East Gallery
A Life of Errors
Nick and Sheila Pye
May 4th 2007 – June 2nd 2007
Opening reception Friday May 4th 6–9 PM
ANGELL GALLERY is pleased to present “A Life of Errors” as a feature exhibition of the CONTACT Toronto Photography Festival. This will be the third Toronto solo exhibition by gallery artists Nick and Sheila Pye. The exhibition runs from May 4 to June 2, 2007. Opening Reception, Friday May 4, 6pm to 9pm
A Life of Errors: presents a film and photographs by this husband-wife collaborative team. The exhibition includes the acclaimed film A Life of Errors, part of a trilogy of films that the Pyes’ are developing and related photographs.
The Pyes' oeuvre is an exploration of the magnetic attraction of opposites, and a visual depiction of the struggle to retain one's sense of self in a close relationship with another person. Compelled beyond reason, the figures in the film wage a war with one another—grabbing tokens of the other’s person (locks of hair are slyly snipped) and setting traps. Perhaps most unsettling of all, the attacks are executed consensually. A blindfolded Nick allows Sheila to lead him around and over sharp and broken objects as the soles of his feet are cut. In a parallel, climatic scene, Sheila is guided by Nick into a circle defined by a fuse. She, masked and docile, jumps rope as he sets the ring on fire. The flames, her activity, and (metaphorically) the violent passion that hangs over the entire scenario consume all the oxygen in the small space, causing Sheila to collapse. Nick meets his own fate when he delivers Sheila’s lifeless body to her bed only to fall over a rope that she has rigged to trip him.
The artists take their married relationship -- generally a taboo subject matter in contemporary art -- as a point of departure for a metaphoric foray into power struggles and communication issues between two individuals. Yet their work retains a dramatic ambiguity about the nature of relationships such as the seesawing of attraction and repulsion or the adopting of different gender roles for expediency or manipulation. An additional emotional complexity is layered onto the narrative by the identification of the characters as brother and sister. The couple dissects the boundaries and lays bear the evocative richness of both their co-dependency and intimacy. The films, and photographs that amplify the filmic project are disquieting and erotic, melancholic and wry.
Kristen Hileman, Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden and adjunct faculty at George Washington University and the Corcoran College of Art and Design, who has written about the Pyes’, notes, "In their films and photographs, the Pyes’ explore the troubling ground where a connection between two people becomes so intense that it confounds or replaces the human instinct to preserve self."
"The artists conceive and construct the visually striking sets for their films, carefully choosing objects with personal significance to fill the rooms their characters will inhabit... The Pyes’ spend up to a month building these environments, which at once evoke a nostalgic and deconstructed sense of domesticity. Related photographs make use of the sets to develop themes from the films in further directions."
In addition, during CONTACT, Camera will be profiling a selection of the Pyes’ films, including earlier works by Sheila, on the following Saturdays in May: the 5th, 12th, 19th, and 26th all during the 1pm time slot.
Both Nick and Sheila completed their MFA’s at Concordia University in Montreal. The Pyes’ have exhibited their award winning works in numerous international film festivals such as the Locarno International Film Festival, Switzerland; Toronto International Film Festival, European Media Arts, Germany, and Rencontres Internationales, Paris, France. Their work has also been exhibited internationally at Rare Gallery, New York, Adler Gallery, Frankfurt, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow Russia, The Curator’s Office, Washington DC; Kasia Kay Art Projects, Chicago; Begona Malone Gallery, Madrid; as well as numerous noted international art fairs such as ARCO, Scope New York, Scope Miami, and DIVA.
Works in the show
Press on the show
