Dianne Pearce

Stammer and Rustle and Other Word Games

November 18th, 2008 - January 9th, 2009

Artist Talk: November 21 7:30pm

Opening Reception to follow.

The Forest City Gallery is excited to present the work of local artist Dianne Pearce. Pearce holds a BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (1988), and an MFA from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (1993). She is an artist, art educator and art facilitator, and is a member of Red Head Gallery in Toronto. // She has received numerous grants from governing bodies in both Canada and Mexico, and has participated in two artist residencies at the Banff Centre for the Arts. She has exhibited extensively in artist-run centres and museums in her native Canada, as well as numerous galleries, art centres and museums in Mexico City, Guanajuato, San Miguel and León. Internationally, she has shown in Paris, Madrid, Marbella, Milan and Miami. // Her curatorial work includes Anatomical Permutations: Ten Canadian Artists for the 1998 Festival Internacional Cervantino, followed by Sticks and Stones in 2005 for the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City. // She has been teaching art since 1996 at the bachelor and masters levels in Toronto, Montreal and Mexico City. // Pearce currently resides in London, Ontario, where she is the Coordinator of Public Programs at Museum London.

The notion of silencing has led me to look at language and its supposed authority. In the most recent work, I focus on language as a structure determining inclusion or exclusion of a given group, be it religion, culture, race, gender, politics or sexual orientation. Mikhail Bakhtin and Julia Kristeva’s work on rupturing linguistic code via dialogism and intertextuality, respectively, has come to interest me, and the pieces I have been working on endeavour to question the authority of language via laughter. Bakhtin proposes ‘turning the world upside down’ as a way for the dominated to respond to the dominating, and laughter is just the vehicle for this. In particular, I am interested in carnivalesque environments where outsiders, freaks and entertainers meet and contradict each other, offering the possibility of difference and change by questioning, challenging or undermining official culture.

fcg miniature gallery presents:

A Visit to the Noëlle Cuppens exhibition at the FCG Miniature Gallery

October 2008 - January 2009

Opening Reception:

Thursday, October 16th, 7pm - 11pm