Installation view of maquette for ‘Goodnight Moon: a Rhythm, a Tempo’ placed within dollhouse, both manufactured by Rob Bird.
“The Process of Art is Art/The Tomato Makes You Think About Eating It”
Shall art communities designate the limits of what is considered a medium of art? If we say yes, we are shutting the door on a variety of creations, and on the subsequent creations that those creations would inspire. We are also then, arguably, shutting a door on unexplored parts of ourselves. At heart is the question, is art but a fancy, or is it an earnest, unpredeterminable exploration? This was the question on my mind when I invited Matthew Robin Nye to bring his complex, playful, and ethically grounding artistic practice to St. Andrews and to Sunbury Shores.
Interdisciplinary to the last, and deeply committed to new ways of making art through the administration of it, Matthew-Robin’s work always troubled the ground on which I walked, while also giving me new ways to navigate the spaces I thought I knew. There is a brutal kindness to his work, a feeling one imagines he exacts the most on his own comings-to-form that his practice embroils him in.
I was lucky enough to see and participate in a work of Matthew-Robin’s in 2015 in Montreal. Already his thematics around “queer utopias” were taking shape in a manner that was forcefully historical and yet also slippery in terms of identities and how they attach (or don’t) to bodies. This ranges like a strong breeze through sexual identity to artistic identity (and does not stop there). Nye believes in process as a real force in the world, a thing that can be named and expanded on, supported and called essential. For example, when Matthew came to St. Andrews in May to meet residents and spend time with Rob Bird (as well as lose at bingo), these things were, for him, already being materially encoded in Goodnight Moon. They are active, invisible, yet undeniably real aspects of this show’s comings to form. Nye instrumentalizes administration for artistic means and uses artistic production for administrative ends. This is felt clearly in how Goodnight Moon: a Rhythm, a Tempo draws around it a cavalcade of unlikely artistic co-creators. When Matthew was looking for a local craftsman to collaborate in the construction, I suggested Rob Bird, a local experienced wood worker with a sensitivity and intelligence that, I thought, would pair well with Matthew’s vibrant and thoughtfully excitable approach. The Peskotomuhkati word for such UN-obstruction, for such openness to process, is Panolamson (the wind blows unobstructed). This is the path Matthew-Robin Nye brings me on (and, perhaps, us). A path of non obstruction to art. To face that which is beautiful around us, and to invest resources in the unveiling of art as a real and often raw process within communities. To become consumed with our collective stories (even while they are divergent). It is surprising but true, it is the only way we come together softly.
~Joel Mason
Installation view, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2022.
Goodnight Moon (1947), written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, is a timeless classic familiar to many children and adults today. The story narrates a simple, rhythmic counting of objects in a room occupied by two rabbits. One by one, objects in the room are wished ‘goodnight’. The book deviates from the standard fairy tale in that it does not have a moral, but a rhythm, a tempo. Because of this, it represents a major shift in how stories are told to us as we are developing; changing, in turn, how we develop. I believe that Goodnight Moon is the story of the environmental static around every fairy tale, the backgrounded processes vital to an experience, providing the lively textures from which a story stands out: in other words, experience for and of itself. There are fissures in the logic of Goodnight Moon, however: the passing moon in the illustrations do not coincide with the hands on a clock that sits on the mantle; a bowl of ‘mush’ is left overnight; the harsh colours of the room may cause unease; finally, the book ends with a blank spread wishing “Goodnight nobody,” to nothing.
Why intervene in the world of the children’s book? In our psyche, the fairy tale holds the place of the ideal form; an ideal that we shape our real worlds around, but that we can never quite attain: a semblance of reality pushed away from reality’s actual concerns, a balloon of possibility that will never be actualized. A fairy tale that does not have a subject, an individual to hinge tension, release, and resolution upon is a dispersed story that is about the non-human, more-than-human, and inhuman processes that make up our world. When not at the service of a central character, these processes are let loose, left to rest and unfold of their own accord, to flourish! Will the mouse go to sleep with the reader? What of its becomings when the lights go out?
