Michèle Provost: Selling Out

Additional Information

Opening Reception and Artist talk: Friday January 8, 2010, 7:30 pm
Additional Talk: Saturday February 6, 2010, 2:00 pm with Jeff Nye, The Secret Adventures of Picasso and Friends
           
Michèle Provost takes on the inundation of consumer culture upon visual art and art history in a tongue-in cheek installation, Selling Out. The artist will transform the gallery into a store-like space filled with over one hundred hand-made action figures based on historical and contemporary artists and their work. These hand-made and hand-painted figures are sealed in industrial packaging, much like the super-hero figures in any toy store. The packaging features printed reproductions of the original works from which each figure is derived.
                                 
The exhibition also features painstakingly hand-embroidered and exuberantly framed Marvel-style comic-book covers based on classical works; to further confuse the issue of disposable commodity versus precious work of art. These embroidered comic-book covers refer to the cheaply produced comic magazine which is eventually sold as a valuable collectible. Provost has included a selection of collector’s cards featuring artists and their artworks and 55 new sliding block puzzles that have been specially made for this exhibition of Selling Out at the Dunlop.
           
Appropriation, copyright, the commerce of art, the relevance of art and art history for the general public, as well as heroism and violence in comic book culture are all issues that lay very close to the surface of this installation.

Michèle Provost, Selling Out (Installation View), 2010.