Meaghen Buckley

Reading With Chair at LIBRO: Liberation of the Book

meaghenbuckley — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 23:13:02 +0000

One of my performance pieces from the Libraries Within Libraries project is featured in an exhibition at Emily Carr University’s Concourse Gallery, from Jan 17-26. Above is an installation show, and below, the video itself:

Installation: Clay Landscape

meaghenbuckley — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 00:15:22 +0000

This was the dual-channel video installation I produced for a final critique in Advanced Ceramics, based on the performance I had filmed a few weeks earlier. The giant projections were from an initial test. The final installation had two projections on opposing walls: a large projection on a flat wall showing the ‘dancing on clay’, and in an opposite corner, where the performance had been made, a smaller projection evenly splitting the corner, showing the resulting clay landscape.

Looking at people in public spaces

meaghenbuckley — Thu, 22 Nov 2012 23:56:22 +0000

One of the products of the Libraries Within Libraries project was this dual-channel video installation that I tentatively titled ‘On Looking’. It was an attempt to deal with the experience of repeatedly performing for an unwilling audience that does its best to pretend you aren’t there, an aspect of public space that I hadn’t initially considered: the refusal to share it.

Dancing on Clay

meaghenbuckley — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 15:19:20 +0000

This was a test for a larger, longer lasting performance that I hope to make next year. In the mean time, this version was used to produce a video installation shown in early December for a final critique in ceramics.

Book Objects

meaghenbuckley — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 02:55:22 +0000

Coating an existing book so it would survive being cast in plaster, making a 5-part mold, slipcasting in earthenware and porcelain, bisqueing, glazing, cataloguing, processing and shelving: ceramic book objects in the Emily Carr Library.

Search for them in the online catalogue here, or find them in the clay at the library (search for them using my name, “Meaghen Buckley”).

Libraries Within Libraries

meaghenbuckley — Wed, 12 Sep 2012 14:49:14 +0000

For the entirety of the Fall semester, September-December 2012, I will be artist/art-student in residence at the Emily Carr University Library. My formal residency day is Wednesday, though work and presence in the library are not restricted to those days. I will be working with the ideas of art and research, collections and communities, and private work in a public space. The manifestations of these ideas will take various forms including, but not limited to: reading, writing, data collection, data analysis, sculpture, ceramics, performance, interaction, talking, listening, and dancing.

The project exists and is documented in cyberspace at http://librariesproject.wordpress.com/.

Show Me How

meaghenbuckley — Tue, 22 May 2012 17:04:37 +0000

A participatory drawing project that built a skill library: a place for strangers to learn and teach each other; a community drawing laboratory.

This project was the result of a collaboration with Vancouver-based artist and Emily Carr University MAA Candidate Ashley Guindon.

We invited people on Granville Island – whether part of the Emily Carr community, visitors, tourists, or members of other communities on the island – to join us in drawing and/or writing instructions that taught a simple skill. It could be a recipe, a map, a list, a process, a joke, a disguise – the only restriction was that it needed to fit on an 8 1/2″ by 11″ sheet of paper.

Once the drawing was done, the drawer could choose a copy of any other skill from the library to take home with them.

At the end of our time in the gallery space, the walls were covered by 126 brightly coloured drawings; we had adopted new ideas, behaviours and drawing styles; and the skills had walked out of the gallery and into homes throughout Vancouver and beyond. We had also collectively created a portrait, a record of the community that had together created a new space within an existing one.

As part of a residency at ie; gallery, Vancouver, May 2012.

Handholding

meaghenbuckley — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 16:54:07 +0000

A collaborative/participatory ceramic and performance piece made from February-April 2012. Image and video from a group performance on April 12, 2012.

Dance Party in the Library

meaghenbuckley — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 19:56:40 +0000

This was a collaboration with Larissa Beringer of the Emily Carr University Library, and everyone who participated in our library dance party.

The video shows the entire hourlong unfolding of the event compressed into just under nine minutes. While we danced to loud music, the regular business of the library went on.

Simple Lines

meaghenbuckley — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 17:03:03 +0000

This project consisted of a series of blind drawings made while listening to Eve Egoyan’s recording of the Canadian composer Ann Southam’s Simple Lines of Enquiry. I consider these drawings to be an artifact of the experience rather than a work in themselves.

For the blind drawing performance, I was in an empty room, where I blindfolded myself and listened to the music on headphones, in order to be completely immersed. I worked through the 11 movements of the piece without removing my blindfold, pausing only as long as the mp3 player did between tracks. I drew for approximately an hour.

These images come from a single iteration (though I did the piece several times with slight differences). Here I was working with vine charcoal on a long roll of mulberry paper, which meant the drawing was a long continuous stream, and I also had the ability to move backward across space I had already worked, as well as forward into blank paper.

It was an incredible experience – the notes seeming to echo from inside my head, the intense tactile awareness of the rough paper and the crumbling charcoal, and the sensitivity I developed not only in my fingertips and ears but in the drawing tool itself, so that I could feel so dramatically the moment the charcoal went off the mulberry onto a layer of kraft paper I had laid underneath it. The sounds, the textures, and the awareness of a kinetic image-making that had no vision about it.