Two Constellations

Artists: Lee Goreas and Shelley Ouellet

Date: April 3 to 25, 1998

Open Space invited the viewer to engage with a sense of playful exploration, Victoria artist Lee Goreas reassembled mass produced articles and symbols to create new forms and meanings. Gorea's work opened the possibility of  humourous reading of familiar symbols appropriated from the public domain through unexpected juxtapositions and constructions. His installations functioned as sculptural poems which investigated his position within socio-cultural hierarchies while designating them as subjects for play. 

Calgary-based artist, Shelley Ouellet, explored another dimension of virtual reality with an installation that recalled B-movie classics like Godzilla and The Blob. A colony of 10,000 Crayola coloured rubber bugs was suspended to create a computer generated 3-D image of a giant bug drawn from Ouellet's interest in community, mathematical organization and new technology. 

Side View: Entomology (version III), Shellery Ouellet, 1998

Lee Goreas Artist's Statement:  "The installations and singular works I construct utilize; texts, pictographs and materials appropriated from; public and commercial advertisements, informational road signs and international symbols. I question the authority of signage by revealing its potential for a humorous reading through the simple manipulation of its context and physical arrangement within space and time. All of the works get their start in the outside world of public experience and are then transformed by their passage through my land of imagination. Out of this process of exchange I present to an audience what I consider to be sculptural poems that investigate my position within social and cultural hierarchies while designating them as subjects for play." 

The installation was build in the project room at Stride Gallery, Calgary from March 10 to 31 and in Kelowna at the Alternator Gallery from May 14 to July 4. 

Lee Goreas, "Artist Statement", Open Space Archives, Victoria, B.C. (Box 36, File 2)