Giddy Up! David R. Harper's The Last to Win

David R. Harper's horse currently on display at the Stride Gallery should consider himself lucky to join the ranks of other famous taxidermied horses such as Napoleon's horse "Vizir" or the great "Trigger" ridden by Roy Rogers. Like all great horses that have a story, Harper's horse is a fragment of the personal mythology he developed as a child living up north. Historically, horses were rarely preserved using taxidermy unless they were of the highest status. This rare practice of permanently commemorating a horse in a state of former glory is one of the ideas that Harper stated he enjoyed playing with during his artist talk at the U of C. Evidence of Harper's motley resume of jobs such as woodworker, upholster, boat builder, swamp digger, and a stint at his local tattoo shop can be seen in his work. His ability to pull from an array of skills has resulted in the DIY horse.

I was stopped in my tracks at the doorway of Stride by the majestic and melancholy horse that was bolted to the floor in front of me. Closer inspection revealed that the horse is not real, but instead is a patch-work of three and a half cow hides skilfully formed over a Styrofoam frame. This technique is a 19th century toy-making technique from Europe that Harper discovered during his extensive research. The horse's head stands slightly taller than mine. I looked up into his eyes unsure as to my stance on the practice of taxidermy, but as he gazed down on me I got the feeling that he had come to terms with his eternal position in the world. I was then struck by the fact that I was thinking about the horse as a "he" and giving him emotions. This must have something to do with the scale of the work within the space and some lingering childhood notions of stuffed animals.

Referencing the tradition of branding, Harper has embroidered a Victorian-inspired patch into the horse's flank. The embroidery is so finely crafted and has such small stitches, that at first, it looks to be carefully hand painted. The image is of a naked woman with flowing locks amidst a floral frame. The knees of the woman are simply whirls of thread that have the ability to suggest a knee without needing to be a different shade. The tactile nature of the thread gives the woman a sense of flowing movement. Harper had said during his artist talk that people usually think that his embroideries are painting, and I can see why they would think that. Using thread instead of paint gives the brand a soft sheen one could not achieve with paint. His use of a seemingly less invasive branding medium like thread is mischievous, and the skill at which is carried out is surprising.

Harper's lone sculpture holds the space. But Stride's small and otherwise empty gallery makes the horse feel innocent or almost fragile. Its innocence causes me to feel guilty for my gaze and prompts questions about why some people feel the need to do the seemingly ludicrous act of stuffing an animal to mount on their living room wall. Harper saw his first piece of taxidermy when he was seven, and he says although he didn't understand it, he knew that he was attracted to its "romantic sadness." Harper likes to think of his creatures as "beasts that I create but I didn't create them." He spoke in his artist talk about how he uses natural materials and creatures to create sculptures that address the duality and contradictions of manmade constructs of nature.

I laughed when Harper told the packed room at U of C that he spends between 13-17 hours a day embroidering while watching UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) on television. It is this crossing of sexual stereotypes that initially caught my eye and got me to make the trek to Stride, but it was his attention to detail and amazing craftsmanship that held my gaze.

The Last to Win runs at Stride Gallery until May 9, 2009.

Visit the Hidden Places: New Work by Mia Rushton

Stride Gallery's +15 Window has been transformed into a colourful mixed-media diorama by Calgary artist and crafter Mia Rushton. In this small universe behind glass, clouds are suggested with strands of braided yarn and screen-printed paper cutouts. A series of two-dimensional paper houses, barns, and scrubby bushes are positioned next to oversized sculptural pine cones, tree branches, and abstract forms sewn from printed fabric.

In the Hidden Places is an imagined version of a real place, and was conceptualized by Rushton as an homage to her grandmother who grew up on a homestead in the rural community of Smokey Lake. Rushton tells me that her grandmother, who has always been supportive of her work, has a creative practice of her own, and the two share similar sensibilities. Both women are voracious collectors and pocket bits of the natural world: things like pinecones, acorns, leaves and broken pieces of branches are taken home and added to their stockpile. Rushton's work, with its colourful patterns and repeated forms, imitates something of the obsessive, repetitive practice of collecting.

With the idea of collecting in mind, Rushton's work can be read as a sort of treasure map. Evocative of a frequently-traveled pathway, a long rope-like form sewn together with pieces of colourful hand-printed fabric, weaves through, contains, and connects all of the elements of the piece. Does this map show the stomping grounds of the artist's grandmother? Does it imagine where the best finds are at different times of the year?

When I first encountered the installation, what came to mind is the recently released Japanese video game Noby Noby Boy. The central character of Noby Noby Boy is a worm-like creature whose striped body expands from tip and tail as it ingests creatures and objects. I don't know if Ruston was consciously referencing Noby Noby Boy when she made this work, but she knows the game--we've played at my house. It's interesting that Ruston's DIY craft approach shares similarities to the aesthetic of something designed for Playstation 3. There are formal affinities: Rushton's three dimensional "pathway" echoes the body of Boy, and her focus on collecting also links to the premise of the game.

