CUAG Audio Description Tour for Drawing on Our History

Carleton University Art Gallery
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CUAG has developed an audio description tour for "Drawing on Our History," designed for gallery visitors who are blind or who have low vision. It is intended for in-gallery use, but can also be used remotely. "Drawing on Our History" is a celebration of CUAG’s 30th anniversary, bringing the works of eight contemporary artists (invited by past guest curators) into an open conversation with a wide-ranging group of historical and contemporary drawings selected from the University’s collection and made by Canadian and international artists. The tour provides an overall description of the exhibition, and descriptions of ten works from the CUAG collection, including the newest acquisition, “Medusa” by Ed Pien. It also features descriptions and interviews with three of the invited contemporary artists: Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Mélanie Meyers and Marigold Santos. In gallery, there are tactile reproductions of several art works, and a tactile path for independent navigation. This tour was produced by CUAG, and designed with insights from members of Ottawa and Carleton’s blind and low vision community.

  1. EPISODE 1

    Chapter 1: About the Audio Description tour

    This chapter introduces the audio description tour. Hello - Welcome to the Audio Description tour for “Drawing on Our History.”  My name is Fiona Wright, and I am the educator at Carleton University Art Gallery, or “CUAG.”  This audio description tour will provide you with an overall description of the exhibition, as well as specific artworks and installations. You’ll hear from a few of the artists as well. There were so many artworks to choose from – the exhibition has over 100 artworks in it! I hope that we’ve chosen ones that can give you a real sense of the diversity of artists, and their expansive use of drawing.  The Audio Description tour will lead you on a path to ten art works from the CUAG collection, as well as three installations by contemporary Canadian artists. There will often be multiple chapters at each stop, which will include a description of an artwork, and then more information from the curators or artists.  The total length of the tour is an hour long. You can skip or repeat the chapters on this tour at any time. At the end of each chapter, you will be notified when you can move to the next stop. You can find information about wayfinding in Chapter 4. Please stay here to listen to the next 3 chapters.

    1 min

  2. EPISODE 2

    Chapter 2: About the Exhibition

    This chapter introduces the exhibition and is 3 minutes long. It was written by CUAG curators Heather Anderson, Sandra Dyck and Danielle Printup. CUAG turned thirty in the fall of 2022; we’re celebrating our birthday with Drawing on Our History.  Drawing on Our History is an experiment. We organized it using a polyvocal curatorial model that embodies and furthers our long history of collaborative exhibition-making. Each person on the curatorial team—five guest curators with whom CUAG has worked in the past and three CUAG staff members—invited a Canadian artist with a timely and compelling drawing practice. The drawings and drawing-based works made by these eight artists open conversations with drawings selected from Carleton University’s art collection. Drawing on Our History illuminates over seventy years of art-collecting activity at Carleton. It presents the first drawing acquired by the University, which commissioned Elizabeth Harrison to render its crest and motto in 1951. It pays tribute to Jack and Frances Barwick, whose transformative 1984 bequest led to the founding of CUAG in 1992. It reflects on an exponential period of collection growth under the gallery’s first director, Michael Bell; today it includes 13,720 drawings, many of which were generously donated by artists and collectors.  Drawing on Our History also features our most recent acquisition, the remarkable 2022 gift of Ed Pien’s Medusa, a monumental, shimmering composition drawn with a sharp knife. Pien’s arresting work points to some of the ways that artists use drawing today: to anchor personal and cultural identities; to investigate ideas, techniques, genres and traditions; to recuperate erased histories; to tell stories; to mitigate loss; to declare positions. Drawing on Our History is installed by Patrick Lacasse and Andrew Johnson, amplified by public programs created by Fiona Wright and tours by Jessica Endress, and supported by administrator Vicki McGlinchey and research assistant Mckenzie Holbrook. Taken together, the work of the invited and collection-based artists, the guest curators and the CUAG team constitutes a multi-faceted look at drawing past and present, at the development of the University’s collection and at our evolution as an organization over three decades. Thank you for your vital trust, generosity, participation, engagement and support. CUAG would not be here without you. You are an essential part of the gallery’s history, as well as its present and future.

