catalogue essay, March 1997

Stirred not Shaken

When Permi Gill, curator of this exhibition, first approached me to write a little something for the catalogue, we began to consider the apparent as well as underlying themes and connections in and between the work of the selected artists. Issues of constructing, deconstructing and literally cannibalizing the essential building blocks of home came immediately to mind as the work of many artists in this show, including Hugh Pocock, Martha Schlitt, Castaneda/Reiman, William Radawec, Davina Grunstein, Stacey Vetter, (and myself) to name just a few, falls into this category. Meanwhile, Caroline Clerc, Arnold Kemp, Suzanne Kanatsiz, Cirilo Domine, Neil Grimmer, Chris Komater and Megan Wilson fragment, dissolve and reconfigure aspects of the human body - their emanations and the apparatus designed for their use. And, using a subversive ambiguity, Paul Bridenbaugh, John Muse, Robert Ortbal, Gay Outlaw, Ben Dean, Mari Andrews and Paul Gaspar play with p a r a d o x , the idea that things are not always quite what they seem.

At our initial meeting, the working title of this exhibition was "abject minimalism" and we discussed how many (if not all) of these artists employ pared down materials and ideas that contain a seditious edge that stirs stuff up. The next time we talked, the title "s t i r r e d not s h a k e n" had been arrived at, bringing to my mind images of the over the top camp and decadence of the Bond "girls" s a s h a y i n g across the silver screen. After that colorful image subsided, the title began to take shape, implying that the work, like the martini, begins with simple ingredients and an attention to detail and maintains a lasting bite.

The internal and external landscapes of these twenty-one artists reveal as they conceal, intimately distance us, stir us up and force us to peer intensely into their practices. By building upon traditions and engaging with a multiplicity of materials and conceptions, these artists in a sense d i s t i l l the s u b l i m e in order to forge their own brand(s) of f u n k y m i n i m a l i s m.

Amy Berk - "s t i r r e d n o t s h a k e n " - 1997