THEORIES OF DRIFTING | DAGMAR DAHLE AND DON GILL
09.23.2006 | 11.12.2006
A collaboration between Dagmar Dahle and Don Gill
No one perhaps has ever felt passionate towards a lead pencil, writes Virginia Woolf in Street Haunting, But there are circumstances in which it can become extremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner.
To haunt, to stroll, to wander aimlessly; the act of walking can be an escape, a ritual, method of transportation, exercise regime, leisure activity, social activity or political act.
Dérive, which translates as ‘drifting’ is a term borrowed from the Situationist International group of the 1950’s who practiced aimless urban wandering as a means of investigating the political and cultural meanings of cities’ architecture and spatial arrangements. The rational and the irrational, the conscious and the unconscious meet in the term ‘dérive’.
Dagmar Dahle and Don Gill engage in walking differently, but for both artists walking is an intellectual practice. Gill is an urban walker whose art practice involves moving through space on visual and conceptual planes simultaneously. Collecting evidence of urban meanderings through photography, video, texts, detritus, maps, conversations, encounters, anecdotes, Gill gathers information to be sorted, analyzed, considered and archived as a record of the act. For Dahle, walking is a meditative practice. In the daily practice of walking, the natural areas of Lethbridge are observed through seasonal changes. Investigating the visual, Dahle ruminates as she wanders.
Gill and Dahle will transform the alcove of the main floor gallery into a laboratory where the collections and residue of their walks are processed and archived. From this centre, they will engage in walks in the city; solo, together or with people interested in joining the artists.
Dagmar Dahle studied at the University of Victoria and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Her work has been included in exhibitions across Canada. She has been a professor in the art department at the University of Lethbridge since 1997.
Don Gill studied at the University of Victoria and the California Institute of the Arts. His work can be found in collections across Canada. He teaches in the Department of Art at the University of Lethbridge. In 2007 Gill will be expanding the concept of carceral landscape during a residency at the Imaging the Land International Research Institute at Fowlers Gap in Australia; a continent originally colonized by transported British and Irish convicts.
Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (Curator: Joan Stebbins). Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.
