Excellence: Saidye Bronfman Award Recipients, 1997-2001 exhibition unveiled
Hull, Quebec, November 20, 2001 – As part of the celebration of the 25th anniversaryof the Saidye Bronfman Award, the Canadian Museum of Civilization presents Excellence: Saidye Bronfman Award Recipients, 1997-2001 from November 21, 2001 to March 24, 2002. This signature exhibition includes works by the five most recent Saidye Bronfman Award recipients, guitar maker William (Grit) Laskin; tapestry artist Marcel Marois; ceramic artist Susan Low-Beer; furniture designer and maker Peter Fleming; and the 2001 Award laureate, ceramic artist Leopold L. Foulem. The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, partners in the award, wish to celebrate these distinguished artists' achievements by acknowledging their talent and commitment to the world of fine craft with this special exhibition.
All of the works in Excellence: Saidye Bronfman Award Recipients, 1997-2001 are from the fine craft collection of the Canadian Museum of Civilization. William (Grit) Laskin is represented by a guitar commissioned by the Museum called Powers of Observation, 1998. The guitar features Laskin's celebrated inlay work portraying a sculptor's tale. Through this story, Laskin questions the veracity of traditional conduits of information and the importance of learning from "seeing."
Marcel Marois' tapestry, Analogie-Temps, 1983-84, updates the storytelling nature of medieval tapestry to address contemporary issues such as the environment. Marois takes images from mass media sources and manipulates them in ways that prompt us to question how and what we see.
Susan Low-Beer's Still Dances VIII, 1991, deals with images of women – taken from historical and contemporary sources – which the artist has segmented and reassembled. The juxtaposition of the fragments prompts the viewer to formulate new narratives about the combination of characters and evokes feelings of vulnerability, compassion and fragility.
The assembly of different sources of inspiration also occurs in Peter Fleming's work. Side Table, designed in 1985 but not finished until 1990, and Writing Desk, 1997, demonstrate a shift that occurred in Fleming's work in the 1990s.
The earlier work is informed by an exuberance based in post-modern aesthetics, whereas the writing table shows Fleming's interest in scouring design history from the Renaissance to mid-century Modernism and then synthesizing these various influences into a final work.
The 25th recipient of the Saidye Bronfman Award, Leopold L. Foulem, is represented in the exhibition by three works that illustrate a number of his ceramic explorations from 1988 to 2000. Abstraction 5847, 1999-2000, is a reduction of ceramics to its most basic – a stereotypical form with colour. Cylindrical Blue and White Teapot in Silvered Mounts, 1995-1996, utilizes commercially made decals to allude to traditional decorative motifs and the addition of metal mounts to refer to Asian ceramics in Europe. Generic Cup and Saucer, 1988, questions what a cup and saucer need to be considered a cup and saucer.
The Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation provides funds that allow the Canadian Museum of Civilization to purchase works by the Award recipients and the finalists. To date, over a hundred works have been purchased for the Museum's collection. Many of these works have been seen in the previous touring exhibitions mounted by the Museum, including Masters of the Crafts and Transformation: Prix Saidye Bronfman Award, 1977-1996.
For further information, please contact:
Heather Hatch-Dinel
The Haley Group
Tel: (416) 536-1566
Email: haleyart@interlog.com
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