Defunct

The Alberta College of Art Gallery is pleased to present a Mixed-Media installation produced by artist Rita McKeough. Entitled "Defunct", it is a large work-in progress that will utilize the entire space of the gallery's smaller exhibition area, Gallery II, November 26 to December 16,1981. 

Having exhibited extensively in Canada, this is Rita McKeough's second solo exhibition in Calgary, the first being 1977 at the Dandelion Gallery. As with a number of her gallery installations, this work covers all of the gallery space, transforming it into a new environment. The subject matter of "Defunct" is the continued destruction of Calgary's older neighborhoods that stand in the way of contemporary progress: The 1/3 scale houses that Miss McKeough is building for this installation will over the course of the exhibition be "wrecked". The floor of the gallery will be covered with sod and dirt, broken by the occasional foundation holes and gravel pits. A continuously – running sound track made-up of a mix of percussive elements and the "Sounds of Progress" will play in the gallery space. The artist is offering a premise that is worthy of consideration by all Calgarians: The demise of cohesive living space and sense of place. 

Review From Ashley Geddes: 

Entitled Defunct, the street of dilapidated one-quarter-scale houses took Miss McKeough a week to erect. It took the whole of Defunct's 12-day run for her to demolish them, one by one, taking care to board up the windows a day or so before destruction. The doomed structures bewailed their fate in eerie tape recordings: "Muney-hungry bastards," grumped one gap-shingled white bungalow, while a baby cried from a nearby two-storey frame house with boarded-over windows. To appreciate Defunct fully, a viewer would have to visit several times. The theme came to Miss McKeough from a lifetime of observing neighbourhoods disappear before the onrushing bulldozers. With Defunct, she hopes, "You can really feel the violence of a house being torn down." 

The 30-year old fine arts instructor at the University of Calgary admits the show contains a political message aimed at fast-paced progress, but her primary experience is more subjective. "I just sympathize with the houses." Whatever the message, Miss McKeough provides only one chance to receive it. Her neighbourhood will never be rebuilt. "I like tomove on to new things." 

Born 1951 in Nova Scotia, Rita McKeough currently resides in Calgary, instructing in drawing and printmaking at the University of Calgary.

Curated by Valerie Greenfield.