Call it a set piece, a puppet, an installation, a sculpture, whatever you like, but our beloved Squid Wreck will be in the public eye once again from now until September 28th in North Vancouver at the Cafe for Contemporary Art‘s PUPPET’S UP EXHIBITION! The hybrid cafe/gallery space is just a three minute walk from Lonsdale Quay and boasts an impressive year-round curation of local and global art.
Squid Wreck (also known by the affectionate monicker “Septopus” by its makers) was created for my short film The Anachronism by a team of artists spearheaded by my close collaborators Dusty Hagerud, Miyuki Mori, and my father Gordon Long.
The mammoth undertaking, which involved the crew working around the clock in the final weeks of preparation, was completed on July 7th, 2008, literally seconds before the camera started rolling on it.
Since fulfilling its first life as a set piece for the film (winning a Leo Award for Production Design for its trouble) Squid Wreck has found new homes in several gallery spaces throughout Vancouver. The Septopus held court with other “audacious and improbable large-scale kinetic, robotic, and mechanized sculptures” at the eatART Laboratory during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games,and squatted in the Dowtown Eastside Chapel Arts Gallery in April of the same year.
More on the Puppets Up show from CAFCA’s website:
“CAFCA140 is known for its unusual exhibitions, but this time is almost unheard of: a show of puppets, instruments of puppetry and actual puppet shows. The exhibition is the brain-child and product of hard-work by organizer, Dusty Hagerud. Dusty has gathered some of Vancouver’s excellent puppeteers and their favourite puppets for the show. It’s been a long time coming, and its really worth a look at these remarkable exhibition.
Dusty points out that puppets is an overlooked if not derided art form, not only today but also throughout history. Christian institutions in medieval England labelled puppetry the work of the devil. Puppetry fell from royalty into the realm of travelling entertainers and gypsies. Ironically, the church utilized puppetry and its evocative and narrative characteristics to influence the general public. Nowadays, puppets rank up there with ceramics, textiles, blanket weaving and other so-called crafts. It’s exactly the controversy that attracts Dusty to this bonafide form of artistic expression. We agree with Dusty. The line between arts and crafts is not only a fine one but also a foolish one. We see the attitude expressed in puppetry as decidedly anti-academic and Do-It-Yourself. That’s just a healthy outlook. Nevertheless, performance arts is the closest form of fine arts that include the multi-dimensional aspects of puppetry, should you need to know.
The crude construction methods and materials — bent cane, grass, real hair and even dried fruit — of some of the puppets are remarkably telling. It easy to think oftramp-art created by Depression-era travellers when viewing the works. Interesting, some of these crudely formed puppets come from Japan, suggesting a vagabond culture in that country. Or perhaps just an interest and respect for ready-mades.”
If you haven’t already, I invite you to check out the Squid Wreck in its most cinematic incarnation:
