Shades of Grace
Alain Ambrosi, Michael Davidge, Anna Elmberg Wright, Ayaz Kamani, Donna-lee Iffla, Ted Rettig
July 12 - August 8, 2008
Reception: July 12, 2-4p
(The Union Gallery appreciates support for this exhibition from the Agnes Etherington Art Centre)

Shades of Grace, installation view, 2008

Alain Ambrosi
I have always been a facilitator of events, an organizer of improbable encounters that produce equally improbable projects in which process and interaction count more than end results. I had come to a point where I felt the desire to do something, if not entirely different, at least to do it in a different way. Donna-Lee Iffla’s invitation to join this project on grace came in complete consonance with my musings of the moment and brought me back to media that I had practised some time ago and that I had long frequented. Having sojourned repeatedly in Andalucia, I have been marked by the duende that inhabits its culture. Grace for me can only be that immanent energy, that evolving “some thing” that emerges from our physical being, on the very crest of consciousness, in precarious equilibrium on the frontier between feeling and reason, something yet unborn, unspoken, unheard, unseen, neither beautiful nor ugly, of no known origin and bearing no predictable result. Something which, once expressed, will engender meaning, will surprise us and surprise the world. The problem was therefore how to share this experience in its very becoming without hampering its movement. Interactive video renders this “becoming other” while at the same time allowing the observer to choose her own moment of grace. As for the photos, they could only elicit its reflections… or reflect its shadows.

J’ai toujours été un facilitateur d’événements, un metteur en scène de rencontres improbables pour réaliser des projets tout aussi improbables dans lesquels les processus et les interactions m’importaient plus que le résultat final. J’étais arrivé au point où j’avais envie de faire non pas complètement autre chose mais de le faire autrement. L’invitation de Donna Lee Iffla à me joindre à cette exposition sur la grâce était en pleine résonance avec mes réflexions du moment et me permettait de renouer avec des médias que j’avais autrefois pratiqués et longtemps côtoyés. Ayant séjourné à plusieurs reprises en Andalousie j’ai été profondément marqué par sa culture traversée de part en part par le « duende ». La grâce ne peut être pour moi que cette énergie immanente, ce « quelque chose » en devenir qui émerge de notre corps, sur une ligne de crête, en équilibre précaire à la frontière du senti et du raisonné, quelque chose d’encore inédit, inouï, « inévu », ni beau ni laid, sans origine connue et sans résultat prévisible. Quelque chose qui, une fois exprimé, va engendrer du sens et va nous surprendre et surprendre le monde. Le problème alors était de pouvoir partager ce vécu dans son devenir même sans figer son mouvement. La vidéo interactive pouvait rendre ce « devenir autre » tout en laissant le spectateur choisir son propre moment de grâce. Les photos quant à elles ne pouvaient qu’en évoquer des reflets… ou refléter son ombre.

Alain Ambrosi has over 30 years’ experience in the /design and administration of development and social communication programs/* *on all continents. He has initiated, co-founded and participated in several international networks of researchers and practitioners in the field of alternative and democratic media and communication. He has also designed and organized numerous international events on these topics. Originally an academic, Ambrosi’s activities have consistently combined theory and practice. He is the producer of many documentaries and author of books and articles on both theoretical and practical aspects of his fields of expertise. His most recent works include the conceptualisation and co-organization of an open source intelligence multicultural process involving contributors from all continents and different cultural backgrounds. The result of this initiative on the major issues and debates of the Information Society was of the publication “*Word Matters*, Multicultural perspectives on information societies”, a quadrilingual 650-page book. Word Matters is also available on the web.


Shades of Grace, installation view, 2008

Michael Davidge
The thought returns in an unrecognizable or camouflaged but still intuited form. For the Shades of Grace exhibition, I will construct a sculptural installation entitled “Platfall” that will induce in the viewer that vertigo associated with the Zen Koan and with slapstick comedy. Following Bergon’s treatise on humour, which argues that there is nothing funnier than a clockwork cabbage, I aim to create a situation based on a classic trope in comic films, wherein viewers, once entered into this situation, will come to the realization that they have become clockwork cabbages. Grace is experienced in the brief weightlessness of the pratfall.
Michael Davidge is currently the Artistic Director at Modern Fuel Artist Run Centre in Kingston, Ontario. He received an MFA from the University of Western Ontario. His installation and video work has been exhibited in various venues in Canada.

