Tableau Vivant: Eaton’s Catalogue 1976

Those of us whom was raised in united states when you look at the 1960s and 70s lacked art, Bible tales, and history as universal sources. The tome that shaped our values most tangibly ended up being the emporium catalogue, a wish guide of that which we may have and whom we’re able to be once we first got it. Gender ended up being plainly defined, battle had been single, and course was center. The most-read book of our Canadian youth in this performance we use the tableau form to enact a page from the Eaton’s catalogue. We’ve paired women’s formals (a look we now have had trouble effectively fitting into) with restroom plumbing system to invoke the endless bounty, cleanliness and hope that the catalogue implied. Three ladies stay in vacant stillness, water streaming through the spouts at their breasts.

Duration: The 15 moment performance is duplicated twice an hour or so

First performed: March 1998, Hallwalls Centre for modern Art, Buffalo, ny. Later done at Counterposes, Montreal, curated by Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick.

Astroart area Corps

Commanders Dempsey and Millan are getting ready to enter space that is deep to produce revisionist stellar cartography and explore the resistant character of anti-matter.

First performed: 2014, La Nuit Blanche, Calgary, Alberta september

Photos by Lindsey Bond

Big Wig

The revolting additionally the revolutionary, the reviled together with revered are united by locks in this time travelling sing-along. Through the wigged ladies of Ancient Rome towards the hirsute levels of seventeenth century France to those extremely hairy 1960s: the world’s most queen that is infamous the annals of radical tresses while thinking democracy.

“we want personal revolution. I would like to cut back package tops, and purchase one out of the mail. I’d like anachronism and misconception, while the anachronistic misconception that things are certain to get better. I do want to be pretty and only a little tragic, yet not too tragic because that will make me personally dead. “

Duration: 35 min.

First done: 2017 Queer City Cinema Camp, Trash, Filth festival in Regina, Saskatchewan, curated by Gary Varro june

Revised: 2017 Isolated Landscapes in Winnipeg, Manitoba, curated by Kathy Rae Huffman november

Photos By Karen Asher and Anita Lubosch

The Dress Series

The Dress Series (1989-1996), a team of performances that explore the gown since the female ceremonial costume and icon of femininity. In these pieces, fabric is changed by not likely materials, producing juxtaposition, brand brand new definitions and upending expectations. All costumes fabricated by Dempsey and Millan.

The pro/antagonist defends herself against racial and economic difference by clothing herself in the domestic architecture of the times: the house/dress is her shimmering, clean fortress and her prison in Arborite Housedress. Through the piece she reveals her worries (such as for example gravity, or worries that “parts of my dangerously sagging self might result in bad neighborhoods”) and her dreams (border city romances, getting straight straight down with dust, therefore the removal of her household, so she’s going to have enough time to devote by herself more fully to being fully a homemaker). The sculpture/costume that is wearable been exhibited at numerous galleries and it has been bought because of The Winnipeg memorial included in their permanent collection.

“Have you ever realized that in the event that you clean the ground each day, by nightfall it appears to be simply the just like just before began? Them again that you can do all of the dishes, and in a matter of hours someone has gone and dirtied? That kids are small grime magnets, picking right on up all types of stubborn spots and bringing them house once more? Well, I Am thinking. If i really could be rid of my children, it could effortlessly cut could work load by 60%. ”

The Dress: lumber, laminate, chrome kitchen area equipment, screws, fabric, Velcro.

Duration: 25 moments

First performed: February 1994, Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta

Photos by Sheila Spence

The world-weary mother of God proffers wry advice and sage warnings from behind her stained glass dress in Glass Madonna. Fashioned just like a two-dimensional carnival cutout with holes on her behalf fingers and mind, the dress is a colourful and explicit rendering of this Virgin Mary’s familiar apparel, with a unique peek-a-boo panel of clear cup to show the source of this Madonna’s fame: her 2000 hymen that is year-old. In her own never-the-same-twice visitations, Mary responses on love, solution, in addition to guys inside her life.

“When he comes for you on a dream-filled evening, delivers their angels to honk their horn at your door, don’t be home. ”

The Dress: stained cup, leading, patina, oak, stain, equipment

Duration: 20 moments

First performed: 1994, Walter Phillips Gallery, The Banff Centre for the Arts, Banff, Alberta (evolved from earlier performance piece The Plaster Virgin, 1992 february)

Picture The Banff Centre

In Object/Subject of Desire t he main visual element in this performance is a big ball gown, made of crisp white paper, similar to a debutante dress. Stiff and translucent, delicate yet unyielding, the gown rustles noisily as Dempsey moves and talks.

The many complexities of desire are discussed, including the many ways desire can be negated within this costume. The purity and purity associated with the gown, the available expression of “wanting”, together with sweetness of distribution, together create an presumption that the item of affection talked about may be the old-fashioned partner that is heterosexual. Nevertheless, these social presumptions are confronted throughout the section that is last of piece, as she finally, clearly, reveals the carnality of her desire to have an other woman.

“i would like you, to desire me personally. I’d like one to wish me personally, also though I do not want you. I do not would like you after all, but i’d like everybody else to. I would like everybody else to would like you, but I do not desire one to wish someone else but me personally. All i’d like can be your want. ”

The Dress: vellum, packing tape, Velcro

Duration: five minutes

First performed: Red pregnant webcams Deer university, Alberta, 1988 (earlier version performed in 1987 before Dempsey began collaboration with Millan december)

Picture by Lorri Millan

The performer wears an iconic wedding gown, the classic raiment of femininity, virginity and promise in Plastic Bride. Nonetheless, the gown’s intended meaning is changed by its construction, from veil to coach, of clear vinyl. The materials encases the bride suggesting more references that are clinical human anatomy bags and clinical specimens, or commodities bagged and shown for sale. Disturbing, dream-like and funny, love and fashion, desire and denial are done inside the gown’s unforgiving folds.

“You have actually gone shopping with a buddy, your sibling as well as your mother that is own been told, ‘It’s perfect. It is you. It is a knockout, ’ only to learn later on that it is a funeral, perhaps maybe perhaps not a marriage. It really is July, maybe perhaps perhaps not December. You’re a nurse, perhaps maybe maybe maybe not an aviator. ”

The Dress: clear plastic, fishing line, buttons

Duration: 20 moments