Shelley Ouellet
The Directors' Show / ROLE
Stride Gallery
Calgary, Alberta
Jan 7 - Feb 11, 2011
Robin Arseneault, Lisa Benschop, Anthea Black, Colleen Kerr Gray, Hilary Knutson, Aurora Landin, Shelley Ouellet, Lissa Robinson, Justin Waddell, Donna White, Robert Windrum, and curatorial projects by Colleen O'Neill (featuring artwork by Joni Brenner) and Diana Sherlock (featuring artwork by John Will)
When I graduated from the Fine Arts department at U of C, my mentor, John Will, suggested I try for a job at Stride Gallery. The job was to “run” things for two weeks while the Gallery Director, Aurora Landin, was exhibiting her work in Europe. I was over-the-moon at the idea and intimidated as hell. I fell in love with Stride as soon as I volunteered. Being the only candidate (I later found out), I won the job in the summer of 1991 that has led to 20 years in Calgary’s visual arts community.
Stride was six years old when I got on board and we ran with the gallery with $25K, cheek and freedom. I was naïve, but the Board, made up of people I admired and respected, backed me all the way. Through the job I learned the minutia of funding and politics in the arts, but more importantly, the infinite possibilities of thinking big. I learned to multitask and organize while establishing life-long friendships. I apprenticed with scores of artists who are still my heroes. It was quite an education.
I have since worked at the Banff Centre, for the Scottish Arts Council and in the private sector. I ran my own independent Carpet ‘n Toast Gallery for two years and recently was EMMEDIA’s first EManimenteur in 2010. I currently teach at the Alberta College of Art and Design and sit as Treasurer on Truck Gallery’s Board of Directors. I continue to draw on my experience at Stride in my practice and have exhibited my work across the country and in the United Kingdom.
About the work
Kurt Cobain #1 - #4, 2011
Sequins pinned on Velvet
Cobain’s image is both iconic and symbolic of the 1990’s and Nirvana’s Nevermind was a constant in the cassette deck at the gallery. Stride 1991-95 was definitely grundge. The series of Cobain’s portraits also takes me full circle to the work I made after leaving the gallery and began working with new technology (computers) at a 1995 residency at the Banff Centre. I sequined large and small digital depictions of movies stars like Rita Hayworth, Audrey Hepburn and Marlon Brando. Like these earlier works, Cobain’s iconic image is recognizable even in low resolution, but now I’m playing with colour. While I’ve always loved manipulating digital images for handy crafts, I also love how a photograph can trap time. Images of 20-something famous faces are burned in our collective memory long after the actual people are aged or gone. The familiarity of the face lends itself to graphic reproduction as artists like Warhol knew. Which in turn makes the image of the face recognizable for more time and new contexts. The images of the original Silver Screen idols were selected for dramatic style and pose and then appropriated with cool, post-modern detachment. Selecting Cobain now is warm nostalgia.