Four By Four

Eric Glavin
Myfanwy MacLeod
Jan Noestheden
Shelly Bahl

October 2003

Four artists have been invited by the Durham Art Gallery to create new work to be displayed as advertisements in local supermarkets. Vinyl floor decals will be on exhibit at each of these locations: Grant’s Independent Grocer (Hanover), IGA (Owen Sound), Wright’s Foodmarket (Walkerton) and Foodland (Markdale).

Though not in traditional art venues, these images on the floor – in the path of the public – invite viewers to negotiate the work in an incidental manner, as they pass over them in the whirl of advertising and mediated consumption.

In the Gallery itself will be a display of additional works by the artists.

Eric Glavin’s images (in Owen Sound) use a palette of shapes and colours culled from advertising but devoid of text, relying instead upon the vague familiarity of the formal elements themselves.

Myfanwy MacLeod (in Walkerton) blends art-history with a humorous take on our self-absorbed and entertainment saturated culture to critique the psychology of consumerism.

Jan Noestheden (in Markdale) uses images from our ‘communal image bank’ – images that have passed through the filter of visual culture and he intensifies their emotion with simplified colour, line and composition.

Shelly Bahl (in Hanover) questions the practices of orientalism, kitsch appropriation and the mass-production of cultural iconography.

The owners of the four supermarkets have shown great community spirit in presenting one each of the artists in this exhibition. We encourage you to visit each of the supermarkets and to express your interest to the staff or owners.