Greg Staats: liminal disturbance

Greg Staats is a photographer and video artist whose work combines language, mnemonics and the natural world. Staats draws upon a traditional Mohawk restorative aesthetic that defines the multiplicity of relationships inherent within the reciprocity of the condolence ceremony and the effects of trauma.

The centre-piece of Staats’ McMaster Museum of Art exhibition is a work entitled dark string repeat, (2010). Dark string repeat is a video installation composed of a string of wampum, video camera and digital projector which provides a video feedback unit which enables the visitor to view the process of a live event and creation as well as to ponder mediation and the acquisition and loss of language. It also exposes an underlying emotional and vulnerable dialogue: confronting the fear of the loss of self, a state of mind further reflected by the codified and heightening voice of the dark wampum string while the gallery wall becomes its mnemonic support. The reciprocity of an electronic pulse of the feedback creates a space for a recovered process of renewal.

Liminal disturbance brings together several works by Staats that reference language loss, acquisition and resurgence through photographic series, video works, and personal archival materials.

An exhibition brochure with an essay by Richard (Rick) W. Hill, Sr., Tuscarora, will be available at the McMaster Museum of Art. An expanded exhibition publication is being produced in collaboration with the Grenfell Campus Art Gallery, Memorial University, Newfoundland.

Greg Staats (b. Ohsweken, Ontario, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory) has had solo exhibitions at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Walter Philips Gallery, Banff, Tom Thomson Memorial Art Gallery, Mercer Union, Gallery TPW, Toronto. Group exhibitions include; Ottawa Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art. Staats is the recipient of the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. Recently, Staats has been Faculty for two Aboriginal Visual Arts Thematic Residencies: Archive Restored (2009) and Towards Language (2010) at the Banff Centre for the Arts.

List of Works in Exhibition:

auto mnemonic six nations, 2007
6 toned silver prints
30 x 30 inches each

six nations condolence, 2008
6 archival digital prints on hahnemuhle
20 x 27 inches each

at the edge of the woods, 2009
archival digital print on hahnemuhle
24 x 40 inches

where submerged bushes tremble – tashina general, 2010
archival digital print on hahnemuhle
24 x 20 inches

new spaces, 2010
silkscreen on somerset
24 x 26 inches

presage, 2010
6 toned silver prints
20 x 24 inches each

phenomena (one), 2011
douglas fir, 3 – 10 x 12 x 46 inches each

liminal disturbance, Canada, 2011, video, 3:41, colour, sound

dark string repeat, 2010
video live feedback installation.
purple wampum string, digital projector, analog DVR and tripod