Ray Fenwick

Interview for Five Voices

Wednesday October 24 to Monday November 5, 2012

In Interview for Five Voices, speech becomes music and conversation becomes a score. In this video and sound installation, Fenwick takes as a starting point five separate interviews with identical questions. These interviews are then transformed and abstracted into a constantly shifting and indeterminate ambient music installation. The piece takes form as a minimal installation of five video monitors within the gallery’s richly reverberant space, resulting in an environment that oscillates playfully between the meditative and the absurd.

Ray would like to thank Colin McInnes, Doug Stechisyn, Elena Stangherlin, Grant Davis and Angela Wells for their help in making this work.

To give language the floor: this is the drive of Ray Fenwick’s art practice and the origin of his studio explorations in video, sound, performance and painting. Fenwick is an MFA candidate at the University of Manitoba who received his undergraduate degree from NSCAD. He has shown work and lectured in both Canada and the U.S. He is the author of two experimental typographic novels published by Fantagraphics, and has worked as an illustrator for The New York Times, The Globe and Mail and others. Pastoralia, his art and dance music project with painter Mitchell Wiebe, has performed at various venues, most notable: as part of Halifax’s Nocturne Festival; at the after-party for the 2009 Sobey Art Awards; and most recently at the opening of Mass MoCA’s Oh Canada. Fenwick is represented by Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Toronto.

Opening Reception

Wednesday October 24, 4:00-7:00 pm