While living in Montreal in 2010 I worked as an artist in residence at SKOL Centre Des Arts Actuels in the Belgo Building. It was a collaborative residency based on the structure of a relay race: each artist created a work in response to the documentation of a work by another artist. With each stage of the process artists worked inside the gallery and then in public space. This lead me to research current public space issues in Montreal and I found that there was a Supreme Court battle going on regarding the right to poster in public places. The only legit spaces for postering were on temporary construction hoarding – you wouldn’t know it since these hoardings are dominated by a private promotions company named Publicite Sauvage. My response to this controversy was to paste white paper over their posters on a burned out building – my glue mix was infused with lotus oil – I wore a T-Shirt printed with references to Montreal’s postering by-laws in both official languages. This installation lasted 2.5 days before nearly the same configuration of posters was replaced.
Materials: bond paper, wall paper paste, lotus oil, over existing paper advertisements.
A video abstraction of this project was created by Simon Benedict, another artist participating in the residency at SKOL Centre Des Arts Actuels.
