0:04

Hey hi everyone my name is Liz I’m the programming an engagement coordinator at

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the HEA and I’d like to welcome you all to a GA live a conversation with Damian

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Moffat today Katherine Kristen we’ll be talking to Damian about

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his new installation here at the HEA before we get started just a little bit

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of housekeeping if you have any connection issues which hopefully we won’t there is a reconnect button at the

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top of your screen that you can hit to refresh also on the right-hand side of your screen you can see that there is a

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chat window we will be taking questions at the end of the conversation so feel

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free to enter any questions you have in there and then we’ll get to them at the end and now I’ll turn it over to

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Katherine for a fuller introduction good morning everybody thank you so much for joining us and also a big thank you to

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Damian Moffat who is joining us online from Vancouver hi Damien how are you good Katherine nice to be with you

1:04

yeah that’s great so we’re doing this live chat today to talk about demands

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new installation entitled untitled abstract drawing in space you can kind

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of see it a little bit hanging behind me and we’ve got more detailed pictures that we’ll be sharing with you as we go

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through the conversation we installed this work on Monday March 16th and then

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closed to the public on Tuesday March 17th to help the efforts to prevent the spread of Kovach 19 so it has been

1:32

unintentionally veiled until today we’re beginning our reopening at 11 a.m. this

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morning and Damian’s work will be the first thing that people see as they return to the HEA Damian Moffitt was

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born in Calgary in 1969 and currently lives and works in Vancouver he received an undergraduate degree and Emily called

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Emile Cara College of Art and Design and an MFA from Concordia University his

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multidisciplinary practice includes photography sculpture drawing painting and video and connects and explores

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different movements in art history solo exhibitions of Damian’s work have been organized by the Simon Fraser University

2:08

Art Gallery the Rena collection at wincing Carleton University art gallery

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and the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery as well as Catriona Jeffries gallery in Vancouver demons work has

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also been featured in numerous group exhibitions most recently at the National Gallery of Canada and two of

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the National Gallery’s Canadian biennials of Contemporary Art shine alight in 2014 and builders in 2012 and

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also in exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery the wit DeWitt in Rotterdam the

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musee d’art contemporain in montreal white columns in new york as well as the power plant and the Art Gallery of

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Ontario in Toronto Damian’s wide-ranging body of work produced in all media often

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investigates the subject of making art and the places materials and processes that such making

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entails his works have represented the artists to do its objects and materials

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as dense active still life as and often works of art themselves by himself as

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well as other artists such as Rubens Modena Picasso Anthony Caro Paulus

3:14

Frampton his sculptural works often reference modernist icons such as the

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mobiles and stables of Alexander Calder and the linear metal sculpture of David Smith his works are self reflective

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ironic and mimetic yet they are steadfastly tied to interrogating the act and processes of making so please

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join me in welcoming Damian for this conversation to talk about this new work and as I said you can see it behind me

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I’m sitting right now on the second floor lobby of the HEA so the work is

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hanging from out 12 feet in the air and suspended from a hook almost 100 feet in

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the air the work of just going to find my place

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here the we first installed a mobile by Damien in 2016 as part of an exhibition

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that we produced here a two-person exhibition featuring Damian’s work the Moffitt was on loan the work was on

4:15

launch was at that point from the Renee collection in Vancouver and has subsequently been donated to the

4:21

National Gallery of Canada to suspend that work though we install the special hook in the ceiling of our H

4:27

which is over a hundred feet in the air with this hook as a new permanent fixture in the building

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following the exhibition we sought for a way to use it in the future and work with an artist to create a long-term

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hanging work of art in 2018 with grants received from the Alberta Foundation for

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the Arts Public Art Commission and grant program the aga undertook a public competition to commissioned a work to be created for

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this site the work is owned by the problems of Alberta as part of the collection of the Alberta foundation for

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the Arts and now hangs as I said in the atrium so Damian it’s interesting

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because this is the second time you’ve installed a suspended work of art in our hmm and but essentially always using

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that same one hanging point which is I think quite unique but why don’t we move to some of the pictures and so people

5:16

get a sense of what the work looks like other than how it is behind me so there you can see I kind of fall on frontal

5:23

view and maybe this will just kind of run through the slides and of this mobile and then we can so people have a

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sense of how it sits in our space so

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that would be Oh so okay so we’ll go back Damian do you

5:43

think at this point we should move on to look at the first moment that was installed in 2016 or do you want to

5:49

speak a little bit about how you approach this new commission yeah well actually yeah I wouldn’t mind sort of

