I'm almost certain that if Kristin Ivey's installation at The New Gallery only had a less literal title, it wouldn't attract much more than a snicker from most viewers. As it is, her latest presentation of The Phallus Series - at TNG's current location in a shopping mall on the edge of downtown Calgary - seems to have also awakened the extra censory perception of the building's management.

Just an hour before the exhibition was scheduled to open to the public, TNG staff received a phone call requesting that a curtain be installed at the front of the gallery, essentially obscuring Ivey's collection of metre-high soft sculptural phalli from all pedestrian traffic in the Eau Claire Market. Fearing an escalation that might result in the artist-run centre's sudden eviction, The New Gallery staff agreed to comply immediately, with an understanding that the General, Development & Leasing Manager would visit the Gallery in person as soon as possible the following week to see the works in question for himself and detail the concerns that had prompted the blackout. At the time of this writing, now halfway through the exhibition's one-month run, the building manager has still not met with either The New Gallery staff or board to discuss the decision. Perhaps even more worrisome is the fact that he has apparently still not yet seen the work that he has redacted.

The twenty-five or so sculptures that comprise this installation seem surprisingly innocuous. Last year Ivey was delighted to obtain about a hundred brightly coloured prom dresses in an eBay auction, some dating back to the 1960s. Using a pattern that has been gradually perfected, the fabric from each dress is re-purposed by the artist into a completely new form; the garments are given a second, sculptural life.

Mimicking actual biological processes, the fabric is introverted to form the corona of each sculpture, exposing the original design labels in the process. The evocative names - Steppin' Out, Precious Moments - and sumptuous satin fabrics signify stereotypical femininity. They suggest great expectations for "a night to remember" - which could be seen as antithetical to the work's apparent portrayal of a quintessentially male symbol. This double-entendre immediately catches up the viewer/interpreter of the work. The gradual recognition of a multi-layered visual pun (or perhaps only our own dirty mind?) usually induces the typical human response: laughter.

The scale of the sculptures, while simply determined by the amount of fabric provided by each dress, is somewhat comical as well. Obviously much larger than "life size" their placement on the floor makes them seem diminutive at the same time; as the artist confirms in her own statement on the work, viewers are intentionally made to feel like a "much too tall and alien voyeur in a foreign yet familiar landscape."

All of these contrasts conspire to make this an interesting test case of what contextualizes specific objects as "Art." For instance, it seems unlikely that TNG Programming Committee would have been interested in presenting this work if the phalli were cast in bronze, or constructed by a male artist.

What differentiates Ivey's sculptures is exactly the series of conceptual inversions that the physical material of each dress undergoes to assume a place in the series. Several obvious traditional dichotomies - male/female, hard/soft, inside/outside - are playfully yet flagrantly subsumed in this work. The resulting multifarious ambiguity is perhaps significant.

One defining characteristic of the conservative worldview is a lack of tolerance for ambiguity. So as Calgary is currently considered by many to be Canada's most conservative city, that The Phallus Series would attract a censor's attention here is probably not that surprising. What is, however, in a contemporary metropolitan centre with vocal aspirations to be perceived as "world-class," is that it would happen so rapidly, sight unseen, and without a clear, timely explanation of the criteria for judgment that have been applied.

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Tim Westbury has exhibited his work at artist-run centre's and public galleries across Canada since 1983. He holds an Honours BA in Cultural Studies from Trent University and is a graduate of ACAD. Since March 2008 he has been Programming Director at The New Gallery, Calgary's original artist-run centre.