Howie Tsui’s Retainers of Anarchy took seven years to make, and it could not have been made at all not so many years before.
“The software and hardware limitations from 10 to 20 years ago would not allow the work to exist,” Tsui says. Go further back and the “mou hap” that is at the work’s core was banned in China until 1970. Mou hap is permitted these days, and Tsui notes that his scroll ”just finished exhibiting at OCAT Museum Xi’an, a historical Chinese capital where the Terra Cotta Warriors are located.”
Retainers of Anarchy, which opens April 12 at the Ottawa Art Gallery, is a multimedia installation anchored by a digital, animated scroll that is more than 20 metres in length. The scroll is a narrative of the fantasy literature mou hap, which the catalogue from Tsui’s exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery defines as, “the adventures of martial artists, often from lower social classes, as they uphold chivalric ideals against oppressive forces during unstable times.”
Practitioners of mou hap were exiled to Hong Kong, where Tsui’s narrative is set in the officially lawless and densely populated enclave that was Kowloon Walled City. Tsui says he was attracted by the “deeply immersive world” of mou hap, and how the walled city demonstrated our “innate ability and desire to self-organize collectively, and [how] based on certain circumstances, these structures can produce more harmonious results.
“This paradox intrigues me, as it runs counter to presumptions that rule and governance are the tools that create order,” says Tsui, whose own roots are in Hong Kong. He was born there, then raised in Lagos, Nigeria, and in Thunder Bay, Ont. He spent 10 years in Ottawa and is now based in Vancouver.
Retainers of Anarchy continues at the Ottawa Art Gallery to Sept. 15. oaggao.ca/howie-tsui-retainers-anarchy
Thresholds — Canada Council for the Arts
Michel de Broin’s work is seen in many countries, including Germany, France, the United States and New Zealand. It is often very big and sometimes quizzically provocative: He once built a bicycle path that was simply a short circle, and another that was a crazily chaotic loop.
But the true hallmark of the Montreal artist’s work is that it’s made of salvaged materials that were originally made for more prosaic uses. His 2005 sculpture, Black Whole Conference, consists of 74 plastic-and-metal office chairs arranged in a globe with their legs facing out, described as, “a utopian architecture in which each element ensures and shares in solidarity with others, thereby securing the stability of the whole.”
He’s known in Ottawa for Majestic, the outdoor sculpture behind the National Gallery of Canada that is built of full-size light posts that were torn asunder by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Now there’s another de Broin in Ottawa, inside the Canada Council for the Arts’ lobby gallery at 150 Elgin St.
Thresholds consists of a series of subway car doors, real doors that have opened and closed countless times on cars in the Montreal Metro since 1963, which was not so long before Expo brought the nations of the world to the city. Now they are arranged in a line with each facing the other, so visitors can walk through them in a tight sequence.
The experience — the doors open and close in quick succession as you pass through — is to be suddenly aware of the sort of technology we pass many times daily with barely a notice. The feeling may lead to other thoughts about our place in the world, and how we take it for granted.
Thresholds continues at 150 Elgin St. to June 9. canadacouncil.ca/about/ajagemo/thresholds
The Wounded — Canadian War Museum
Stephen Thorne has, for more than 30 years, travelled as a Canadian news correspondent to some of the places that most people would fear to go — race riots in South Africa, the NATO invasion of Kosovo, and Afghanistan three times.
Once in Afghanistan, he was embedded with a recon squad that found a bunker-cave complex on a mountainside, and assault troops were called in to fire rockets and drop satchel bombs into the caves. At one point, he scuttled across a swale to get closer to where troops were “shooting into every hole,” but he got out of there when the explosive charges got bigger.
“I could deal with a lot of things over there, but I wasn’t very fond of explosives,” says Thorne, who now works for Legion magazine in Ottawa.
When he returned to Canada, he was diagnosed with PTSD, and during those struggles he decided to create The Wounded, an exhibition of portrait photographs of Canadian soldiers who had been seriously wounded in action, and which is now at the Canadian War Museum. The wounded, Thorne believes, were largely forgotten by the public, despite their sacrifices.
Thorne uses black-and-white film, which creates a sense of the men and women in the photographs emerging from the darkness. The wall panels beside each portrait relay stories about the wounds, the struggles to heal and the remarkable accomplishments that sometimes follow.
The Wounded continues at the Canadian War Museum to June 2.
More shows
Stefan Thompson and Jordan Deal, April 22 to May 4 at Wall Space Gallery, 358 Richmond Rd.: Ottawa artists Stefan Thompson and Jordan Deal mark Earth Day with an exhibition of new works made of eco-friendly materials. “Our techniques are influenced by the findings of modern chemistry and ancient practices,” the artists explain. wallspacegallery.ca
Pat Durr, May 9 to 21 at Galerie St-Laurent Hill, 293 Dalhousie St.: American-born Pat Durr is an Ottawa art institution — a painter, print-maker and builder of installation art — and she returns with new works. galeriestlaurentplushill.com
Leslie Hossack, June 6 to 16 at Studio Sixty-Six, 858 Bank St.: Ottawa photographer Leslie Hossack turns her lens on lands that saw the invasion that changed history, in the special exhibition D-Day: Normandy, 1944. studiosixtysix.ca
Colin B, June 12 to 30 at Orange Gallery, 290 City Centre Ave.: England-born, Ottawa-based Colin B’s latest exhibition, The Ladies and More, includes “colourful portraits of ladies.” orangeartgallery.ca
Peter Simpson is an Ottawa writer and regular contributor to ArtsFile.
