Evidence: The Ottawa City Project
5 September to 16 November 2008
Curated by Emily Falvey

David Barbour, Claude-Philippe Benoit, Marlene Creates, Pat Durr, Tony Fouhse, Lorraine Gilbert, Vera Greenwood, Colwyn Griffith, Greg Hill, Kenneth Lochhead, Deborah Margo, Uta Riccius, Michael Schreier, Carl Stewart, Jeff Thomas, Eric Walker, Justin Wonnacott

Colwyn Griffith, Casa Do Churrasco Dalhousie St Ottawa ON (Reclamation), 2004, Chromogenic print, courtesy of the artist

Tony Fouhse, Junior, Ottawa 2007, from the series USER, Collection of the Ottawa Art Gallery, purchased with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, 2008

Marlene Creates, Looking at the City of Ottawa from Ten Places Outside the Municipal Boundaries, Pre-amalgamation, 2000, 2005, cibachrome prints, purchased with the assistance of the Canada Council for the Arts, OAG's Art Rental and Sales Service volunteers, and the RCA Trust Fund, 2005

so the poem is not a description
so the city is not

– rob mclennan, ottawa poems (blue notes), 24.

Ottawa is sometimes mislabelled a boring city. In truth it is one of the most paradoxical places in Canada–a perplexing mix of wealth and poverty, summer heat and winter cold, nationalist and regionalist, poor arts funding and rich cultural heritage. While the relationship between these elements may at times be maddening, it is rarely dull.

The word "desire" comes from the Latin de sidere, which means "from the stars." The idea that Ottawa is missing something?that it is desirous?is an inevitable part of its constellation of paradoxes. Such feelings generally arise anywhere there is conflict or contradiction. It is possible to misconstrue this sensation as a dearth of excitement, thus accepting the banality that some feel is Ottawa's fate. Like anything paradoxical, however, it is equally possible to experience desire as a call to adventure, to the quest to discover the missing "thing," which may be merely hidden. From this braver, more creative perspective, Ottawa is a complex riddle that demands to be solved.

In 2007, local poet rob mclennan published The Ottawa City Project (Chaudiere Books), a book of poetry whose playfully bureaucratic title belies a poignant engagement with a hidden Ottawa. The artists included in Evidence, like many working in our city, have undertaken similar "Ottawa City Projects," charting the fragmentary proof of an alternative Ottawa, a living city that is constantly changing. Through their work, we are invited to explore its margins, those overlooked regions where chance wears its provisional path through the urban landscape, a disturbing and beautiful phenomena that landscape architects refer to as "desire lines."

– Emily Falvey, Curator of Contemporary Art

Events

Opening and House Party!
Celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Ottawa Art Gallery and party like it's 1988!
Thursday 4 September at 5:30 pm

Talk with curator Emily Falvey (in English)
Friday 12 September at 12:30 pm

Poetry Reading with poet rob mclennan (in English)
Thursday 25 September at 7 pm

Family Workshop with artist Deborah Margo (in English and French)
Saturday 8 November at 1 pm

Exhibition Catalogue, with texts by rob mclennan and Emily Falvey
Forthcoming fall 2008

Anniversary Publication Contemporary Art Collection, with texts by Emily Falvey and Glen A. Bloom
Forthcoming November 2008