Myfanwy MacLeod's new installation makes satirical, pop-culture nod to the holiday blues
Called Do You Hear What I Hear?, Vancouver artist’s wry repeating pattern covers upholstery and gifts in window exhibit at 1265 Howe Street
“FESTIVE BUT BLEAK” are the all-too-fitting words that Malaspina Printmakers are using to describe Vancouver artist Myfanwy MacLeod’s wry new installation in their window gallery at 1265 Howe Street.
The repeated, mirrored pattern of a retro-caricature of a (drunk? hungover?) woman plays out across the upholstery of an arm chair and the gift wrap on a pile of presents waiting under a coal-black Christmas tree—all illuminated by a Grinch-green grow.
From the outset, the piece draws on the history and conventions of window displays, especially the early design work of Andy Warhol for high-end department store Bonwit Teller. Dig deeper into the inspiration for Do You Hear What I Hear? and you’ll start to see the different shades of the holiday blues that it evokes. Consider that the “carol” the piece is named for was a plea for peace during the Cold War—specifically, songwriters Noël Regney and music by Gloria Shayne were referring to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the image of the woman staring gape-mouthed at herself across the repeating silkscreen print? It builds on MacLeod’s collection of postcards that feature caricatures of drinking and drunkenness—over 150 of them, dating from the early 1900s to the mid-1960s, some crude, some comical; she’s drawn on that pictures to create sculptures and collages in the past.
A closeup of the not-so-cheery print.
MacLeod is perhaps best-known for her public artwork The Birds—the gigantic sparrow sculptures that sit in Olympic Village at South False Creek. They nod to everything from Hitchcock movies to sustainability.
Do You Hear What I Hear? comes out of a year-long artist residency at Malaspina Printmakers studio on Granville Island, where MacLeod explored methods of printmaking that could be integrated into her practice. She had previously collaborated with Malaspina printer Matt Parisien to produce Stack, part of her solo exhibition titled Myfanwy MacLeod, or There and Back Again at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2014. More recently, she’s collaborated with Malaspina Printmakers’s production manager Val Loewen on new textile-based screen prints.
“By personifying the objects in this exhibition, MacLeod transforms the mise-en-scène into a frozen play about a woman endlessly lamenting to herself, all the while surrounded by gifts to and from herself,” says curator Justin Muir.
Do You Hear What I Hear?is presented by Malaspina Printmakers and can be viewed 24/7 through the street level windows at 1265 Howe Street. It was created in collaboration with Loewen at Malaspina Printmakers’s studio on Granville Island.
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