What: A Sculptor’s Life and Performative Documents and the Labouring Body
Where: FAB
By who: Peter Hide and Michael Woolley

---

Take Two

Peter Hide: A Sculptor’s Life

Leviathans looming in the early morning mist are a common sight on North Campus thanks to Peter Hide, University of Alberta’s senior sculpture instructor, who co-inhabited the FAB gallery with Michael Woolley for its first shows of the new semester. Together, these artists offered students the chance to experience art from two subsequent generations with radically different values and interests. The juxtaposition of the artists’ personalities and visions only enhances the viewer’s experience and raises thoughts on age, tradition, and ingenuity.

Since 1964, Hide has worked exclusively with steel, pushing it to its limits molding and carving what is usually seen as the simple means to a greater product. It is immediately apparent to the viewer that he or she must exercise patience and attention to detail to fully appreciate Hide’s work. The main brilliance of 3D sculpture is that it allows the viewer the opportunity to experience multiple sides of one story, and the artist utilizes this opportunity to insert hidden canyons and textures in unlikely places, offering perhaps a bit of playfulness to his otherwise somber gallery. The pieces translate emotion exceptionally well, though to fully grasp Hide’s vision, paying attention to the titles of the works is essential; Dunbarton Oak, a looming, though not intimidating, red sculpture initially reminded me more of a clock tower than a tree. Upon encountering such ambiguous titles and abstract concepts, the viewer is forced to speculate on the artist’s experiences and emotions. Hide’s gallery leaves the viewer unsatisfied, but happily so, and is not a collection that will hold everyone’s interest. However, for those who do not fear applying their own perceptions and curiosities to the pieces, this collection is provoking.

Michael Woolley: Performative Documents and the Labouring Body

Woolley’s work is startlingly modernist in relation to his senior’s. There is no mystery to Woolley’s performance, but rather an immediate relatability. The artist combines audio, performance art, sculpture, photography, and cinematography into a conglomerate with the intent of representing the stress and turmoil of writing a master’s thesis, and the end result is immersive to the point where I had to remove myself from the room for a moment to still my racing heart. What makes this experience so vivid is the incredibly effective use of audio. The artist played sounds that often go undetected, but that are immediately recognizable — a heartbeat, the gurgling of a stomach, a jaw popping, fingers running over the fresh regrowth of a shaved head — over footage of his daily routine.

Woolley’s use of colour and lighting was unsettlingly beautiful in Blood Vessel, which showed intimate snapshots of his naked body. Had the artist continued this colour theme in the rest of his pieces, the collection would have come across more harmonious. As it is, there is disconnect in the collection. To attempt to use a GoPro and a spoken word poem in the same performance is risky, and perhaps had there been more to tie the gallery together from beginning to end than a theme of over-exhaustion, it would have worked. Unlike Hide, Woolley keeps the viewer at a distance while maintaining a candid front. Nonetheless, the gallery achieved its purpose of being relatable, unsettling, and beautiful all at once.

—Taya Weyland