As an artist, I’m always pursuing the following question: What makes a work work? How, in the world of experience, might we know ourselves and each other - and in so doing, reflect, relate, and change? Here, I invite you to help me find out; not only by reevaluating this fruitful collaboration between Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd; but by granting me the possibility to demonstrate that an artwork begins to do its work when you initiate an interaction with it. To help facilitate the work, its entry and audience understanding, artists k.g. Guttman and Jordan Arseneault to intervene in the work. Each is unique in their ability to facilitate an audience’s experience, daytime and late night. To this end, each “visited” the stage that Rob Bird constructed in an attempt to tease out the wonderment that has been fostered in Goodnight Moon’s pages for 75 years.
I’ll end with an invitation: This work has been made to foster curiosity, dialogue, and – hopefully – understanding. Please, come in.
~ Matthew-Robin Nye
Composite digital image from The Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon, and My World (all by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd) for installation
I would like to give my deepest thanks to Rob Bird of St Andrews. His wholehearted joy for craft, art, and the lack of distinction between the two is palpable in this space. The exhibition would exist in pale form were it not for his prowess.
Joel Mason invited me to the community surrounding Sunbury Shores, intuiting that I would find this to be a welcoming space for this zany experiment. I believe that Joel shares my belief that there is no line between ‘art’ and ‘ecology,’ if we’re to get out of this damned mess. Angela McLean has been a steady, charming, and enthusiastic support, as has the team of beautiful accomplices that she has brought along with her: Florence Small, Amy Ash, Mary Wobma, and Caroline Young-Walker. My deepest thanks to each of you.
I’d like to thank the team at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, who took ambitiously adopted this project: John Leroux, Adda Mihailescu, Troy Haines and Emilie Grace Lavoie.
Many additional thanks to:
Van Horne Estate on Ministers Island for the loan of the antique telephone
Sara Brinkhurst, costumiere
Louise McFarlane, knitter extraordinaire
This exhibition was developed with the assistance of:
Canada Council for the Arts
New Horizons for Seniors Program
Composite digital image from Goodnight Moon and My World (all by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd) for installation
Interview with Vicki Hogarth for Southwest Magazine, CHCO Television. Original airdate November 2, 2022
“Concordia Artist reimagines the children’s book Goodnight Moon for a gallery space” by Andy Murdoch for Concordia University. Published November 23, 2022
Master craftsperson Rob Bird, holding his maquette of ‘Goodnight Moon: a Rhythm, a Tempo’ set
Installation view of ‘Goodnight Moon: a Rhythm, a Tempo’
Composite digital image from The Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon, and My World (all by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd) for installation
Visiting artist k.g. Guttman demonstrating her ‘techniques for haptic viewing,’ at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre
Installation view of visiting artist k.g. Guttman’s devices for haptic viewing, Beaverbrook Art Gallery
Visiting artist Jordan Arseneault performed ‘The Dance of the Tide and the Moon,’ a new site-specific work as part of the Arts Atlantic Symposium, ‘Goodnight Moon: a Rhythm, a Tempo’ at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre. He restaged the performance at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery.
Performance documentation of visiting artist Jordan Arseneault performing ‘The Dance of the Tide and the Moon’ at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre
Documentation of a life drawing class at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre. Image credit: James Whitehead
Documentation of a life drawing class at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre. Image credit: James Whitehead
One of many interactive school tours of students from grades K-12 at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre, led by Sunbury Shores’ Artistic Director Caroline Young-Walker. Image credit: Florence Small
Documentation of a reading and musical performance at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery organized by Adda Mihailescu and the Fredericton Public Library. Image credit: Adda Mihailescu
Installation view, Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre, 2022.
Composite digital image from The Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon, and My World (all by Margaret Wise Brown and Clement Hurd) for exterior installation at Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Centre, Saint Andrews, New Brunswick
Installation view, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2022.
Installation view, Beaverbrook Art Gallery, 2022.