Prominent Canadian artist Bev Pike has shown her work in major public art galleries across Canada, is the recipient of many grants, a feminist writer*, an international guest speaker and a long-time community activist. Adding to her list of accomplishments, Pike embarks on a curatorial project in her exhibition currently displayed at Art-Windsor Essex, in Windsor, Ontario. Pronounced like grotto; Bev Pike’s exhibition Grottesque: Spectacles of Miniature and Gigantic transforms the third floor of Art Windsor-Essex into an exhibition which attempts to mimic the experience of being in a 17th-century English shell-grotto, a theme which has occupied Pike and her artistic output for over a decade.
This project is born out of a new directive from within the gallery itself to engage artist-curators to position Art Windsor-Essex’s permanent collection in conversation with their own contemporary works. It’s an innovative approach to the problem of contextualizing and activating institutional permanent collections that do not always succeed in connecting with diverse audiences. This opportunity is a natural fit for Pike, who has long been an advocate against the historic exclusion of women artists from galleries’ permanent collections.
With temporary walls placed to suggest the structure of tunnels and caverns, the installation winds through a narrow entrance before opening into a gallery space. Pike’s selections from the permanent collection are tightly hung in groupings which emanate from the constructed corners of the space like the shell mosaics that adorn their counterparts in England. These grottos are covered in colourful seashells and installed as a patterned mosaic covering walls and ceiling. In much the same way that Pike experienced the mosaic decoration in the shell grottos, the viewer is first drawn in close to admire the details before stepping back to appreciate the full installation.
Each piece was selected intentionally for its scale and intricacies which prompt this up-close interaction. Of note is Lucille Oille’s wood engraving, Tailpiece for chapter three of The Owl Pen (1947) which, at only one-inch square, is compelling for the magnificent detail contained within its miniature confines. This floral study is done in the delicate and precise medium of wood engraving, as are Oille’s other works in the exhibition.
Stepping into the main gallery space, we are dwarfed by Pike’s monumental gouaches, which extend in 18 feet swaths across the walls and are entirely enveloped in the experience of this constructed space. Since the late 1980s, Pike has been working on a large scale, completing one painting per year. This methodology has resulted in an observable continuity as she examines the possibilities of imagined spaces, Baroque sensibilities of decoration, and the lived experiences of women, which are of particular and enduring interest to Pike as a feminist and activist. These themes, always evident in Pike’s work, are reinforced by her selections from the Gallery’s permanent collection containing primarily images of nature and the figure, with decorative styles. Though welcoming, there is an eerie undertone brought forth perhaps by Pike’s love of a Baroque style, an aesthetic that is not purely decorative but also highly emotive due to deep, evocative colours and dramatic contrast.
Rounding the last corner of the installation, the viewer is confronted with the sculpture Home Fires (2007) by Canadian-artist Anna Frlan, and the mind wanders to certain questions, such as; Who inhabits this space? What is it for? This sculpture of a stove constructed of plasma-cut steel transforms the space into a domestic one, expanding on the context provided by Pike’s paintings that allude to communal and domestic spaces. This is certainly a place to inhabit, and not alone it seems. With its innate reference to women’s work and gender inequalities of domestic labour, Home Fires highlights Pike’s longstanding interest in exploring the lived experiences of women. In fact, all Pike’s selections from the permanent collection exhibited in Grottesque are by women artists, as per her curatorial mandate that she set promptly at the beginning of this project.
This new inclusion of an implied community of women, is especially noticeable when we look at Pike’s exhibition history. In Pike’s Boudoir series, exhibited in a solo exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in 1990, she reflected on the experience of existing in her body and used the term spinster to fondly describe her identity. Somewhere in the intervening decades, as bedsheets became textile caverns in her Hymenal Views series, and these became shell grottos, an undeniable “we” has appeared. It is present in Pike’s paintings of shared spaces and punctuates her writing about the show, “I dreamt about living underground, just for a while. What would we need?” It is felt in the auras of each carefully selected work by a woman artist from the Art Windsor-Essex permanent collection. This is a space for us.
The Art-Windsor-Essex introduction text about the exhibition describes the experience of the space; “We wait, we analyse, we perceive anew. We embody awe,” and Pike encourages her viewer to “fantasize your splendiferous sanctuary.” However, these places for retreat also gently hint at more active possibilities. A space not to just hide away but to live and to thrive. The pandemic shifted this interpretation for Pike, as well as a visit to Chislehurst cave, a Roman mine near London England that people evacuated to during World War II which remained an active community for many years. From these formative experiences, the grottesque paintings have become reflections of spaces for living, learning, and creating. Spaces to build a new type of future.
These interpretations of the work, which are supported by the written information about the exhibition, are only accessible to the audience if they choose to scan the QR codes on the gallery walls. It is a directive at Art Windsor-Essex not to have texts printed on the walls in the usual manner. It is argued this encourages individual interpretation; however, it may also prevent deeper engagement if viewers overlook this prompt or are hesitant to be on mobile devices during gallery visits.
The English grottos of the 17th century were meant to be natural yet stylish. They were transcendent and mythical in an attempt to outdo others in upper-class and royal society. Pike’s works also indulge fantasy and imagine a future that can evade or come out of these trying times. However, her work never seems competitive even when the work is on such a grand scale. So, while these grottos of the past may have been spaces to upstage each other, if Pike makes any similar appeal to her audience to join this project of imagination, it is not from a space of competition but from a space of communal liberation. Our instinct to hide is indulged and yet challenged; after you cocoon yourself here, what will you become? What will you need to thrive in that reinvention of self, society and system?
Grottesque, pronounced with a long O, is taken from 17th-century French that Pike came across during research for this collection. It indulges her love of word play, satire and embellished language that is concentrated in her written works and ripples through her paintings and exhibition titles.
In conversation, Pike joked that she wouldn’t be able to write a ransom letter because her writing style is too recognizable.
I would argue the same is true of her paintings, and now her curatorial explorations. Who made this? It is most certainly Bev Pike.
* Pike also creates humourous and provocative feminist writings including her Agony Aunt columns which are featured in artist books in collections at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Modern, University of Bristol among others.
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You can see move of Bev Pike’s work on her website.
About the Author: Danielle Hoevenaars is the Head of Collections at Woodstock Art Gallery and has over a decade of experience working in commercial and public art galleries. Danielle holds a BA in Fine Arts Studio Thesis from the University of Waterloo, and a Certificate of Museum Studies from the Ontario Museums Association.
