Persistence Is Futile

Developed at the request of Mary Williamson to create an artwork responding to the celebration of the 2005 International Festival of Authors. Installed in the foyer of Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, I exhibited three banners each 100 X 140 cm that displayed the detailed measurements that I collected at three different printing presses throughout the city of Toronto. These presses included Sun Media, Webcom and the Couch House Press.

The measuring of these locations is a continuation of other measuring works I produced over a four year period in Toronto, Canada. These  performance pieces where developed in relationship to the architectural and academic restructuring that occurred at the art educational institution OCAD (Toronto CAN) between 2002 and 2005 .  Subtle, meditative and accumulative this performance documents spatial arrangement with obsessive, numeric description. Futile in its attempts at accomplishing completion or accuracy, the work is ultimately a meditation on boundaries, language and failure.

Through measurement it seeks to identify, quantify and name, yet the text produced during each performance rescinds a visual depiction. It both loses and regains meaning though this removal and through the emergence of codification within its own syntax.