jillian mcdonald . a public art work for participation
sept 20-27 2003 • kitchener, ontario • for CAFKA's
'probing into the distance exhibition
and 4 Cardinals
"As a performance artist, I want to insert a sense of play into
everyday activities.
Mile Share, operating out of a storefront, is a performance in which
passersby are invited to join me in running or walking a mile of Kitchener.
Each participant will choose a mile which has personal significance.
After completion, we will freshen up in the storefront and take a photograph.
These photographs along with maps and motivational music will form a
growing installation in the storefront."
with support from Pace University • photo – Ray Lewis
PROBING INTO THE DISTANCE*
In 1849 the Baldwin Act defined the shape of local and regional government
in Upper Canada and as a consequence many counties throughout Ontario
have recently or will soon be celebrating their 150th anniversaries.
Waterloo Region designated 2003 as the year to celebrate regional
identity as defined 150 years ago by the official drawing of borders and
the marking of a territory. Through the drawing of lines on maps and surveyor's
charts the land was invested with content that is as significant as that
written on the landscape itself by roads, fences, fields and furrows.
Artists created work with civic or vernacular landscape as subject,
which engages the geographic themes of borders, mapping and land surveying,
refers to the specific history mentioned above, or deals with broader
themes: the notion of local identity; land ownership, transfer and conservation;
modes of looking at the land.
* Northrop Frye, The Bush Garden, (House of Anansi Press, 1971) p.222:
"The sense of probing into the distance, of fixing the eyes on the
skyline, is something that Canadian sensibility has inherited from the
voyageurs."
CONTEMPORARY ART FORUM is an annual intenational exhibition/symposium that aims to take works of contemporary art out of galleries, studios and artist run centres and bring them into the civic space. Centred in and around Kitchener City Hall, this event invites and encourages people of all ages and cultural backgrounds, particularly those who do not normally visit galleries, to encounter, react to, and engage with contemporary art and with the artists who create it.