Part of Fall 2006
Pleasure Dome is honoured to present a program of film and videos by the late American artist Diane Bonder (presented at MoMA this past May) that spans ten years of the artist’s Super 8, 16mm, and video work. “Diane Bonder’s films and videos have the uncanny ability to examine where we come from – family, home, community – without satire, condemnation, condescension, or sentimentality. Diane’s films are poetic evocations of the quotidian, exquisite journeys to places you think you already know transfigured into the strange and wonderful. Familial relationships, lost love, and small town provinciality, rendered with intimacy, artistry, and honesty, become the viewer’s own story, own history. The filmic experience is further intensified by the formal rigour of the work: Diane’s visual style, dense collages of patterns and textures, reflects a joy in seeing and imagining through the lens. What emerges are lyrical compositions, familiar but somehow much richer, a song of the senses.” (Liss Platt)
Liss Platt will be in attendance to introduce the programme and discuss Diane’s work.
Programme:
Dear Mom, 1996, 13:00
A girl’s identity is examined in relation to her powerful mother, a matriarchal family, and domestic fantasies.
If. 2000, 12:00
The confines of a room and the objects in it represent a missing lover.
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now. 2001, 15:00
Rural American landscapes and newspaper stories reflect the struggle over privacy, public space, and property.
Closer to Heaven. 2003, 15:00
“Urban ghosts collide; abandoned umbrellas tumble down the streets, my father calls again and again to say good-bye” (Bonder)
You Are Not from Here. 2005, 10:00
The meaning we project on the environment is explored through the disappearing vernacular landscape.
I Remember Now, We Never Danced, I Miss You, Good-bye. 2006, 8:00
Everyday movement, woven into a dance of memory and loss.