5:55

talking about the first mobile first perhaps okay then we can move back to

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the the latest one so this is the image of the work it’s entitled broken fall as

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I said it was created in 2011 and I think believe this is a installation image of it at the Rena collection yeah

6:14

yeah I mean though that work was made

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sort of expressly for this show at the wing sang I think it was 2011 and I

6:25

wanted to sort of given the nature of the gallery space there it said not a

6:32

huge space but it’s quite tall I think the ceiling is 80 feet up in the air and

6:38

so I wanted to make a work that really sort of took up as much as the overhead

6:44

space as possible and I was at the time I was working on works that were sort of

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referencing Anthony Caro is early one morning was also sort of starting on a

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body of work that was also talking about David Smith but I I I would serve in the

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middle of a process of taking specific modernist works sort of made around the

7:11

middle of the century and altering them in a way and for Calder I wanted to make

7:20

my sort of alteration or in my sort of

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my hand in in his work I wanted it to be

7:32

a destructive hand and so I wanted to make a mobile that looked like a Calder mobile but it was broken or part of it

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had fallen off and so that’s why it’s called broken fall one of the terms of

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the mobile is is on the ground and it’s placed at the foot of the mobile and it’s it served off-balance it’s off

7:53

kilter but not Jane dears not dangerously so but it is a meant to

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represent sort of a failed mobile in a way and it worked really well when we

8:07

installed it at the at the Aga for the two-person show with my father and I

8:15

think yeah this image shows the piece on the floor yeah yeah yeah yeah and then

8:24

in in moving towards making a new work for the same location I my sort of

8:30

thinking changed a little bit and I I was less interested in making sort of a

8:36

an investigation into the work of a specific modernist artists or sort of

8:42

altering a another work of David Smith or Alexander Calder but I wanted to make

8:47

something that was more in line with the work that I did for example the work I

8:54

did for off-site in Vancouver we have they have some images of that as well yeah

9:01

but we can okay yeah we go back to that but at various stages you know in the in

9:09

the after 2009 onwards I was interested

9:15

in making sculptural works that represented paintings and and making

9:20

paintings that represented you know three-dimensional works and so the the piece I did for the off-site for the bag

9:26

was basically a painting made a painting a mine of my studio with sculpture and a

9:34

painting and progress but made to almost look like a three-dimensional pop-up book I have to say on Georgia Street and

9:41

I wanted to sort of go back to works like that which were 3-dimensional

9:49

manifestations of either drawings or paintings in my work and so the the work

9:55

that’s at the aga now is is basically sort of a an abstract drawing blown up

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to be a three-dimensional work thick base and that’s where the title comes

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from and so I’ve always been really fascinated with trying to make a large

10:20

fabricated work and trying to make it look as if it’s very fast and very

10:26

spontaneous and I wanted this work to be playful colorful in sort of a simple way

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but I wanted it to really look like it was drawn in space and so the

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fabricators that I worked with were Carvel and Calvary were really amazing

10:45

at sort of bringing to life some drawings that I’d done and sort of

10:51

realizing them in aluminum and copper and steel and it’s I really wanted it to

10:57

look like scribbles charcoal on paper

11:02

some of it is is just like a sharpie pen and so the

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the work itself is is really just trying to be a really playful drawing in space

11:13

in a large scale yeah it’s interesting when you think about the idea of the

11:21

spontaneity and it being seem like a kind of a simple drawn gesture or something and in fact the work is kind

11:27

of quite heavily engineered and there’s a lot of kind of mathematics and work that went into make sure that this would

11:33

suspend from one single point and be balanced yeah absolutely and a lot of

11:40

things just you know trying to paint enamel and to get it to look like a

11:47

quick shark or a piece of newsprint paper that the light blue sort of copper

11:53

tubing that’s been twisted to look like like sort of fountain pen drawing with

12:00

squiggles overtop of circles like yeah it I mean I’m hoping it it’s seen as

12:06

successful that I really am interested in in and having sculptures try to sort

12:15

of even if they are large and scale and do take you know a lot of effort in

12:20

terms of fabrication to have them represent a really spontaneous sort of

12:26

you know not casual but a but a playful

12:33

sort of artistic form of creation or expression yeah I think that the way it

12:39

occupies the space got here in the atrium is very different than the other one I think of course because of the you

12:45

know the shift from something that is kind of more 3-dimensional and rotating like broke and fall to this one which is

12:52

has a definite kind of frontality to it when you enter the space but it works with the architecture in a very

