Never heard of the McCleave Gallery of Fine Art? It is a public gallery in the literal sense of the term. Being a suitcase, its portability allows its exhibits to be shown in the public sphere, turning any locale it touches into a possible cultural hotspot. This fall, the McCleave Gallery wrapped up its Lineage Tour 2006, which was seen in several locations in Canada, as well as Australia, Holland and the United Kingdom
Why choose ‘Lineage’ as the theme of the McCleave Gallery’s first international tour? You see, the gallery’s name was derived from the last name that labeled the suitcase when it was found and until recently, the identity of the original owner of the suitcase was a mystery. As a result, some of the ideas behind the Lineage Tour were to discover the roots of the name McCleave and to host a traveling exhibition of artist books created with the theme of Lineage.
The following is the second half of an interview (done in March 2006) with Michael McCormack, McCleave Gallery founder/director/gallery attendant/custodian, focusing on the stories, artwork and concepts behind the Lineage Tour. To find out a bit more about the general history of the McCleave Gallery of Fine Art, be sure to check out the first half of the interview featured in Volume 1, Issue 10 of silenttalkie.
How did the Lineage Tour 2006 come into being?
I was interested in continuing the McCleave Gallery as a touring nomadic exhibition venue. Since the McCleave Gallery had begun, I noticed that the issues that I had originally been addressing had changed as the project and my own life had simultaneously developed.
By the time that Adair (the McCleave Gallery Assistant Director) and I had arrived in Dawson City from the 2005 tour, the locality, for one thing, was not particularly about Nova Scotia anymore, but more about tourism in general and the responsibilities and commitment to each community someone has as they enter and leave a place. During the tour across Canada, Adair and I soon became aware that although we were both in a position that we could enjoy each community and what it had to offer, we were not there long enough to commit to anything, and we always had the option to leave if we wanted. The McCleave gallery gave us the opportunity to connect with each place in a way that seemed more genuine. We were able to give back an experience to someone instead of monetary exchange being the primary focus.
The lineage tour was a way of re-visiting the roots of the project as well as the McCleave suitcase gallery. I am also interested in how our obsessions with lineage have affected how many of us approach tourism and how our culture today has learned from the past but in many cases has only adopted the more direct, efficient, or profitable principles and methods from it.
If you stop to think about it, the topic of Lineage is a broad one. Did the books in the Tour take on a few main thematic directions, or are they all over the map?
With the intentions of going overseas, I felt that it was vital to represent a diverse range of artists with multiple interpretations and responses to the subject of lineage. For me, one of the most accessible entry points to the entire exhibition is to be able to experience the range of different interpretations of the theme. There were a few books that naturally had an autobiographical or biographical theme to them (some fiction and some not), as well as many seemed to have a personal tone to them. There is a nice mix of playful and sculptural with some more serious and grounding themes as well. All in all though, ranging from Kelly Andres’ autobiographical fiction titled The wee Storybook Theatre about her long line of inventive ancestors to Julieta Maria and Lisa Ross-Rizikov’s Semites, an exploration of their collective Jewish and Palestinian identities through digital photo/montages, I’d say that the variety of approaches to the theme are apparent.
In the Lineage Tour Call for Submissions, artists were invited to submit proposals for ‘bookworks in any form’, stretching the traditional definition of a ‘book’. Could you elaborate on the experimental approaches taken by some of the artists?
Understanding that the format of a book itself is specifically tied to western methods of documenting (and in some cases manipulating) history, I was particularly reluctant to portray that this was the only way we could be connected to our ancestors. For many folks that were here before colonization, history was remembered through storytelling and aural traditions. Currently, through the use of television, visual culture, computers, and digital media, we are moving further away from our dependencies on books to define our history.
About half of the 17 books were done in a magazine or a book format. Otherwise, there is a silent video in DVD format, a couple of posters (one that is to be posted on telephone polls as I walk down the street), an audio-visual storybook theatre, and a sculptural cube-puzzle. I found it interesting how a few of the artists chose the accordian style of bookmaking.
