Gregory Richard Curnoe, RETURN FROM OTTAWA #5, 1964, collage, 11 ins x 8.5 ins; 27.9 cms x 21.6 cms

Lot description

GREGORY RICHARD CURNOERETURN FROM OTTAWA #5, 1964collagedated “Jan 29/64” 11 ins x 8.5 ins; 27.9 cms x 21.6 cms Provenance:Wynick/Tuck Gallery, TorontoPrivate Collection, TorontoThe London Regionalists were a collective of artists, musicians, filmmakers, poets and authors who worked to articulate the turbulent changes happening in Canadian society in the 1960s and 1970s. At the centre of this group was the artist Greg Curnoe (1936-1992) whose voice helped to spark and ultimately shape the grassroots movement of artist run galleries and magazines. The London Regionalists subverted the trope and condemnation of “provincialism” by embracing and exploring their own peripheral position and perspective. Rather than simply picturing the local landscape around them, the London Regionalists were committed to experimentation and creating new forms of artistic production based primarily on the experience of their local surroundings and the city’s burgeoning sense of collectivism. Such experimentation can be seen in Return from Ottawa #5, a colourful collage that overlays a diary entry, a shoe store postal address and a Maclean’s magazine headline “The New Birth Control”. The piece was featured in the film R34 by another founding member of the London Regionalists, Jack Chambers, wherein he juxtaposes Curnoe’s work with his daily routines. R34 has been praised by the legendary filmmaker Stan Brakhage as: “the greatest film on the creative process I’ve yet seen”. Drawing inspiration from the Dada and nihilists movements of the early 20th century, this work blends a heightened political moment in Canadian history with Curnoe’s own quotidian experience. Curnoe was committed to documenting the ephemera of his daily lived experience, and this work can be read as just that, everything he encountered on his return from Ottawa; however his use of Dada-style collage motifs and birth control headline, which was not yet legalized in Canada in 1964, hint at his more activist and politically charged inclinations. Estimate: $4,000–6,000