12:58

different way I find yeah yeah I think I mean it’s it is a it’s a tricky space

13:06

but I also wanted it to I wanted it to sort of address people as they come in the other work had

13:13

interesting moments inside and also from you know the broken fall you could see it the large circular shapes from

13:20

outside I think this one like you say is very much meant to be read from one vantage

13:26

point and I think that you know there’s there are smaller components that move

13:32

but it essentially is meant to be a drawing in space that has served one

13:39

sort of frontal viewpoint well I think that in our slide presentation here as well we have some

13:45

earlier works some sculptural works of yours that are smaller and kind of also

13:52

seem to be experimenting with the idea of a it’s not a relief sculpture so much as a sculpture with a with a definite

13:59

front and a back sided kind of a flatness to them so maybe we can move to some of those yeah yeah yeah I think I

14:07

was talking about sort of referencing modernist you know artists from the the

14:13

middle of the century this is uh from a show I did a Catriona Jeffrey’s in 2013

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and I had a three works that were [Music]

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recreations of David Smith works but then I would add something to them and

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so they were you know three-dimensional versions of David Smith’s works with the

14:40

scale slightly changed but for the most part not perfectly accurate representations but but but but close

14:47

and then I would there would be sort of a an alteration or a you know a

14:54

[Music] something I would add to it that would that would flatten it out and I yeah I’m

15:02

not quite sure why I’m so interested in sort of making three-dimensional sculptures but making them read as

15:09

paintings and have one circle this is big point of view that are you supposed

15:15

to view it from but it it’s a recurring aspect to my work oh yeah I think it

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perhaps Liz if we could go through a few other slides people look at a sense of what they means speaking up with in that

15:26

regard yeah this this work is riffing on khatai drawing and I took

15:34

various aspects of it and and mates flat ceramic shapes and then sort of adhered

15:41

them to a metal structure and that was

15:47

all so innocent that the previous David Smith’s alteration was in and this yeah

15:55

this this one was a bit of a one-off but I was trying to I was just starting to

16:02

sort of Troy with the flat drawing and

16:07

making a sculpture that’s a drawing and so I found a foundry in Vancouver that would actually let me go in and draw in

16:15

the sand and then they would pour liquid prawns in it and they would end up with sort of a flat sculpture

16:21

sadly they decided that a key concerns wouldn’t let them do that again it just

16:28

ended up being a one-time thing I really wanted to continue that but sometimes

16:34

safety comes first always doing you want to do some but it was a nice experiment

16:40

in trying to use sort of a material like bronze which usually has a whole lot of

16:47

preparation and steps that you have to go through in order to make something and doing something really spontaneous

16:52

with it and having it represent the the gesture of my hand

16:59

if this captain said yeah was yeah yeah so I drew in sand and then they they

17:06

they make a satin cast and yeah because you can actually see the kind of texture

17:11

of this thing yeah yeah it’s really rough about it yeah yeah and I feel like

17:22

there’s one more side Francis this is the work that I did for the Vancouver

17:29

Art Gallery at off-site and in it I worked with Melanie O’Brien at the SFU

17:36

gallery and she got it installed permanently on the campus and the

17:42

Burnaby Mountain SFU campus and so we we kind of collapse

17:47

it a little bit and flattened it out slightly and and adhered it to this the

17:53

side of the concrete it’s not actually the hotel on campus there but it’s meant

18:00

to this represents a painting I did in

18:05

in cut aluminum that’s been painted and when it was installed and off-site it

18:12

was it took up a larger amount of space and there was more depth involved from

18:18

front to back there was probably roughly about 30 or 40 feet and then we sort of

18:24

collapsed that down to 18 inches but you

18:29

can see in this image that it represents the sort of the yellow rectangle in the

18:34

back with the white shape there’s a painting of a sculpture that I did and then there’s a chair and then a little

18:42

model of a curated sculpture I did in the right hand and it’s actually a

18:48

studio I was sharing with Liz May or so there’s a Liz mayoral run left hand side

18:54

the artist studio is something that comes up in your work fairly often in terms of I’ve seen it in your work in

19:01

paintings in smaller drawings also in replication of sculptures and things so

19:08

I just it seems to be to be a kind of fertile ground for your three-year thinking where your imagination yeah I

19:14

think there was friends deep period

19:20

where they did a lot of works that were very self referential and varies very

19:28

much about sort of looking at my process of making and trying to allow the

19:36

audience sort of a an entranceway into my process into how I mean I was making

19:44

a lot of works that were you know paintings of sculptures and progress or paintings of paintings and progress in

