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Diana ThorneycroftGroup of Seven Awkward Moments (Beavers and Woo at Tanoo)2008
2008
About the Item
Canadians have a funny kind of national identity, meaning specifically we do not really have one. To say that there is a national identity is to enter into a discussion without end -because there are just too many different kinds of people in Canada- it would be impossible to pin identity to anything, let alone a top-down Multicultural Act, or a Group of Seven. Strangely though, in art, that is exactly where Canadian begins, with a Group of Seven. In Diana Thorneycroft’s new series Group of Seven Awkward Moments, the momentous humor Canada is famous for is contrasted with the nation’s dirty little secret: that it is not funny at all, and in fact, much too serious, bordering on menacing.
The new series of works falls into a line of art objects created by Canadian artists within the last few years that utilize parody and play to explode the hallowed imagery of nationalized corporatism. In the case of Thorneycroft, the use of backdrops that are reproduced works of the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson, combined with stereotypical iconic representations, produce strange entanglements of visual narratives that are at once laughable, and in the same engage preconceptions regarding what it is that defines a nation. The idealization of an empty and prosperous landscape, claimed authentically Canadian while in the same owing much to Scandinavian landscape painters, is rendered as a manufactured fabrication. The series is littered with black humor, addressing issues of colonization, sexual identity, corporatism, environmental destruction and celebrity. The image of Bobby Orr, for example, falling into the Don River to his death while his shimmy buddies concentrate on scoring, provides a dizzying moment of Canadian pastiche.
The works embody the manufactured, exportable, and fallacious concept of Canadian identity. The paintings become the backdrop for a performance of tourist economies, simulating instances, rumor, innuendo and destruction: the unsaid of national narrative. Group of Seven Awkward Moments follows the artist’s interrogation of popular representation and violence, but envelopes the series in the curtain of nationalism. An empty landscape is an easy way to detract from the reality of its occurrence, those unsaid memories that betray any kind of consensus. The work of Thorneycroft echoes the unsaid and the fabricated, leaving the viewer to judge any truth within the falsity of its construction.
- Creator:Diana Thorneycroft (1956, Canadian)
- Creation Year:2008
- Dimensions:Height: 23 in (58.42 cm)Width: 30 in (76.2 cm)
- Medium:
- Movement & Style:
- Period:
- Condition:
- Gallery Location:Montreal, CA
- Reference Number:1stDibs: LU4762042983
Diana Thorneycroft
Diana Thorneycroft is a Winnipeg-based contemporary artist, born in 1956, in Claresholm, Alberta, Canada. She has exhibited various bodies of work across Canada, the United States and Europe, as well as in Moscow, Tokyo and Sydney. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2016 Manitoba Arts Award of Distinction, assistance to visual arts long-term grant from the Canada Council, several senior arts grants from the Manitoba Arts Council and a fleck fellowship from the Banff Center for the Arts. Her early work was the subject of national radio documentaries and a CBC national documentary for television. From 2000-02, Diana's photo-based exhibition, “The Body, its Lesson and Camouflage” toured to eight venues. Several images from this show were included in the 2002 Phaidon Press publication, Blink, which presents the work of 100 rising stars in photography. Diana is best known for her photographic work depicting facets of Canadian identity. Some of the work is humorous, sometimes dark, frequently both. From 2007-14, she completed four photography series, “The Canadiana Martyrdom Series," “Group of Seven Awkward Moments," “A People's History” and “Canadians and Americans (best friends forever... it's complicated).” Canadian Art Magazine selected the “Group of Seven Awkward Moments” as one of The Top 10 Exhibitions of 2008. Equally as dark, is her drawing series, “There Must Be 50 Ways to Kill Your Lover,” which is divided into three categories, Foul Play, Desperate Housewives and Failed Relationships. In 2013, Diana began working on a complex installation, entitled “Black Forest (dark waters).” The exhibition, which had its inaugural opening in 2018, is composed of three interconnected bodies of work and two sculptural installations that are presented as physical evidence of the cryptic narrative that unfolds in the suite of 19 photographs.
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