Deirdre Logue, That Beauty, video still, 2005

Notes from the Worry Room

Deirdre Logue

A Space Main Gallery

April 4 – May 13, 2017

Copresented by: Images Festival

Book Launch: "Beyond Her Usual Limits: The Film and Video Works of Deirdre Logue, 1997 to 2017" on Saturday, April 22nd, 3pm to 5pm at The Commons, 401 Richmond. Co-published by Oakville Galleries and Open Space Victoria in partnership with A Space Gallery, Gallery 44 and Images Festival. Covering two decades of Logue's output, this monograph brings together texts and documentation from a wide variety of the artist’s exhibitions and projects over the years, alongside a series of newly commissioned texts.


A master of her mediums, small gauge film and video, and a novice at her subject matter—primarily herself—Deirdre Logue will show work at A Space Gallery beginning with the era in which she was on the organization’s board of directors. Spanning nearly 20 years, the exhibition chronicles Logue’s compelling self-portraits as well as her handling of all aspects of the production and post-production process.

Logue performs silent and spoken breath; she climbs, crawls, licks, suckles, eats, drinks, suffocates, gets hit on the head, and falls. She records her infectious, beautiful dancing and explains that she worries so much it might be the end of her. Then she worries herself in-between the mattress and box spring of a made bed. She does not tell us what is wrong, per se; what she does suggest are inevitable and repetitious disasters. Logue utters discomforting phrases and wraps them in the warmth and beauty of hand-processed celluloid. 

Deirdre Logue is the 2017 Canadian Artist Spotlight at the Images Festival. This exhibition is part of a larger celebration of Logue’s practice which includes additional exhibitions in the A Space Gallery vitrines, Gallery 44 and Tangled Gallery, as well as a single-channel screening during the Images Festival.

Biographies

Deirdre Logue’s performance based film, video and installation works are self-portraits uniquely located between comfort and trauma, self-liberation and self-annihilation. By using domestic objects and spaces to contrary ends, her works capture gesture, duration and the body as both subject and object. Solo exhibitions of her work have taken place at Open Space (Victoria), the Berlin International Film Festival, Oakville Galleries, YYZ Artists’ Outlet (Toronto) and the Images Festival (Toronto). Logue is currently the Development Director at Vtape.

The artist would like to recognize the financial contributions of the Media Arts Section of the Canada Council for the Arts and Open Space in Victoria, British Columbia.