Anna Elmberg Wright
Ingenuousness is necessary in order to explore the vital force that is Grace. This un-owned mystery is an ever-present and timeless force which humans elusively struggle to realize as they attempt to maintain separation. Grace is not interested in pursuit or possession. Grace exists within the non-categorical struggle of the flowers of spring: through a tremendous, invisible effort to blossom in their unyielding authenticity, they resolutely embrace the steely-eyed promise of their dying.
Anna Elmberg Wright was born in Spain where the rain falls mainly on the plain. She is a 2008 graduate of the Fine Arts Program at Queen’s University and is pursuing post-grad studies in homeopathy. She is concurrently developing an artistic practice and is continuing to focus on painting, sculpture and installation. Her first publicly awarded commission (2007) for a foyer mural may be viewed at the new Regional Headquarters of the Ministry of the Environment in Kingston.

Ayaz Kamani
“Grace” as a term holds many definitions, but it also holds a feeling that keeps it from ambiguity; a positive notion, a journey. Religious connotations aside I found self-exploration as a search for grace or as grace in itself. Despite the distance that has come between me and my initial ideas and intentions, I still recognize the interviews as an experiment to find a common denominator within myself. However is this common denominator, or core/soul, just a function of my mood, since the interviews were completed over three days rather than a more objective span of time. Do the interviews prove my ephemeral fear as real? Acceptance of self is ‘grace’, understanding myself to by kinetic, and accepting this inevitability is my arrival at ‘grace’.

My environment has an effect or a part in me, and I don’t want to ignore that, so control is given up; not to be confused with submission.
I think I’m alright

BFA – Queen’s University, J.J.’s dishwasher for three months. Modern Fuel internship for 2.5 months. Shown at Modern Fuel State of Flux, verb gallery, Union Gallery Project Room. Screening at AGYU. Member of semi-precious promises collective with Lisa Visser and Jeff Barbeau. Moving back to Vancouver to live with parents and learn how to cool Churna Batteta – chickpeas and potatoes better. Know Love because it is still happily stubborn inside me. Ismaili Muslim. If culture defined my race instead of skin I’m East Indian, Canadian, Cantonese, German, Irish, East African, Iranian, and Dutch.

Donna Lee Iffla
This group project and exhibition has come out of an experience I had following some traumatic events which occurred to three friends of mine. The word that came to me during that experience was grace: and since it is not a word I use very often, it started a whole journey of contemplation, a whole chain of events, conversations and finally, creative activity. For me, grace has come to mean a doorway, a quest, a journey. Since I think of myself primarily as a poet, it has been humbling and stimulating to try to express my work in another “language”: ceramics. That process has been spiritually instructive because I have had to learn to let go, and to trust and to accept what comes. In terms of the form of the poem, that has meant putting certain lines out there and hoping people engage with those and construct their own completion. I have also been sustained and inspired by the generosity and enthusiasm, the grace, really, of the other artists in the group, and by the skill, encouragement, and patience of my ceramics teacher and friend, Delvalle DaSilva Lewis.
For over 30 years, Donna Lee Iffla has worked in education, community arts and cultural development in Canada, England and the People’s Republic of China. Her main arts practice is writing and in particular poetry (sometimes performance poetry and performance text), and she combines that with community-based and more recently government work in anti-violence.

Ted Rettig
I do find it hard to write about newer pieces. Often I try to work in the area of non-verbal communication and the wall mounted piece titled, breath, voice and graciousness, does enter this area. The new printed multiple, kindness and graciousness, approaches deeper areas of awareness through text in combination with graphic elements. The sculptural piece, clarity and luminosity, does so in a different more playful way. The concept or theme of graciousness has pretty well always been part of unspoken background assumptions of my works. I do research contemplative practices and in different ways graciouness or similar concepts are always present both as background and as general goal.

Ted Rettig was born in 1949 in West Germany. The family immigrated to Canada in 1953 and he became a Canadian citizen in 1959. He studied both Visual Arts and East Asian Studies at York University, Toronto, BA Hon. Visual Art ’74 and MFA ’77. He has been exhibiting nationally and internationally since 1974. He works in the areas of sculpture / installation, drawing, photo/text pieces, bookworks, multiples and recently video. The main areas of research comprise contemporary art and spirituality / contemplative practices, art and ecology, Chinese art history, inter-religious dialogue and recent cultural theory. His works are in the collections of The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre, St. Michael’s College, the Canada Council Art Bank, the Ministry of External Affairs, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and other public and private collections. He teaches in the Department of Art at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. His work is represented by Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Toronto. Many images and more information are available at this web site: www.ccca.ca.