http://strutsgallery.ca/blog_draguhall/

"Marginalia is about creating discourse: both between the two artists who have undertaken this committed correspondence, and between audiences who experience the work both virtually and in real-time. Our process engages new technologies and old manual practices toexplore the ground between art and life, between one coast and another, between two strangers deciding to "make a relationship". We are, like most Canadians, exploring how it might be possible to forge deep connection, mutual understanding, and complicity across great distance."

nb from the struts website

The last time studio xx and germinal Canadian performance artist, Margaret Dragu crossed paths was in celebration of Art's Birthday in 2004. For that event, Maragaret was sending messages from the Western Front to Tagny Duff live in Montreal at studio xx.

Marginalia has Margaret engaged in a conversaton of a different sort. Since 2005 Margaret and artist, activist and educator, Pam Hall, have been sending 1 foot x 1 foot embellished cloth squares across the country. Pam lives in the eastern most city in North America, Margaret in Finn Slough, British Columbia. a tiny fishing village on the southern tip of Lulu Island. As such, east meets west in an artistic engagement that allowed for a remarkable level of intimacy. As they were kind enough to spend some time with me touring through the residency and exhibition sites, i felt priviliged to enter into a space that has been developed over such a long time. There was perhaps a shorthand between them buut it also had a space for others- a very large warm space.

Each of the women expressed how this structured relationship was different than just being friends. I wondered about these cloth patches as mediating devices traveling between them that now were filling the walls of Struts. Making something with the knowledge of who it is for greatly changes what we do, oftn inpositive ways, infusing the work with caring and cnsideration beyond self expression. Mike Kelly famously called these love hours.

Each morning one would sit at a table laden with the remianing unhung cloth patches. She would call out a word from her patch and then the other would place it on the wall. it was a a kind of call and response, or "jazz singing" they called it. At other times they walked the work, bringing their bodies into the space where once only their voices rang out. By the time i saw the space, well into their residency, its walls were heavily padded with words, patches and th residue of their near month long stay in Sackville.

they were kind enough to let me take pictures and let us share them with you here.

a little out of focus but they were just so happy!

west-east= we

xx sisters for life

one wall deep

re-considering community