'The Last Art Collage' with Garry Neill Kennedy

F A I T H

Garry Neill Kennedy was the president of The Nova Scotia Collage of Art & Design in Halifax, Canada between 1967 - 19990, and taught/worked with the likes of 'Minimalist' legends Sol Lewitt, Carl Andre and Dan Graham, who studied at the school (more info about Garry here).

This afternoon, Garry gave an artist's talk in Old Mining (School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies, University of Leeds) - but it wasn't really much to do with anything. When I say this, I mean it from an art-historical point of view.
In accordance with his latest (and first) publication 'The Last Art Collage', Garry went through a catalog of works created by his students, accompanied by some images. Important pieces like Michael Snow's 'La Region Central' and John Baldessari's 'I will not make any more boring art' were explained in terms of what the artist did to actualize an idea, however the actual ideas were not even briefly touched upon by Garry himself. There was no discussion of why these incredible artists did the things they did; no insight into the themes and ideas that were being investigated through their contemporary (and often very bizarre/abstract) practice were mentioned at any point. I found this chronological presentation very dull, and admittedly I was very disappointed by the talk - particularly since I've spent the last few months researching Minimal and Fluxus practice in order to use examples as arguments in my final year dissertation. The juxtaposition between my recent in-depth, archival considerations and Garry's remarkably laid-back attitude was unbelievable - yet it must be acknowledged that he wasn't uninterested or boring. If anything, Garry (even after having written a book) seemed almost unaware of the huge impact his students and his education methods had had on art history. Rather than focusing his talk on a discussion of the themes at play in the work he presented, the unstructured, inconclusive form in which he made this presentation illustrated the aforementioned artist's approach to the influential works they were making. Perhaps during their time at The Nova Scotia Collage of Art & Design, the artists, like Garry during today's talk, didn't discuss the ideas. Perhaps just doing - or showing, as Garry did today - was enough.



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