    3 min

  3. EPISODE 3

    Chapter 3: Description of the gallery

    This chapter provides you with a physical description of the art gallery. It is a minute and a half long.  The Carleton University Art Gallery has two floors and is shaped like an “L.” The mezzanine, or upper level, where you arrived, and probably are right now, is a large balcony that spans the long stem of the “L.” There are two stairs, one in the crook of the L, close to where the gallery monitor sits at the front desk, and one at the top of the L. There is a railing that extends along the tall stem of the “L”, and there is a curved railing beside the front desk that looks down into the High Gallery (or small part of the “L” below).  The audio description will bring you on a route for artworks on the main level, below. On this level, the long stem of the “L” is 23 metres long by 9 and a half metres wide. It has 2.4 m high ceilings, except along one wall, where it extends up to the mezzanine level above. This is the same height in the High Gallery, or small part of the “L”, about 5.8 metres.  There are wood floors on the main level and the walls are white, except for four floating walls that are placed going down the middle of the long stem of the “L.” Those have been painted a dramatic black. Only one chapter left to go before you can start on your way!

    1 min

  4. EPISODE 4

    Chapter 4: Explanation of wayfinding on the floor

    This chapter provides you with a description of the wayfinding tools that are part of the audio description tour. It is a minute long. There will be audio cues within the audio description tour that will direct you through the gallery and to the various stops on the tour.  Once you go down the stairs, there are also tactile floor markings that will help lead you on a one-way path clockwise around the gallery to the stops in front of the artworks. There are twelve stops on the tour. Stops will be marked with a circle composed of smaller felt circles. There are also tactile representations of several artworks, held in a tote bag provided at the front desk, that you can take with you on the tour. They are numbered and the audio description tour will notify you when there is one available at that stop.  Please go down the stairs to the main floor. The stairs have railings and turn twice to the right. You will find the tactile path at the bottom. Turn left to go to the first artwork, in six metres. Stop at the felt circle and turn left.

    1 min

  5. EPISODE 5

    Chapter 5: "Medusa"

    This chapter describes Medusa by Ed Pien, created in 2012. It is two minutes long.  Tilt your head up, and imagine you’re standing underneath the canopy of a huge, knobbly tree, maybe a willow. The artist has created the tangled upper branches by cutting out the negative space from two different materials crinkled, flattened and layered on top of each other: translucent Japanese paper called Shoji paper and reflective film (similar to the material used on nighttime running outfits or highway signs). Though it appears to be almost black, as you move closer, the spotlights above hit it and reveal a beautiful purple-grey shimmer.  The paper cutting has been intricately done, with some branches almost as thin as a spider’s web, or strands of hair, tangled together. Larger silhouetted forms appear caught in the branches. This, along with the title Medusa, evokes the long tresses of that fearsome and perhaps misunderstood mythological character. The artist has also cut small and medium circles from yellow, green, blue, orange, red and purple from the same material and affixed them to the tree’s silhouette, so that they appear to be floating across the branches. These adornments, as Pien has said, “celebrate resilience and offer glimmer of hope in troubled times.” Trying to increase that glimmer, you could pull out your cell phone flashlight, and the light bounces back even more strongly - the reveal stops you in your tracks, just like Medusa’s provocative gaze.  To hear more about this work, play the next track. Or move to the next stop, a straight line to the right for 7 metres.

    2 min

  6. EPISODE 6

    Chapter 6: Curatorial label for "Medusa"

    This chapter is the text written by curator Heather Anderson for Medusa. It is a minute and a half minutes long.  Ed Pien drew with a knife to create this shimmering tentacular tree with human figures amongst its branches. In 2004, Pien, who immigrated from Taiwan to Canada as a child, made a research trip to China where he encountered a spectacular cut-paper piece while visiting a temple. He began experimenting with the ancient Chinese art of papercutting, which dates back to the Northern and Southern Dynasties (385-581 AD).   The monumental tree, figures and ropes in Medusa reference La pendaison (1633), a renowned etching by French artist Jacques Callot and American artist Nancy Spero’s Maypole: Take No Prisoners (2008), a sculpture comprising a central pole hung with colourful ribbons and cut aluminum heads. While Medusa shares these artworks’ indictment of violence, Medusa is also inspired by Pien’s experience of fireflies amongst ancient trees in Italy: a captivating homage to trees as more-than-human beings.  Please move to the next stop. It is a straight line to your right for 7 metres. At the stop, turn left.

