14th February – 16th March 2005
John McDowall’s work is mainly in book form but also includes wall texts, prints, distributed ephemera, performed music scores and other collaborative projects.
The books reflect the influence of film and aspects of experimental writing and explore some their shared characteristics, encompassing the potential for contribution and participation by the reader/viewer, books in which subject and medium are combined, which refer to and cross-reference with varied printed representations of the cultural environment.
He has established and is currently working on a project of collaborations with practitioners of other disciplines to develop a series of book works. Participants include composers and musicians, choreographers/dancers, writers and translators based in the region and in Germany, France, Belgium, the United States and Switzerland.
Lessness: a correspondence to Samuel Beckett’s text with the visual content given but variable.
Chrono de triage: a collaboration with Robert Galeta, his poem and markers within a line of deep, violet blue.
Mask: the collected black shapes appear to be the subject, until the source is known.
Triptych: a story of encounters and journeys and of the Continental Divide.
Mask - 16 details: a supplement to ‘Mask’, intricate enlargements seem to offer clarification.
Mise-en-scène: simple, specific scenes suggest more complex allusions and narrative possibilities.
Mask - Canadian eclipse: continuing the ‘Mask’ series with 52 black discs, collected from Canadian publications.
Kakusu - a graphic score: open notation, following the theme of the ‘Mask’ books, in this case developed from aspects of Japanese mangas.
Story of the time: exemplifies connection, awareness of holding a book, of reading and return to the book.
Atlas: consists of a series of stacks, each made up of 360 numbered sheets, a notice invites people to take one of the pages. As these are dispersed a shifting, expanding atlas will form with a conceptual and yet physically actual geography created in the space between the pages.
Atlas is an ongoing project and will be presented for distribution during the exhibition.
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