publications decades older. The much older pictures and illustrations found near these mentions also curiously represent the original SAAG book. Searching for All and Nothing, Margaret May’s 1990 SAAG exhibition and publication, within online databases returned a digitized page from In English Homes (1909) with the accompanying quote by Horatio Walpole (1717-1797):

I hurried from chamber to chamber and scarce knew what I saw, but that the house is in the grand old French style, that gods and goddesses lived over my head in every room and that there was nothing but pedigrees all around me and under my feet…

Sifting through the holdings of the SAAG and libraries in general, often feels like Walpole’s frantic movement from room to room, whipping past the heraldry of past icons. When searching through collections like the SAAG’s, Johnson considers himself an amateur investigator and provider of covert volunteer maintenance. His work, both artistic and laborious, is present as much in his performances of service as it is in the final material art objects. In this case, SAAG’s publication history is re-presented as an investigative game for visitors, offering new encounters with forgotten books. Visitors are invited to trace each image back to the original book and exhibition which provoked its discovery.

There Were Nothing But Pedigrees All Around Us nods towards the chance encounters of searching, exploring, touching, and guessing only possible in the library space. Despite their non sequitur appearance, the found images on each postcard are not completely inaccurate representations of the book they stand for. These postcards are indexical signs, indications of a broader cultural concept of each book title. Presented as ephemera to be taken from the exhibition, each postcard is really an invitation to search back in time to witness how representations of the artist, their work, and its documentation in book form changes over time.

 Curated by Adam Whitford, Interim Curator