Dartmouth artist uses wide variety of mediums
The Lumière’s Art-at-Night event will take place today from 7-11:59 p.m. in downtown Sydney.
For more information on the festival, visit www.lumierecb.com.
The following is about one of the artists taking part in the annual festival.
RYAN JOSEY Hometown? Dartmouth, N.S. Age? 25 What is your artistic medium? This project, November, November, is made up of flags that were sewn with the Michelle Stevens Sail Loft in Lunenburg. The fabric is a digital print from a restoration of fabrics on a quilt my grandmother made for me. In the restoration process I used photography, Photoshop and gouache painting. And since this project, I have made other projects in oil painting, jigsaw puzzles, drawing, performance, poetry, power point, and lots of reading and writing. Most of my work happens on graph paper, Photoshop or my iPhone and then finds its way back into the world in whatever materials feel appropriate.
What first inspired you to work in this medium?
My choice of materials is usually driven by the project or research or reading that I am doing. I try to look at the world around me and see what the materials around me are saying. Chain-link fences, construction banners, flags, for instance. Then I ask if they are hiding anything and if I disagree with or can find a contradiction in what they have to say. Then I see what else I could say with those materials. Writing queer love poems in nautical flags language is a good example.
Is there an artist in particular that has inspired you?
There are so many … Sharon Hayes, Wolfgang Tillmans, Tacita Dean, Taryn Simon, Kapwani Kiwanga, Alex Colville, Vija Celmins, Agnes Martin, Josef & Anni Albers, On Kawara, Dahn Vo, KD Lang, Felix Gonzalez Torres … This past year, I have had the chance to meet and become friends with a few artists whose work really inspires me … Derek Sullivan, Bella Li, Alex Turgeon … And then there are many underrecognized people who I consider to be making art, but who wouldn’t necessarily call themselves artists, like my grandmother, Dorothy Josey; Michelle Stevens who made this project possible; and my frequent collaborator, Michael Phillips.
Do you have a favourite piece of work that you’ve created?
My favourite projects are usually the ones that are still coming up. Right now, I am collecting my writing and poetry for a book I might call, “Sex Outside.” I am also working towards a project called Sleepwalker, which will have me rent a 30-foot inflatable mummy and make a record of it watching the sunset and sunrise on the beach. Then there is a project to translate texts by Walter Benjamin and Hito Steyerl into cuneiform, and a project I’ll call Islands, that responds to Dolly Parton’s lyrics as if they were queer theory about modernist paintings. Last year at a poetry cafe in Hameenkyro, Finland, I gave a power point presentation about Nova Scotian geology, the Bay of Fundy and the possibility that its tides were the catalyst for Agnes Marten’s late works. Some people laughed, most people didn’t know what to think and I was shaking the whole time. I’ve been thinking about that piece a lot lately.
What makes it stand out in your memory?
For the past four, almost five years now, I have been making work with nautical flag language as a reference point. That work has been fruitful; people have been very generous in supporting that work; and it has let me say and respond to some important things. But that way of working feels a bit narrow at times, and there are other things I have to say, and other ways of looking at the world through other languages that feel more important at the moment. The process of exploring new languages — poetry, geometric abstraction, modernist painting, colour, and more vocal forms of intervention like public speaking — the possibilities of these things is what is exciting me now.
What prompted you to participate in Lumière?
I was very lucky to be invited to participate in Lumière. Halifax’s Nocturne: Art at Night festival initially supported me in producing this project, November, November, and I am very grateful for the opportunity to get to share it with another community. I said, yes, of course, because it’s such an honour to be asked to bring your work to a new community.
What do you hope people will take away from your Lumière project?
I hope they’ll come away with questions and maybe start to look at flags and the language of flags a little differently. I hope some people will see the connection between this project and nationalism and patriotism. I hope that some people will see this project as an act of love, that responds to how nationalism has been used to justify a lot of harm in the world, even and especially in Canada.