How is the genealogical research into the last name McCleave coming along?
I had done a bit of research at the Nova Scotia Public Archives in Halifax when it basically fell into my lap in Halifax when I received an email from a Mr. Spense McCleave who happened to be browsing the web and stumbled across the McCleave Gallery Website. Spense said that he used to live in Halifax and got me in touch with his sister who thought that the suitcase might have one day belonged to her mother Blanche. So Janet and Blanche McCleave and myself scheduled a meeting and sure enough, Blanche remembered the suitcase as being the one that she threw out in a yard sale years ago. She still had the companion smaller version of it under her bed where she kept all of her favorite photographs and memories.
Blanche and I have kept in contact and I had tea with her a couple of times in Halifax to discuss the strange coincidences in life and exchange some family stories. I decided at this point not to go through with the video portion of the project and instead provide a travel journal about the tour. I have set up a meeting with Blanches niece who lives in Belfast where I will begin the tour in Ireland by visiting a place called Belfast Exposed which is basically a photography gallery with an archive of nearly half a million images of Irish art and Photography. It will be in Dublin as well where I will find a public archive and continue my research further.
The public has been able to view the books and projects in the Lineage Tour in Halifax since late February. How has the response been so far?
It was extremely rewarding to see both the replica suitcases next to the original one. I am going to try to get them all together for a family photo but they’re all over the place now you see, repro #1 is in Australia, repro #2 is in Halifax, and repro #3 has taken off to Bishop’s University in Lennoxville, Québec. Perhaps after the tour is over I can convince them all to sit still together for a photo session.
The response was pretty positive in Halifax, it’s easy there to organize an event because I know the city well and there are a lot of people there who are familiar with what I am doing. For the show at the eyelevelgallery, I launched a postcard series called Checkpoint to accompany the 2006 Lineage Tour. Sarah and Sonya at the Anchor Archives hosted a wonderful opening with a small slide show presentation followed by a walk that was led by a tape recording of bagpipe music, a sound often heard in the streets of Halifax but in a different context in the summertime during pub-crawl season.
The response to the books was great, it is great to have the reproduction models available in a more permanent setting so that viewers can spend a decent amount of time with the books. The day before leaving Halifax, I made a trip with the suitcase to the Veith Street Gallery, a gallery for people with disabilities in this amazing old building that used to be an orphanage for nearly one hundred years dating back to the 1860’s. The gallery director Michael Searey told me that it was one of the only buildings in the area that survived the Halifax explosion and many of the orphans were rescued by a nun who heard an explosion, and thinking it was an air invasion, hurried them into a shelter in the basement.
What parts of the Lineage Tour are you looking forward to the most?
I have basically just arrived in Europe safe and sound with the very heavy suitcase and a backpack full of booklets and postcards to be given out as part of the tour. I’m hoping that as the tour progresses, people will take some booklets off my hands to lighten the load a bit. Right now I am in Amsterdam staying with a friend and next week I will begin my residency at the This Neck of the Woods residency program. This I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. The concept of TNOTW is similar to the McCleave concept, where the organizer, Yvette Poorter has transplanted some seedlings from the trees from her old backyard in Montréal to her new place in Rotterdam. Amongst these trees is a tree house on stilts that she has turned into a residency. It is extremely minimal and has just enough room for a fold out bed to sleep in at night, and a fold out table to use during the day.
I’m also excited about visiting Dublin where there are a few collectives and book stores that I’m interested in meeting. One being the red ink bookstore, a bookstore that specializes in zines and books about DIY culture. The unexpected can always be a bit of a rush as well, but I try no to anticipate that too much!
For fans of the McCleave Gallery, Michael created a blog documenting the Lineage Tour in Europe and Canada. As well, the gallery is gearing up for its 2007 Space Mission exhibition and is accepting artist proposals until March 20, 2007 (Ed. sorry we’re a day late but you should contact them). You’ll find the Lineage Tour blog, the Space Mission Call for Artists and a wealth of other information at the McCleave Gallery website: www.mccleavegallery.ca .
