Family Values - Work & Play
On the TTC:
Wednesday the 5th

Family Values - Party Time, 2008
On the TTC:
Sunday the 9th, Friday the 28th

Family Values - Greetings From PEI
On the TTC:
Tuesday the 18th

Artist Statement

In 2008, Stephen Harper, armed with a wardrobe of smart sweaters and 1950s era nostalgia, championed family values as a platform on which to campaign.  In light of Harper’s reactionary response, Suzy Lake and Chris Ironside in their work “Family Values” question what Harper’s family values are and in so doing delve deeper into the nostalgia pool.  “Family Values” revisits a time and place that was personified as ideal, but, and much like Harper’s platform, was not.  Dressed as slightly askew doppelgangers Lake and Ironside’s “Family Values” is infused with gender identity and the cultural concerns of today.

Artist Bio

Bio - Suzy Lake
Born in Detroit, Michigan, Suzy Lake immigrated to Montreal in 1968 where she began teaching at the Montreal Museum School of Art. She was one of 13 artists to co-found Vehicule Art Inc. in 1972. Lake is considered to be among the first female artists to adopt performance, video and photography to explore the politics of gender, the body and identity in Canada.

Suzy Lake was the subject of a major mid-career retrospective organized by the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography in 1993, and was one of 119 women in the historical feminist exhibition: WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution 1965-1980. Lake’s early work was featured in Identity Theft: Eleanor Antin, Lynn Hershmann and Suzy Lake 1972-1978 at the Santa Monica Museum of Art in 2007. In 2008 she was invited by CONTACT to mount an installation titled Rhythm of a True Space on the hoarding of the AGO. Lake is currently preparing for an exhibition titled Political Poetics at the University of Toronto Art Gallery in May 2011.

Bio – Chris Ironside
Chris Ironside was born in London, Ontario where he grew up dreaming of acting on daytime television, becoming a celebrity and winning an Emmy. He became an artist instead and moved to Toronto. Working primarily in photography and drawing he is interested in representations of masculine ideals and identity through performance, documentation and the staged image. He currently teaches photography in the School of Fine Art and Music (SOFAM) at the University of Guelph and the Department of Visual Arts at York University. His photographic body of work, Mr. Long Weekend, is being exhibited at the O’Connor Gallery in Toronto from May 20 – June 13, 2010.

Artist Contact

http://www.suzylake.ca/
http://www.chrisironside.com/