This show at the downtown London (ON) Michael Gibson Gallery of large, possibly unfinished Curnoe works from the 1961-1965 period accompanied by numerous smaller sculptural pieces will be one of the most important Canadian art show in Ontario this year – but also likely, alas, to be little known outside of London. The show includes the last large works from the early 60s period remaining in his studio and the last remaining constructions from incidental materials similar to his celebrated Drawer Full of Stuff of 1961.
The central piece of the exhibition, an 18-foot tryptich presenting the outline of a female nude in three poses, in fluorescent orange, red, green and blue, and on its verso coordinated portraits of Louis Riel and the Rolling Stones in similar areas of unvariegated colour, is remarkable in numerous ways. Not the least is that it shows Curnoe working at large-scale installation art in the early 1960s, before the term was coined and long before it entered the Oxford in 1969, and before his Kamikaze painting/sculpture of 1967. As well, this stunning triptych has
The central piece of the exhibition, an 18-foot tryptich presenting the outline of a female nude in three poses, in fluorescent orange, red, green and blue, and on its verso coordinated portraits of Louis Riel and the Rolling Stones in similar areas of unvariegated colour, is remarkable in numerous ways. Not the least is that it shows Curnoe working at large-scale installation art in the early 1960s, before the term was coined and long before it entered the Oxford in 1969, and before his Kamikaze painting/sculpture of 1967. As well, this stunning triptych has
all the elements that one is familiar with in Curnoe’s mature work – the fluorescent areas of plain colour, the extraordinary rendering of spatial proportions, the combinations of text, collage, carpentry and paint, the use of text to comment on the process of creating the work, and the use of templated fonts. It’s thus a major piece in the history both of Curnoe’s development and of world art. Curnoe may have abandoned it because of the difficulty of combining and erecting its three parts – the legs he had made for it were insufficient and have been replaced for this exhibition. He had attached metals eyes to the top, possibly in hopes of suspending the pieces from a ceiling. He also appears to have had misgivings about some of the visual elements. The text on the left panel appears to be on its way to being erased. On the centre panel there is an uncharacteristically blurred area beside the chin of the blue-and-
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