Maureen Bradley
Dana Claxton
Allyson Mitchell
b. h. Yael

 

McMaster Museum of Art, McMaster University

January 28 - March 27, 2010

 

FIERCE Page

 

 

 

Public Reception: Thursday January 28, 6 - 8pm
Artists' Think Tank: Friday January 29, 1:30 - 2:20 pm

with exhibition curator Janice Hladki and artists, Maureen Bradley, Allyson Mitchell, and b.h.Yael

 

Public Talk by Jolene Rickard: Friday, March 19, 12:30 – 1:20 pm at the Museum
Jolene Rickard is a Tuscarora curator, photographer, and scholar. She is also Chair, Department of Art and Associate Professor, History of Art/American Indian Studies/Department of Art, Cornell University.

Presented by the McMaster University’s Women’s Studies and Indigenous Studies Programs and the McMaster Museum of Art.

 

The McMaster Museum of Art is proud to present Fierce: Women’s Hot-Blooded Film/Video, a group exhibition of video and experimental film works by Maureen Bradley, Dana Claxton, Allyson Mitchell, and b. h. Yael: women at the forefront of Canadian-based, media production and installation.

 

Multiple themes thread through the exhibition’s two installations and fifteen moving image works, which were produced between 1994 and 2008. Janice Hladki, former multi-disciplinary artist (e.g., The Clichettes), exhibition curator and Associate Professor in Theatre & Film Studies at McMaster University’s School of the Arts, writes, “In their interrogation and theorization of social and cultural relations of power, territories of land and body, and spectator responsibility, these works may be understood as hot-headed: intellectually tempestuous and thoughtfully simmering.”

 

This exhibition addresses how Canadian-based women artists are contributing to contemporary moving image culture, particularly in terms of producing the thinking image. Focusing on artists with histories and bases in different Canadian locations, Fierce provides a rich account of video art and experimental film in the Canadian context and contributes to the impact of Canadian-based work within transnational spheres. Mobilizing narrative, documentary, autobiographical, video essay, video poem, animation, and experimental forms, the artists explore urgent concerns: multiple embodiments and identities, public life and social justice, the global and the local, history and memory, the environment and species diversity, and war and peace.

 

Fierce will travel to the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa July 2 - August 28, 2011. It is supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) and a publication is forthcoming including essays by Janice Hladki, Richard Fung, Julia Bryan-Wilson, Jeremy Todd, Lisa Steele and Patricia R. Zimmermann.

 

image top: Maureen Bradley, Birthday Suit Management: a 21C Homage to Lisa Steele, 2001, video still.

 

 

Selected Reviews

Fiery female filmmakers showcased at 'Fierce' exhibit by Peter Goddard - The Toronto Star, January 28, 2010

Art is not always pretty pictures by Jeff Mahoney - The Hamilton Spectator, January 27, 2010

Fierce exhibition opens today at Museum of Art - McMaster Daily News, January 28, 2010