At first glance, you’d hardly notice the change. As usual,
the walls at Eyelevel are hung with interesting work—on this day it’s
paintings by Mark Stebbins and Art Krauss. At the back of the gallery,
the administrative staff works behind a large desk. Then you hear it.
“Ka-chunk.” Gallery intern Chris Foster is busily typing out contracts
on a small, grey typewriter. When he makes a mistake, he pulls out a
vial of Wite-Out, and covers up the mistake with a gob of it. When the
phone (a large, black rotary phone, beloved for their aesthetic charms,
but cursed for the impossibly long time it takes to dial anything
useful) rings, it does so with a loud, shrill, “BRRRRRing!” that echoes
through the gallery like a retro wake-up call. There’s the of-a-time
swivel chair, the orange desk lamp and most humourously, a half-full
glass ashtray on a corner of the desk. More significantly, there’s no
computer, because galleries didn’t have anything resembling them in
1974.
Eyelevel Gallery is in a time warp. If you want to get in touch,
skip the email, because you won’t get a reply. They’ve taken a trip
back in time until May 27. It’s all part of an experiment in “low-tech
and creative administration” the gallery calls Eyelevel
Unplugged. That, in turn, is directly tied to a wider project
currently invigorating the small Gottingen Street gallery. 35 Days
of Non-organized Art is a 35-day event over the course of which the
gallery is being turned over to artists—from emerging and
established, local to international—for “self-organized” art
activities. It’s all in celebration of Eyelevel’s 35th anniversary.
“We’ve been thinking a lot about our history and where we’re going
from here,” says Eryn Foster, Eyelevel’s director. “Not that we’re
necessarily being nostalgic,” she adds, “but we’re revisiting the past
so that we can understand it.” Even the retro office set-up is inspired
from a photo of the gallery, circa 1974 (hence the ashtray). After all,
the gallery has changed, mostly out of necessity, since its inception
35 years ago. An artist-run centre first established as a space to
foster creativity and “social experimentation,” Foster admits the
gallery has lost some of its original spontaneity. Because artist-run
centres depend on government grants for survival, they’ve had to lay
out programming schedules years in advance and virtually squelch the
creative free-spiritedness of yesteryear. “Over-organizing has deeply
affected how artist-run centres work,” says Foster.
So to celebrate what the gallery was—and what it still is, at
heart—Eyelevel put out a call to artists, asking them to submit their
ideas (by mail) for one-, two- and three-day-long exhibitions between
April 23 and May 27, in any medium. Artists were given gallery space on
a first-come basis, often grouped together in a way that might
encourage creative collaboration. The result is a veritable cabaret of
expression by 50-plus artists, from painter Mathew Reichertz’s Dog
Day, where he invited people to bring their dogs to the gallery, to
Craig Leonard’s thematically appropriate 1974 Information
Station, where he doled out information about the year, to Annik
Gaudet’s sound sculpture.
Still to come are Mitchell Wiebe and Ray Fenwick’s performance,
Dweebo School of Art , and Ottawa sculptor Jennifer Macklem’s
Chick Art project, wherein a whack of real-life chicks will
hatch at the gallery. There’s Amy Belanger, Zsuzsa Szoko and David
Ferguson, who plans to build a fort from scavenged materials in the
middle of the gallery and camp out for the night.
The rotation of artists and ideas means the gallery has successfully
recaptured some of its original energy; the space is now vividly
animated by people (who drop by more frequently because of the daily
changes), longer open hours and more social events, including weekly
receptions. “Unplugging” the gallery has freed the staff from the daily
grind of emails and phone messages, allowing them to slow down and
concentrate on the art and the artists.
“It’s totally changed my day-to-day experience of the gallery,” says
Foster, “I feel like I’m giving more of myself.” Though she admits it
would be hard for the gallery to keep up at its unplugged place, Foster
says the experience has been invigorating. Most importantly, it’s been
fun—just like an artist-run centre should be.
35 Days of Non-organized Art until May
27 at Eyelevel Gallery, 2063 Gottingen, 425-6412. Check listings for
the schedule.
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.