As a review of Noby Noby Boy explains, "the game play happens on a flat plane spotted with houses, playground and sports equipment, animals, flowers...that look like [they] came out of an overturned toy box." Players, "let go of gaming conventions, enjoy Noby Noby Boy as a toy, rather than a challenge to beat...and simply play." Similarly, In the Hidden Places suggests a narrative that isn't intended to be classified or necessarily solved. Look at the work yourself and turn your imagination loose to play.

In the Hidden Places runs April-May 2009 in the Stride +15 Window Space, EPCOR Centre for the Performing Arts

Once Upon a Time - Steve McQueen

Around 11AM our minivan bound posse rolled out of Calgary, destination: Banff. After about an hour on the road we arrived, heading straight to Wild Flour Bakery for tasty nosh, tea, coffee and tart unsweetened lemonade. From there we wandered to the Whyte Museum to see the Burtynsky show and examine some fascinating artefacts from early Banff life.

Of course this casual meandering was just a prelude to our primary objective: the exhibition Once Upon a Time by British artist Steve McQueen at the Walter Phillips Gallery. Steve McQueen has an impressive CV, notching the Turner Prize in 1999 and representing England at the upcoming Venice Biennale. I recently saw McQueen's thought provoking stamp project Queen and Country in Edinburgh, but had little idea what to expect from this recent work at WPG. Having briefly read that Once Upon a Time utilizes materials from the Golden Record (a time capsule sent into space aboard Voyager 1 and 2) I assumed some rumination on utopia (and its representations in the near past) would play into the content of the exhibition. These conjectures were on my mind as we crossed the threshold into Glyde Hall and walked past the newly installed WPG desk.

Upon entering the exhibition space proper a large darkly painted wall blocked direct entrance to the gallery, shifting movement to the left or right. A small didactic text on this wall described the technical specs of the piece. Underfoot panels of interlocking grey felt tiles covered the floor, dampening sound and footfalls. At point of entry my eyes were adjusting to near total darkness while my ears absorbed the recorded sound of a person speaking in a language of which I was unfamiliar. Narration by a series of individuals in this 'language' would continue through the entire 70 minute duration of the project. After I turned the corner around the front wall a large projection screen became visible, illuminated with cross-fading photographic images depicting the visible spectrum of light and the surface of the moon (this is neither the beginning nor end of the piece, simply the moment at which I entered). Progressively, the image of the moon became sharper while the light spectrum faded. Gradually, the image of the moon began to fade as well, being replaced by yet another image, with this process recurring throughout the entire sequence of 116 photographs and diagrams.

STEVE MCQUEEN, Once Upon a Time, 2002, Courtesy: Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

The images in the slideshow are remarkable, including general to specific documentation of life as we understand it (or life as we understood it in 1977 according to Carl Sagan and the other individuals who compiled the Golden Record). Each of the pictures have been appropriated by McQueen from the original slides included in the Golden Record, creating a seamless sequence which moves from the basic elements of life to the most complex examples of human ingenuity and back again. Conspicuous is the lack of images portraying war, poverty, famine, disease, environmental destruction and so on. If the Golden Record was intended to provide an accurate understanding of our world, one must assume that aliens with knowledge of this document will be shocked by the level of misrepresentation once they arrive on earth.

Of course the tension in Once Upon a Time is not only developed by the relationship between the images and the real world they deign to portray, but also the odd pairing of sound and image in the work. What at first sounded like a foreign language, is in actuality a series of recordings of people speaking in tongues (although a companion of mine noted that one of the recordings is spoken in a decipherable form of Portuguese). The effect of this soundtrack establishes a specific alienation in the viewer, forcing them to look upon these images as unfamiliar, despite their ubiquity. Rather than reassurances of the meaningfulness of each slide, the soundtrack begs us to ponder what it would be like to experience the pictures if we had no prior knowledge of their content. While experiencing the work I was reminded of Julia Kristeva's book Strangers to Ourselves and I began to think about the subtle empathetic thrust underlying McQueen's project. In this sense, Once Upon a Time asks us to consider the supposedly objective images of the Golden Record from a viewpoint which is not our own and casts doubt on the possibility of expressing our world through an authoritative set of representations, theories, laws or ideals. The result I found was an experience of 'othering' in me, mixed nearly simultaneously with an ambiguous nostalgia for a world that never was. I pondered this sensation as I walked with my friends to the Banff Centre Library after our cycle of the piece was complete.

Once Upon a Time runs until July 5, 2009 at the Walter Phillips Gallery.