19:50

the studio and and then some finished sculptures that were very sort very much

19:56

sort of iteration of various stages of figuration

20:01

abstracted and so I I think I was interested in showing my process in in a

20:09

in a kind of a limited way or a very specific way in terms of how how I was

20:16

making things and I I was at the time I think I was also sort of exploring ideas of other romanticism around around

20:24

making work and the celebration of the studio as a place of creation and

20:32

expression I think it’s interesting because I think that in some ways the

20:38

you know the for your work there seems to kind of be this vessel or oscillation between the kind of spontaneous and the

20:44

hand-making and and the you know the our traditional ideas of an artist as of

20:49

someone that works with their hands and makes things and things that are kind of I would say somewhat more kind of

20:56

distanced and ironic or perhaps you know

21:01

questioning that the very nature of that of that sense of the kind of the Romantic tradition yeah yeah I mean I

21:07

think there’s I’ve always been interested in how how things change the

21:16

more you do it and I when I’m painting I always try to paint something a whole

21:23

number of times and so I can sort of get away from what I’m trying to paint and I

21:29

end up somewhere new and I also have found a way of when I’m working with

21:35

sculpture using fabrication and various

21:40

craftspeople in my process to to sort of use their perspective in in making a

21:48

sculpture in order to sort of better benefit the outcome that I want and so sometimes I’ll I’ll take a picture of a

21:56

David Smith sculpture for example and give it to a welder who

22:03

doesn’t usually do work for artists and get the – fabricated and and to see sort of how

22:10

things change and then to use that kind of translation of what for me would be a

22:18

familiar thing but it would be a completely unfamiliar thing to the crafts person and use that sort of

22:24

translation in my work I’m very I’m very much interested in how how things change

22:30

and can be sort of regurgitated I think through the process of repetition I’m

22:39

curious in the works that you do that merely specifically reference the works of other artists is how important it to

22:46

you I guess it is important obviously but for the audience who might not understand or see the reference as

22:52

clearly as some other people would yeah okay yeah that’s a really valid question

22:59

I think I’ve always just understood that there will always be levels to work that

23:06

not everyone will understand and essentially I’m also pretty firmly

23:14

believed that the work I make is essentially for myself I’m sort of the

23:20

first and last viewer of my work there’s a great Alex Katz quote which is you

23:27

know someone asked Alex Katz who is his audience was and he just said well there’s probably one person out there I

23:33

don’t know who he or she is but I have one audience member that I think about

23:39

when I make my work it I don’t really think that I mean I do I think I take my

23:50

choices for works and and artists that I think that I sort of regurgitate or rip

23:58

with like Henry Moore or Calder or Caro

24:03

are fairly well known yes so there is I

24:11

mean there are sort of canonical you know male artists so it’s not all

24:17

they’re not very adventurous in terms of going deep into the history books and

24:24

finding some obscure artist to toy with there they’re sort of like the the Led

24:29

Zeppelin’s of modernist sculpture yeah

24:36

it’s only two I know David one of the funny things that I think perhaps our

24:41

audience doesn’t appreciate is that you’ve actually never seen this new mobile installed because you’re

24:46

unfortunately unable to come out when we installed it in March and have it been and we haven’t been open until today so

24:53

we do have a video of it that perhaps you’d like to see I won’t okay so this

25:01

will just get that up on them and share screen the video of it so you can actually kind of see it in a filled

25:07

space and I apologize for some of the background noise we are actually opening in just a few minutes and our staff are

25:14

all showing up and preparing for that so our security and gallery attendants are

25:19

back on site and our first visitors hopefully will be arriving in just a few minutes oh there it goes

26:00

it’s interesting because the architecture of the aga interior is a kind of combination of this rectilinear

26:06

grid and the kind of curving lines of that for yellow before the borealis

26:12

structure and I think the work has that similar sense of both the kind of

26:18

fluidity of a circular form and the kind of structure of the of the grid mm-hmm

26:24

oh it’s nice to see the backside yeah oh yeah we’ve you’ve never seen that no and

26:37

because our atrium space is open on three levels actually there’s different views that people will have from the

26:43

first floor from the second floor landing where I am and also from our third floor because they can see it kind

26:49

of from above looking down nice yeah now

26:58

I don’t know whether we have questions in the chat room that maybe let this

27:08

finish that

27:18

okay I don’t see any questions yet but earlier on I know someone right away was

27:24

curious about how how you make the sculpture and I know you’ve touched on

27:29

that a bit but maybe you want to add anything about the fabrication process sure yeah I mean it like like anything

