The McMaster Museum of Art Presents presents Greg Staats: liminal disturbance on view January 28, 2012.
Greg Staats, dark string repeat (detail of video still 2010) video installation
Greg Staats is a photographer and video artist whose work combines language, mnemonics and the natural world. Staats draws upon a traditional Mohawk restorative aesthetic that defines the multiplicity of relationships inherent within the reciprocity of the condolence ceremony and the effects of trauma.
The centre-piece of Staats’ McMaster Museum of Art exhibition is a work entitled dark string repeat, (2010). Dark string repeat is a video installation composed of a string of wampum, video camera and digital projector which provides a video feedback unit which enables the visitor to view the process of a live event and creation as well as to ponder mediation and the acquisition and loss of language. It also exposes an underlying emotional and vulnerable dialogue: confronting the fear of the loss of self, a state of mind further reflected by the codified and heightening voice of the dark wampum string while the gallery wall becomes its mnemonic support. The reciprocity of an electronic pulse of the feedback creates a space for a recovered process of renewal.
Liminal disturbance brings together several works by Staats that reference language loss, acquisition and resurgence through photographic series, video works, and personal archival materials.
Greg Staats (b. Ohsweken, Ontario, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory) has had solo exhibitions at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Walter Philips Gallery, Banff, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, Toronto. Group exhibitions include; Ottawa Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art. Staats is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Recently, Staats has been Faculty for two Aboriginal Visual Arts Thematic Residencies: Archive Restored (2009) and Towards Language (2010) at the Banff Centre for the Arts. – www.mcmaster.ca/
