Lois Klassen’s version of the PENELOPE! project, from loiszing.blogs.comI love (and am envious of the recipients of) Calgary-born, Vancouver-based artist Allison Hrabluik‘s recent PENELOPE! project. On March 17th of this year, Hrabluik mailed out 435 envelopes to various Canadian art world figures. Produced in collaboration with Artspeak as an OFFSITE project, the packages had no return address and each contained a large sheet of white paper that had the addressee’s first name written across it in simple but exacting block letters.
While the envelopes were a total mystery to some, and there was quite a bit of online gumshoeing going on to try and find out where they’d come from (on Facebook especially), they seem to have been a welcome surprise for most people. The posters seem sort of like oversized, generous but strangely anonymous “thinking of you” greeting cards. I’ve really enjoyed finding people’s names in such bold, enthusiastic letters above their desks in their offices and other unexpected places.
Anyone want to bet which Greg this might be for? From artspeak.caHrabluik was recently in the Vancouver Art Gallery’s “How Soon is Now” survey of West Coast art and is also coming to Toronto next week to do an artist’s talk at York University in Dan Adler’s “Theoretical Issues in Contemporary Art” grad seminar. The seminar focuses on photoconceptual practices in contemporary art, so I’m assuming her talk will address the use of photographs in her projects at some point.
The talk is free and open to the public (or to those who are willing to make the trek up to North York) and will be happening next Wednesday, May 6th at 11:30 am in Accolade West, Room 003.
Thanks for the tip Gabby! Sounds really interesting.
But…. isn’t she scared of forgeries? : – )
I hadn’t thought about forgeries. We’ve been talking a lot in Dan’s class about the development of “certificates of authenticity” in the art world to be able to sell works like Hrabluik’s project, which these posters did not have. I guess it’s not so much a worry since this was a free project commissioned by Artspeak and each one arrived by mail from Vancouver (which is sort of a mark of authenticity, isn’t it? Mailing yourself creative work is still one way to show legal copyright, right?)