27:42

there’s there’s you know a lot of a lot

27:52

of my cats that go into of coming up with something and and to be honest you

28:02

know that this the process in making this piece um was was tougher than usual

28:08

for me I I had a pen a hole I was

28:13

juggling a whole bunch of ideas and I and then I had a sort of a on an

28:21

epiphany but I land I kept on returning back to these drawings that that were

28:26

doing something more from even then like the maquette I just showed you were doing and so once coming up with sort of

28:34

an idea of how something would look it’s you know it’s an interesting process of

28:40

working with the fabricators and seeing how to how to manifest every little

28:47

gesture every little shape you know it starts if I have a drawing when I scan a

28:53

drawing and I break it up into shapes and I sort of have ideas about how how

28:59

what materials can be used and and then it’s after that it’s a back and forth

29:05

with the fabricators about picking colors about the shapes of thighs of

29:10

scale of tubing thicknesses of aluminum and are really lucky and get to work

29:18

with somebody like Carvel creative in Calgary and they they do an amazing job

29:26

yeah it’s you know sometimes it’s no I was just gonna say Munich in this

29:33

case you know because we are a public building we had to make sure that there

29:38

was an engineer involved and there you know for public safety so there’s a whole other kind of level of diligence

29:45

that has to be done and also you will be suspended in the gallery for at least five years making sure that you know

29:53

that it is both safe and has that kind of longevity built into the installation

29:59

yeah when I made the first broken fall work that was installed at the AJ but

30:04

was initially made for the wing sang I was working with a fabricator that was

30:09

very cavalier about fabrication and safety and so we had never really put it

30:17

together until we installed it in the gallery and I designed it so it could be

30:23

sort of rebalanced and altered whereas this the work that’s behind you

30:30

Catherine is is fixed and much more carefully fabricated but you know

30:38

there’s something to be said for working with somebody who also is pretty carefully her safety issues sometimes

30:46

depending on the scale and location of the work you know harder to find those kind of people lately but but they’re

30:52

out there a question Damien um actually I’m gonna bring up as weather because

30:58

network is owned by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in the province of Alberta and it will be here for about

31:04

five years and then potentially be cited because of the way it’s been constructed is the err desire that it’s always hangs

31:11

kind of in three-dimensional space or could it be reinstalled similar to the Vancouver Art Gallery worth moving to

31:17

SFU and kind of more maybe perhaps wall-mounted or shells type space that

31:25

was also my thinking in terms of how which work to design for the space is

31:33

thinking that it would be reinstalled somewhere else and so that it should be a little more flexible in terms of its

31:40

its so yeah that’s that’s one of the reasons why I when it was something with a little more

31:47

sort of a flat sort of rental point of view so it could could be installed sort

31:54

of you know in front of a wall for example if it needed to be yeah I mean

32:02

it’s tricky when you have a situation where you’re not quite sure does it work

32:07

but it may every work painting sculpture drawing is like that it always ends up

32:13

in a in a space that you’re not really aware of you know when at the time I’m

32:19

making it I think like I can’t see the

32:25

chocolate um we are having a lot of people showing us working and pretty happy about it I’m sorry

32:31

I’m kidding distracted because I’m sitting there are second floor allowed me is right in front of our Rembrandt

32:37

exhibition which was only open for about seven days before we closed to the public in March so I think there’s a lot

32:43

of interest and people are coming in and I’m also seeing people over the edge here kind of just standing and looking

32:48

up at the new installation so I think it’s a great reopening day grunts so

32:54

we’ve got one one more question from Gail she’s asking if the material is

33:00

suitable to external insulation or internal only so could it be put outside potentially yeah I could the enamels the

33:09

that it’s painted with our or weather resistant I think they’re the same same

33:15

materials like they would use on an outdoor sculpture so it’s it’s flexible

33:20

in that regard um well thank you so much

33:27

Damien before joining us on is it’s a really exciting to be able to talk to you in person about the work is we

33:32

haven’t actually talked about it as I said since it’s been installed and we do hope you can make it to Edmonton once

33:37

there yeah you really want to come unfortunate that I was sick at the time

33:44

of installation so yeah yeah I’d love to see it and see you again so thanks thanks for having me today oh well thank

33:51

you so much and thank you Liz for facilitating it and a note everybody

33:58

that the AG is now open Thursday Fridays and Saturdays so please come down and see

34:04

Damien Muppets untitled abstract drawing in space for yourself thank you oh I

34:11

think we got another question you’re getting some thank you and explain it

34:17

later today so 8:00 okay all right thanks so much Danny everybody

34:24

thank you

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