Janice Gurney (born 1949) is a Canadian contemporary artist born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. She graduated University of Manitoba in 1973 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts Honours degree and later received a Master of Visual Studies degree from University of Toronto in 2007 with a collaborative degree in Book History and Print Culture.Gurney, Janice. Curriculum Vitae. https://birchcontemporary.com/artist/janice-gurney/cv . PDF She went on to get a PhD in Art and Visual Culture at Western University in 2012.
Gurney's work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions across Canada. Notable collections which have featured her art include: the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and Museum London. In her work, Gurney explores abstract concepts of human connection, meditation, and isolation using post-modernist art, collage, and visual meditation as methods of inspiration.
Career and life Janice Gurney was born 1949, in Winnipeg Manitoba. She pursued visual arts throughout her post-secondary and graduate studies, attending University of Manitoba for a Fine Arts Degree, University of Toronto for a master's degree in Visual Studies, and University of Western Ontario for a PhD in Art and Visual Culture.
She began exhibiting her work in 1981, with a solo exhibition called The Battle of the Somme, which was shown at the Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax and YYZ in Toronto. Her works have been exhibited in galleries across Canada including: the University of Toronto Art Centre, the Thielsen Gallery, The Wynick/Tuck Gallery, Museum London, and the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Working for almost forty years across the country, she has become a well-established Canadian artist.
Between 2007 and 2012 she worked in the faculty of Fine Art at the University of Western Ontario, and has since celebrated the department of Visual Arts’ 50th anniversary at Western. In particular, her experience pursuing a PhD at Western University pushed her towards the complex nature of her art which she has developed over the years.
In 2015, she orchestrated a panel discussion on appropriation in Canadian and American art, titled “In and Out of History: Appropriation in Canadian and American Art,” for the Toronto conference “This is Paradise: Art and Artists in Toronto.”
Outside of the exhibition space, Gurney has multiple publications written about her work.
Janice Gurney: All The Spaces (McIntosh Gallery, 2016) which was edited by Julian Jason Haladyn, includes ideas surrounding Gurney's work on the Marcus Aurelius meditation, a collection of photographs which represents these meditations visually.
Janice Gurney: Sum Over Histories includes writings by Shirley Madill, Suzanne Gilles, Gordon Lebredt, Richard Rhodes, and Barbara Fischer. Janice Gurney: Sum Over Histories, analyzes some of Gurney's best and most renowned works, discussing the intentions around her work, the themes and contexts, and explores some of her other career highlights.
Postmodernism and style As a contemporary artist, Gurney's connection to postmodernism is evident through the mediums and forms she uses in her work. Postmodernism is described as a rejection of ideas and concepts associated with modernism. Artistic techniques that are associated with postmodernist art in particular include: collage, appropriation, performance art, reinvention/recycling of past styles or work in a contemporary context, simplification, bricolage, and the mixing of high art and low art. Many of these themes can be seen in Gurney's work, as it is typically political in nature and does not follow a strict binary of thought.
One aspect of postmodernism that is directly related to Gurney's work is the presence of multiple elements. Collage art is considered the practice of assembling many individual elements (often consisting of different media) to create one new, complete image. Gurney's artistic style mimics collage due to the elemental aspects of her work. While she doesn't always overlap images, Gurney often mixes media and plays with the boundaries of artistic abstraction to create works that resemble collage. Gurney also often arranges her pieces side by side to assume one overall meaning – a technique that is reminiscent of collage art, though more contemporary in form.
Not only does Gurney interpret collage differently in her works, but her style (while consistent in nature) is fluent from one work to another. Gurney's work follows a surrealist style, and her overall aesthetic varies from piece to piece depending on her overall themes and intentions.
Methodology
Actor-Network-Theory The actor-network-theory (ANT) is a social methodology that suggests everything in the natural and social worlds exist in networks which are in a state of constant flux; furthermore, ANT proposes that nothing exists outside of these interconnected relationships. This theory aligns with Gurney's artistic tendency to connect with other artists by using their work in her own creations.
Gurney first learned about ANT in 2006, after conversing with Dave Kemp – a fellow student in the Master of Visual Studies program at University of Toronto. His explanation of this theory resonated with Gurney as a description of her artistic methodology despite her rejection of being placed into an artistic box.
Before learning about ANT formally, Gurney began her artistic career actively avoiding the development of a personal style which she considered a trap that hindered artistic development and growth; she did not want to be defined or confined by her artistic identity. Instead of focusing on differentiating herself from the artistic herd, she sought to connect with other artists and create links between herself, those around her, and history. She describes her early work as a ‘montage style’ in which she used works by other artists across a variety of media to create her own collage art. This method of art production demonstrates both the artistic and historical mapping/networking taking place in the majority of her work.
