For almost 25 years Angela Grossmann has worked to show us life at the margins.
Now, without taking her eye from the grim reality that for many life is experienced as an outsider, in this body of work she shows us, too, one of the ways in which those who feel marginalized by society cope.
Grossmann entitles this new work Make Believe.
The images immediately tug the viewer in. We have all escaped to that place of make believe, which can so often seem to make up for what is denied us in the real world. For some it is a place they have been able to leave behind with childhood, but for many it may be the only neighbourhood that offers comfort from the harsh reality of their everyday lives.
In that place of Make Believe all families are loving and kind; one is free from fear; one can accomplish one’s dream.
In the one work on canvas entitled, Time for Tea, a young man appears to have achieved what he wants — and he still has time to take tea. The other three 2008 images are also rendered on canvas, but it is canvas Grossmann has found discarded, something that has become a gritty Grossmann signature over the past decade.
In another piece, Cravat, a figure takes an opportunity to lounge about, relaxed, while another, in Skate, takes time for a whirl. The figure in Leather Coat seems to feel himself dressed appropriately for his occasion.
In Make Believe, all is well.
The female figures in the exhibition, currently on at Newzones in Calgary, however, are different. Here Grossmann exposes reality more forcefully.
A young girl with a baby on her hip is titled Girl and Baby, not Woman and Baby — nor Girl and Doll.
In another work, the descriptor Seaside is used, evoking wonderful times on the beach, but we read that notion also as a time likely to be short-lived, and indeed the female figure has a posture that indicates she is just about to leave this idyllic time.
In the piece Dancer, the female figure has her back toward the viewer — she is no longer performing; she is finished.
The female figure in Red Stockings looks down at her wonderfully clad legs, as if even she is in disbelief.
Grossmann, 53, may know how tempting it may be to live one’s life in Make Believe, but she also knows as an observer of life and as someone who has worked long and hard for the recognition she now has as an artist, that there is always grittiness and difficulty in life.
This she is reminded of each day when she goes to her studio in Gastown, the oldest part of Vancouver, which neighbours the city’s Downtown Eastside, the poorest neighbourhood in Canada.
British-born Grossmann, who came to Canada in the mid-1970s as a teenager, has lived this past decade in Vancouver, the city in which she was first recognised in 1985 as one of the eight Young Romantics. Between graduating and returning to Vancouver a decade later, she studied in Paris, lived and worked in Amsterdam and worked and taught in Montreal.
While the signatures we have come to know as vintage Grossmann — collage, the use of old and discarded material and found canvas — are constant, the literal signature has changed.
It is now no longer Angela Grossmann, but AG. And the signature is always in red.
This, too, is new in signature Grossmann.
© S Fuller 2008
S Fuller is a writer and award-winning communication coach. She has a PhD from the University of British Columbia, an MA from Simon Fraser University and a bachelor’s degree in economics, law and political studies from the University of Cape Town.
S worked as a foreign correspondent for the British-based multinational news agency Reuters before immigrating to Canada 21 years ago.
On leaving high school, S attended art school before taking up a position in a design studio and working in interior and retail design for a few years before going to university.
S is currently writing a book on how to educate the palate, while educating the heart. In Search of the Divine Bottle will be published this year.