e-artexte

Jason, Joyce

Neumann, Alex

Zwarts, Alice

Bealy, Allan

Farish, Catherine

Laporte, Claire

Neumann, Cliff

Beckett, David Stanley

Sorensen, Verona

Jacobs, Donna

Slopek, Edward

Rothbart, Evie

Déry, François

Hesketh, Gary

Gericke, Irene Rosenberg

Perlman, Janet

Saucier, John

Zahn, Kathy

Palladini, L. Gino

Pink, Patricia

Headland, Ronald

Sur, Sur Rodney

Lake, Suzy

The Montreal Museum School of Art and Design : Retrieving The Years 1967-1977

Behzadi, Mojeanne

Vers la liberté = Towards Freedom

Awono, Jean-Claude

Camps, Yaiza

Chiénin, Chayet

Felinto, Renato

Gakuru, Wanjeri

Grünke, Moritz

Obolo, Pascale

Pichler, Michalis

Tabapsi, Parfait

Decolonizing Art Book Fairs : Pratiques de l'édition indépendante dans les Sud(s)

" Dundee is a rural township situated in the Montérégie region of Quebec, Canada. In the early 1800s, Scottish settlers arrived and established their roots in this area, giving it the name of their homeland: Dundee. This project delves into the transformation of Dundee, Quebec, through the lens of Scottish migration stories. The project spans two countries, Canada and Scotland. " -- Artist's websit

Ogilvie, Will H.

Hua, Jin

DUNDEE

Fulton, Gwynne

Malcolm 
4 February- 11 March 2023
Clare Samuel 
I
n an intimate and moving meditation on loss and madness, Tkaronto/Toronto-
based artist Clare Samuel memorializes her father, Malcolm, who died in 2018 
following heart surgery complications.  
Malcolm was acutely aware, as early as the 1970s, of the science of anthropo-
genic climate change. Gripped by a vision of the future that looks much like our 
present reality, he distributed flyers to raise awareness about the environmental 
impact of fossil fuel emissions and increasing carbon dioxide concentrations. 
On two occasions, he even ran for office with the Green Party. As a member of 
the British Interplanetary Society—the world’s oldest space advocacy organiza-
tion—he petitioned leaders to work collaboratively to expand space explora-
tion and to ready planet Earth for our collective “off-world” relocation. Malcolm 
envisioned a future “on Earth, the moon and beyond” that included renewables, 
biodiversity protection, solar radiation shelters, and coordinated defense against 
comets and other “near-Earth objects,” as well as airlock space stations and moon 
colonization. His techno-survivalist vision feels all more prescient today against 
the backdrop of the climate catastrophe we are presently living—however 
unevenly in different parts of the planet. 
Cosmos in a Shell 
Paying homage to Malcolm’s engagement with ecology and astronomy, 
Samuel combines photographs and video, weaving a personal cosmology from 
fragments left behind in his Northern Ireland council flat: medical records, 
photocopied ecojustice pamphlets, snippets of hair, dense hand-written journal 
entries. The act of sifting through objects and their affects is crucial to 
Samuel’s attempts to come to grips with loss, which is complicated by 
Malcolm’s experience of living with schizophrenia. 
A large-scale vinyl facsimile depicts Malcolm’s flat, hollowed out of its 
contents by Samuel in three tumultuous days following his death. Gone are the 
blue curtains, the wingback reading chair that once sat by the window, and the 
stacked boxes of belongings that were shipped to him after his mother’s death. 
Tracing the contours of absence, his room confronts us as an empty shell. 
Samuel responds to this absence with a series of lumen prints—an early 
photographic process of solar photograms—of her pony tail and of Malcolm’s 
diary from 1978-79 in soft millennial shades, alongside a view of Holywell 
Hospital, a psychiatric intensive care unit in Antrim where Malcolm spent several 
stints of time following serious mental health episodes. Her images examine how 
memory is held within objects, while transforming it through a material process 
that pushes towards abstraction. An image of Malcolm’s hair cuttings collected 
from the undertaker recalls the finitude of mortal bodies, while a shell, likely 
collected by Malcolm on his 1978 trip the West coast of Canada, floats against a 
dark backdrop, its spiral structure transformed into an iridescent cosmos.  
Malcolm once warned a young Clare to burn the hair she cuts: “so that no one 
can get a hold of it and do magic on you.” But Samuel has other ideas. Perhaps 
she has her own magic in mind when she places her own hair on photographic 
paper, exposing it to sunlight for up to twenty-four hours—the time it takes for 
the Earth to spin 360 degrees on its axis. With these durational exposures, she 
casts a counter-spell that draws him closer, deepening connections with a father 
who remained evasive in life. 
Samuel’s rituals reflect on the structure of inheritance and mourning. 
One leaves things behind—pieces of paper, journals, a corpse, traces and 
memories—and those who remain inherit. Samuel mourns her father, 
who she has called “Malcolm” since early childhood, by collecting and 
transforming the traces he has entrusted to her in a constellation that is 
both intimate and tender. It recalls Malcolm’s unique and singular life, and 
bears witness to her relationship with him. Yet, her portrait of him is also a 
portrait of herself, or more precisely, of the planetary threads that weave them 
together across generations.  
In Malcolm, Samuel holds her father’s abalone shell to her ear. Is she listening 
for the sounds of the sea that separated them at the time of his death? Can 
we hear in this image the low murmur of a world beyond the grave? Or the 
venous hum of the flow of her own blood-in-the-ears? In “Seashell Sound” 
Stefan Helmreich discusses historical explanations for the oceanic sounds that 
reside in seashells.1 Nineteenth-century spiritualists believed they could hear 
the ghostly sounds of the departed. Trading enchantment with empirical expla-
nation, in the twentieth century, scientists claimed the sounds were actually our 
own blood surging in our veins. Without taking sides, Samuel’s images asks us to 
listen: to the space that opens up when the voice of a loved one falls silent and 
to the resonance of our own bodies in the gallery space.
 
 
1. Stefan Helmreich, "Seashell Sound: Echoing Ocean, Vibrating Air, Brute Blood," Cabinet Magazine 
nº 48, Trees (hiver 2012–2013), https://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/48/helmreich.php.
4001, rue Berri, porte 301, Montréal (Qc) H2L 4H2 
www.oboro.net oboro@oboro.net 514.844.3250
— Gwynne Fulton


Clare Samuel : Malcolm : Cosmos in a Shell

Dmyterko, Ayla

Puton, Clara

Ayla Dmyterko : On Volya : Filling in the Frescoes //Liberate Thee, Angel of History

Not a member yet

The Montreal Museum School of Art and Design : Retrieving The Years 1967-1977

Vers la liberté = Towards Freedom

Decolonizing Art Book Fairs : Pratiques de l'édition indépendante dans les Sud(s)

DUNDEE

Clare Samuel : Malcolm : Cosmos in a Shell

Ayla Dmyterko : On Volya : Filling in the Frescoes //Liberate Thee, Angel of History

Principes élémentaires de la typographie : une histoire des styles

Alana MacDougall : Echoes

Valérie Blass : This Is Not a Metaphor

Jeannette Ehlers : Play Mas

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