In an interview with Western University, Gurney summarized the important influence ANT continually has on her artistic practice, stating: “My research into Actor-Network-Theory gave me ways to think and talk about how different components from different times, people, and places could come together to create new meanings in a new context.”
Major works and themes The focus of Janice Gurney's work is most commonly concerned with location, connection, and continuity."Janice Gurney". Artists with Their Work. The Art Gallery of Ontario Extension Services. 1986–1987. She often incorporates or manipulates pre-existing images in her work, even at times using the work of other artists directly in her own artistic practice. By inserting and overlaying found images with her own creations, Gurney attempts to extend or alter the initial meanings of these works.
The medium of her art includes and is not limited to: paint, photography, video, photostatic enlargement, and the use of plexiglass.
In a 1987 summary of her own artistic process, Gurney claims, “I structure a completed work from a number of individual parts which are put together to form a matrix of identities, wherein I try to locate myself.”
Within Suzanne Giles’ book Janice Gurney, Sum Over Histories, Gurney is described as cynical, well thought out, and often reflects the public ideals of success, beauty, and imperfections. Overall, Gurney's portfolio is consistent in style and aesthetic; however, her work is drastically different from theme to theme.Gilles, Suzanne (1993). Janice Gurney: Sum Over Histories. pp. 7–11.
Portrait of Me as My Grandmother's Faults (1982) In Janice Gurney, Sum Over Histories, Suzanne Giles discusses the historical reflections of Gurney's Portrait of Me as My Grandmother's Faults (1982). According to Giles, Gurney both constructs and deconstructs meaning in the way she designs her initial subject only to paint over the figures in white.
The Surface of Behaviour (1988) One work that reflects Gurney's style and recurring themes authentically is The Surface of Behavior (1988). In this piece Janice Gurney blends mediums and multiple works of art to create a collection of images representing one meaning. To create this work, she lays photographs, and paintings of multiple genres side by side. In Janice Gurney, Sum Over Histories, Suzanne Giles writes about Gurney's resistance to linear art by collaging multiple pieces, yet not necessarily blending them all together. The technique Giles describes can be seen within this specific work, as it consists of a collection of media.
Meaningful Work (1991) Compared to The Surface of Behavior (1988), Meaningful Work (1991) demonstrates the versatility in Gurney's style, which she maintains from piece to piece by using Cibachromes, photostats, plexiglass, and duratrans from photographer Robert Flack. With its multitude of elements, this piece emulates a collage effect. While Gurney does not necessarily intend to create a collage of images by using a layering technique in this piece, the images side by side create the same sense of collaboration.
Dark (1999) From September 16 to October 31, 1999, the McIntosh Gallery at the University of Western Ontario ran Janice Gurney's exhibition called Dark.McIntosh Gallery. (1999). Dark [Pamphlet]. London, On, Canada. The exhibition featured and compared Gurney's earlier work to her recent reinventions of these installations at the time. According to Arlene Kennedy, the artistic director at McIntosh Gallery during this show, the exhibition offered viewers the opportunity to explore the connection between “experimental information” and memory.
The exhibition displayed many ‘cancelled’ versions of Gurney's previous work. These ‘cancelled’ works are copies of her earlier pieces wherein some or all of the content has been blacked out; the result is at times a completely black canvas. These dark squares and indistinct forms are comparable to mirrors which reflect the gallery goers observing these pieces. Mark Cheetham describes Gurney's cancellations as “anything but erasures” which instead, serve as a reminder to the artist of her lifelong "passion for memory."
In reflecting on Gurney's previous work in relation to these cancelled versions, Barbara Fischer believes that this presentation challenges the viewer to remember what the works looked like before they were blacked out. She explains her viewing experience, stating: “It's like being put into the dark, aggressively, and finding myself commanded to recite what it was that I saw on the page before the light was turned out. In the reflection that stares back at me darkly, I remember exponentially increasing details [of] ... the images that the black surfaces withhold, boldy. So, I guess, right in front of me, Janice has made history of her work.” Therefore, the triumph of this installation, according to Fischer, is the evocation of Gurney's art in the mind of the viewer despite her work being simultaneously withheld from view.
In response to the exhibition, Sheila Ayearst explains that while Gurney's work often initially represents certain milestones of [a woman's] life, upon further consideration, Gurney's art invites the viewer to consider their relationship to not just what the art represents, but the art itself. In viewing Overexposed (1989) and Underexposed (1989) in particular, Ayearst found herself considering the physical space between her and the works. In her review, she even likens Gurney's work to paintings found in horror films: “[they] suddenly turn on me – they are aware of me, the viewer, and are returning the gaze in this space, now.”