    1 min

  7. EPISODE 7

    Chapter 7: Mélanie Myers

    Mélanie Myers is a Francophone artist based in Gatineau, and was invited to be part of the exhibition by Heather Anderson, CUAG’s curator. You can hear her reflection on Mélanie’s artwork in Chapter 10. This chapter will give an overall description of Mélanie’s installation, and the next two chapters will go into more detail. Then you’ll hear from Melanie herself. This chapter is a minute long. Mélanie’s installation is in the Main Gallery, along the wall that has very high ceilings. There are two pillars on either side of this section, and stairs to the right. Her installation consists of four parts, two on the wall and two freestanding in front of you. Each is made from papier mâché on which she has intricately drawn a lake and forest scene, similar to a stage set.  Go to the next chapter for information on Myers’ work.

    1 min

  8. EPISODE 8

    Chapter 8: "Sans titre (Henry Moore, Reclining Figure et Vertebrae)" Part 1

    This chapter describes part 1 of Sans titre by Melanie Myers, made in 2022-23. It is two minutes long. In front of you is a set of two free-standing French doors one and a half metres apart. The artist has constructed them using papier mâché, and they are roughly the size of real doors: a little more than half a metre by 2 metres. On the backside, Myers has used pencil crayon to draw wood grain, but on the front, there is nothing so ordinary: it holds a beautifully drawn surface of a lake with lily pads floating on it. Behind the doors, through this portal, are two drawings on top of one another: the lower is a continuation of the shallow water with tree branches sticking out of the water, and ducks floating on the surface, partially hidden by the branches. Above is a triptych of the opposite shore of the lake, complete with a dense wooded area and thick red and orange undergrowth. Myers has drawn the details of the leaves, the texture of the rocks and branches, and the reflection of the trees on the water. The tops of the trees are jagged as they meet the sky, as if they have been ripped like a piece of paper. This landscape is repeated three times, almost identical though the colours alter slightly, and the trees point to the other edges of the paper, like a fan. It is late summer, and the sun must be setting because the water is getting darker. The colours of the sky reflect in the rippling water, oscillating between oranges, purples, and hints of blue. The papier mâché bases even ripple: the doors have been caught mid-sway, and the bottom edge of the triptych juts out a little, right where the water meets the shore. This technique plays with our perception: what we think should be flat, like a drawing, reaches out into our three-dimensional world. Running your hand down each one, you would feel the edges of the strips of paper that were dipped in a watery glue and layered on top of each other to create the base. To hear more about the artist’s play with drawing as sculpture, go onto the next chapter.

    2 min
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About

CUAG has developed an audio description tour for "Drawing on Our History," designed for gallery visitors who are blind or who have low vision. It is intended for in-gallery use, but can also be used remotely. "Drawing on Our History" is a celebration of CUAG’s 30th anniversary, bringing the works of eight contemporary artists (invited by past guest curators) into an open conversation with a wide-ranging group of historical and contemporary drawings selected from the University’s collection and made by Canadian and international artists. The tour provides an overall description of the exhibition, and descriptions of ten works from the CUAG collection, including the newest acquisition, “Medusa” by Ed Pien. It also features descriptions and interviews with three of the invited contemporary artists: Gayle Uyagaqi Kabloona, Mélanie Meyers and Marigold Santos. In gallery, there are tactile reproductions of several art works, and a tactile path for independent navigation. This tour was produced by CUAG, and designed with insights from members of Ottawa and Carleton’s blind and low vision community.

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