24 November 2017 - 18 February 2018 Main Galleries, West Wing
Rodney Graham, Basement Camera Shop circa 1937, 2011, Painted aluminum lightbox with transmounted chromogenic transparency, 182 x 182 x 17.7 cm.
Since the early 1980s, Canadian Rodney Graham has
shown himself to be a distinctive artist whose diverse practice encompasses
many things – a painter, photographer, sculptor, video-maker, actor, performer,
producer, historian, writer, poet, sound engineer and musician. Defying easy categorisation, his works are
informed by psychology, literature and story-telling. His cyclical narratives
are layered with puns and references as various as Lewis Carroll, Sigmund
Freud, Raymond Roussel and Kurt Cobain, and are all infused by a sense of
humour that betrays Graham’s place in the post-punk scene of late 1970s
Vancouver. Avant-garde experimentation has always informed Graham’s practice
demonstrated here with a survey of film works and an important presentation of
photographic light boxes
Astute, contained and profound, Graham’s work has a strong
contemporary relevance. This major exhibition includes work made from 1993
through to the present, and is organised in partnership with the Baltic Centre,
Gateshead.