GEOFFREY FARMER: "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton, Sept. 14, 2013 to Jan. 12, 2014

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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"The Intellection of Lady Spider House"

Geoffrey Farmer, "The Intellection of Lady Spider House," 2013, various media, installation view.

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GEOFFREY FARMER

The Intellection of Lady Spider House

Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton

Sept. 14, 2013 to Jan. 12, 2014

By Agnieszka Matejko

It’s not often that an internationally recognized artist creates a populist exhibition with children in mind, but that’s exactly what Geoffrey Farmer has done. The Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist recently received the $50,000 Gershon Iskowitz Prize, has a retrospective at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2015, and participated in the acclaimed Documenta 13 group exhibition in Germany – to name a few accomplishments.

Yet for this project, Farmer turned back to his childhood experience of building a haunted house for Halloween. It was not a timid attempt: Farmer recalls transforming an entire rec room with his friends. He made rickety stairs out of planks and rigged a somewhat hazardous curtain to fall on unsuspecting visitors.

While the current show is vastly more ambitious – it takes up an entire floor of the gallery – it is, in many ways, a reenactment. Farmer again asked friends to participate. Only these friends are 11 acclaimed, and mostly Canadian, artists – Valérie Blass, Julia Feyrer, Hadley+Maxwell, David Hoffos, Brian Jungen, Tiziana La Melia, Gareth Moore, Hannah Rickards, Judy Radul and Ron Tran. They figured out what the exhibition would become as they worked, jointly weaving their ideas into a fearsome web.

The result is symphonic: each artist’s voice is subsumed by the whole. Darkness pervades labyrinthine partitions and only shafts of light lead the way. There are blood-dripping body parts suspended like meat in a butcher’s shop, broken windows, slashing knives, a secret room entered through a closet, and a video of a ghostly figure. A reverberating echo of thunder – an eerie audio piece by British artist Hannah Rickards – completes the effect.

The artists drew inspiration from the fascinating tradition of spook houses – there are nearly 5,000 such attractions in the United States alone – and also from local history. Fort Edmonton Park, where visitors can wander through historic homes, inspired the exhibition’s maze of clapboard facades and turn-of-the-century rooms. Artists also explored Edmonton for source material, including Hadley+Maxwell, who made black foil impressions of various statues.

The artists have turned a typical gallery exhibition inside out. Gone is the pristine white room designed to show discrete objects made by individuals. Many items were borrowed from a Vancouver prop house or from the gallery’s collection. “I wanted to make an exhibition that was atmospheric at its core,” says Farmer. “A fog that intentionally blurs and obscures, so that one does not feel the pressure to distinguish what was created from that which already existed.” In this grungy and theatrical show, as in spook houses elsewhere, individual artists melt away, leaving a space that awakens curiosity and collective fears. Ultimately, it’s the viewer’s experience that makes the art.