The Forest City Gallery presents:

Bruce Nauman: Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario

January 7 to February 19, 2011
Opening Reception: January 14th 2011, 7pm

Curated by Christopher Régimbal



Image Credit: Bruce Nauman, Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario, 1969-1970.  Archival image from the 1970 presentation at the 20/20 Gallery, London. Photographed by Ian MacEachern. Collection of Donald Young, Chicago.

The Forest City Gallery is proud to present a major exhibition of the work of the American artist Bruce Nauman, titled Bruce Nauman: Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario.  This exhibition revisits Nauman’s first Canadian solo exhibition, which was held at the 20/20 Gallery in London, Ontario in February and March of 1970. 

In the winter of 1970, the artists of the 20/20 Gallery cooperative commissioned a new site-specific audio/video installation from Nauman, a piece was originally called Surveillance Piece but has come to be known in the artist’s catalogue raisonnée as Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario (1969-1970).  From January 7 to February 19, 2011, just over forty years after the initial exhibition, Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario will return to the city that gave it its name.

The original 1970 exhibition will be restaged at the Forest City Gallery in London, the present-day incarnation of the former 20/20 Gallery.  Extant from 1966 to 1970, the 20/20 Gallery is considered the forerunner of Canada’s contemporary artist-run centre system. During its short run, the Gallery went from being at the centre of London’s legendary artistic community to being one of the leading contemporary art galleries in North America, presenting early major exhibitions by Bruce Nauman, Greg Curnoe, Ron Martin, Michael Snow, Murray Favro, Joyce Wieland and Robert Fones.

Today, Nauman is widely acknowledged as one the world’s most influential artists, but in 1970s, he was part of a burgeoning American avant-garde.  His contributions to the development of video and performance art, sculpture, installation and conceptualism in the second half of the twentieth century have been the subject of countless articles, exhibitions, and books.  The return of Audio/Video Piece for London, Ontario is a homecoming of sorts, and it is the first major research project dedicated to Nauman’s little-studied work in Canada and its influence on the early development of conceptualism and related practices in this country.  The project will greatly add to our understanding of the internationalism of London’s well-documented regionalist movement.

The exhibition will be complimented by a publication produced by the McIntosh Gallery and a graduate student conference organized by the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Western Ontario.  The conference will be presented at the Artlab Gallery and will include papers and panels by MA, MFA, and PhD students, as well as a keynote address by Michèle Thériault, Director of the Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery at Concordia University.  The catalogue is scheduled to be released in the winter of 2011 and will contain essays by Aileen Burns, Robert Fones, Adi Louria-Heyon and Christopher Régimbal.

The Forest City Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of its funders, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council and the London Arts Council.

Forest City Gallery
258 Richmond St.
London, ON N6B 2H7
519-434-5875

www.forestcitygallery.com