Red Bull - 381PROJECTS

Dave Dyment

Pop Quiz, video projected, 42 minutes, 2001/2008

For Pop Quiz, Dave Dyment mined his entire record collection, cataloguing the questions posed in countless song lyrics and presenting them sequentially. Ranging from the banal to the absurd, each question is given uniform type treatment and visual arrangement, playing out in a seemingly endless succession. In the context of the work’s title, these questions prompt the viewer to provide an answer despite their decontextualized presentation and lack of coherent narrative.

Dave Dyment is an artist, writer and curator based in Toronto, Canada. His work encompasses audio, video, performance art, curating and writing. Dyment is the former Director of Programming at Mercer Union, and in 2008 curated a portion of Toronto’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche. Dyment recently completed an artist residency at the Glenfiddich Distillery in Dufftown, Scotland, and previously exhibited in Edmonton, Ottawa, Halifax, Toronto, Philadelphia and Dublin. His sound work can be heard on the YYZ/Walter Phillips Gallery publication Aural Cultures, and on "New Life After Fire," a collaboration with Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth. He is represented in Toronto by MKG 127.

davedyment.com
mkg127.com

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay

YOU AND ME FOREVER, FIGHTING FOR OUR LOVE, performance and installation, 2008

For this exhibition, Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay presents the latest incarnation of his ongoing work, (Jimmy Somerville Project), in which he pays homage to Glaswegian pop icon Jimmy Somerville through a series of performance, textile and print works. The project consists of a series of gestures that honour Somerville’s lasting creative, social and political legacy. In this exhibition, Nemerofsky Ramsay has developed prototypes for a new tartan that represents Somerville’s legacy in colour and lines. Using posters and projections against a wall-mounted white flag, Ramsay will debut his proposed tartan alongside museological documentation of past elements of the Somerville project and information about Ramsay’s appeal to the Queen of England for Somerville to be knighted.

Benny Nemerofsky Ramsay is a Montreal-born artist currently living in Europe and Canada. Working primarily in video, performance, text and sound, Nemerofsky Ramsay takes expressions of emotion in pop music as a point of inquiry. Nemerofsky Ramsay's work has been screened in festivals and galleries across Canada, Europe and East Asia. He is represented by Jessica Bradley Art + Projects.

nemerofsky.ca
jessicabradleyartprojects.com

Tony Romano

Johnny Young vs. William Judge With Constant Reference to Dorothy Retallack two wood
cabinets, sound system, c-print, 2008

Johnny Young vs. William Judge With Constant Reference to Dorothy Retallack is a combination of the artist’s two existing works: Johnny Young/William Judge and Judas vs. Judas (both 2007). The first of the two, a seven-inch vinyl record and album cover, relates to the Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard’s book Either/Or (1843). Each song derives from Kierkegaard’s text, alternating between aesthetic and ethical themes. Romano embodies his album title’s opposing characters, Johnny Young and William Judge, performing on the record’s A- and B-sides respectively. Performing both roles, he appears in character portraits on both sides of the record sleeve, forming a character opposition that the artist applies to his other work, Judas vs. Judas. Where previously, this work featured two tomato plants, individually isolated in sound-proofed cabinets and subjected to the iconic heavy metal band Judas Priest’s Stained Class album—one with the album played forwards, the other in reverse—Romano has substituted this sound source with that of the Johnny Young/William Judge record. In both cases, the effects on the plants conform to the logic of Dorothy Retallack’s plant and music experiments—the subliminal suicide-inducing Priest replaced with Kierkegaard’s existential oppositions as interpreted by Romano.

Tony Romano is a Toronto-based artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans sculpture, film and video, installation, and text, in addition to his work with the artist duo T&T (with Tyler Brett). Romano received his B.F.A. in 2001 from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions in Sweden, Austria, Vancouver, Oakville, Montreal and Toronto. Romano is represented by Diaz Contemporary.

tonyromano.com
diazcontemporary.ca

Alana Riley

Songs of Love, 2-channel video, 10 mins. 50 secs, 2007

Riley’s 2-channel video work is a form of video portraiture that takes as its premise the love song as a window into the subjects she documents. For this work, Riley approached employees and local merchants in Montreal’s Mile End neighborhood, asking each person to perform their favorite love song before the camera. Like all of her work, Songs of Love reveals a bond of trust between the artist and her subjects. Each participant’s willingness to sing lyrics suffused with emotion and intensity, combined with the personal nature of their choices, is contrasted by the artist’s presentation of the work before a detached, mediated gallery audience.

Alana Riley is an artist and photographer based in Montreal. Her work explores portraiture through a performative practice that combines documentary and conceptual approaches. She completed her studies at Concordia University in 2003. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions in Montreal, Baltimore and New York. She recently completed a residency and exhibition at the Museum of Rimouski in Quebec. Riley is represented by the Joyce Yahouda Gallery.

joyceyahoudagallery.com