November 5, 2011 – 12:28 pm
For Preternatural, a curated series of exhibitions investigating the spiritual in a secular age, I portrayed ecclesiastical music in smoke. Appearing to emanate from the very shape and structure of St. Brigid’s vaulted ceiling, puffs of white smoke plumed, jetted and dissipated in time to a greatly slowed version of Handel’s Messiah. Appropriate to the site and the season,…
November 1, 2011 – 2:01 pm
I received two commissions to create artwork for the new chancery building of the Canadian Embassy in Moscow. Rare Earth sought to fundamentally change our perception of the building through the use of materials and Light Year would have employed the natural light entering through the skylight to enhance one’s sense of time and place. The refurbishment of the building was cancelled…
September 18, 2011 – 4:17 pm
I collect old wind-up alarm clocks, and in 2009 I began to make drawings using the energy found on the clock springs. The first drawing in the series was created using a 1934 Westclox Big Ben Chime Alarm, which I purchased at a yard sale at an old farmhouse west of Kingston, Ontario. The clock…
September 18, 2011 – 3:52 pm
The player pianos in old western movies were hardy and inelegant. Shown scrolling punched paper rolls through their mechanisms, they automatically plunked out popular melodies for the saloon patrons. By the early 1900s however, player pianos had evolved into quite sophisticated instruments. The reproducing piano played rolls that recorded, not simply the sequence of notes…
September 18, 2010 – 4:12 pm
Rain Barrel is one of three artistic lighting designs that were mounted on lampposts in downtown Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Conscious of Vancouver’s rainy, foggy winters, I created an artwork that accentuated the rhythms of the rain and would glow if enveloped in fog. As well as adding visual interest, the path…
September 18, 2010 – 3:31 pm
22×30”, branding iron on paper I stumbled across the technique before I developed the concept. While at a local toy store this spring, I saw a novelty branding iron with a moveable typeface. Intended for use with a backyard BBQ, the host could sear a steak or burger with the name of a guest. I…
September 18, 2009 – 8:21 pm
My 3.5 year-old son has a Hot Wheels set entitled Tornado Alley, which features a toy tornado gyroscope. The goal is to launch Hot Wheels cars at the tornado and knock it off balance before it lays waste to a parking lot. I laid carbon paper over drawing paper and then released the tornado on…
September 18, 2009 – 8:17 pm
A public art commission for the Shenkman Arts Centre, Orleans, Ontario The vividly coloured pattern of the glass façade compliments the naturalistic elements incorporated by the architects in the design of the building. Inspired by the stand of trees that once graced the site, the abstract design features the colours of leaves, blossoms, sky and…
September 18, 2009 – 4:23 pm
Scotia Bank Nuit Blanche Toronto 2009, October 3rd – 4th, 2009 Panorama Tower – Lakeshore Blvd and Dan Leckie Way The expression “safe as houses” refers to the permanence and protection of one’s home. As a way of playing with this notion, an entire residential tower was treated with light, making it appear impermanent by…
September 18, 2009 – 4:22 pm
Durham Consolidated Courthouse, Oshawa, Ontario Steel and Paint, 2009 This low-relief sculpture was inspired by the Region of Durham’s motto: Peace and Prosperity. The words of the motto, plus the word Durham, were broken down into individual letters and assigned a numerical equivalent: A=1, B=2, C=3, etc. The numerical sequences were then plotted on a…
November 12, 2008 – 5:19 pm
Berlin: West to East, 2008, digital video, 2mins 54sec This simple little video first appears as an animation. As the U2 subway train moves west across the former East/West divide of the city, we see a graphic of the Brandenburg Gate playing over a telling change of scenery. Those familiar with Berlin will know that this…
October 1, 2008 – 3:57 pm
Warm By Night is a public art commission for CityPlace towers south of Front St. on both sides of Spadina Ave. in Toronto. The Concord Adex Development corporation requested an artistic roof-top lighting treatment that would unify and define the towers within the skyline. I proposed to illuminate the mechanical levels of each tower with…
November 12, 2007 – 6:16 pm
Maxi Laventille, 2007, digital video, 3mins 28sec Maxi Laventille records a short taxi journey between the Fernandes Industrial Complex in Laventille, Trinidad to the central station in Port of Spain. Maxi taxis are small passenger vans that pick up passenger along a set route. The route taken was along a dedicate bus/taxi roadway, which skirts the…
October 1, 2007 – 2:15 pm
Created for the Win-Win exhibition at the Ottawa Art Gallery This line graph charts the percentage voter turnout for all elections held in Britain (blue), France (brown), Canada (grey) and the United States (green) since the end of WWII. Through the middle of the century, a time when the West held up democracy as a…
September 18, 2007 – 8:28 pm
The Met Tower, Carlton and Younge Streets, Toronto, Canada I was commissioned to create an artwork for this 43-storey condominium development. Noting the streamlined design of the tower, I proposed creating a light-based piece that signaled the wind speed at the top of the tower. The result is an artwork entitled Harbinger. Utilizing LED technology…
August 31, 2007 – 3:53 pm
Introduction Luck is a nebulous concept. But as intangible as it may be, we have all had the sense of having been lucky at one time or another. Having once felt the rush of being lucky, one can’t help but be drawn towards it. The Shape of Luck Series began while I was in residency…
November 12, 2006 – 6:34 pm
Up, 2006, digital video, 6min 28sec When walking through my neighbourhood, like most, I look straight ahead and view my surroundings in the same familiar manner on a daily basis. By directing the view upward, the neighbourhood is still perceivable, but now abstracted. The video is comprised of a succession of lamp standards, telephone lines and…
October 17, 2006 – 1:55 pm
After Smiths Falls, Oct. 17, 2006, digital video (silent), 2min 27sec I often take the train between Ottawa and Toronto. I filmed the telephone and power lines after Smiths Falls as they follow the track for a good distance. Because of the speed of the train, the lines remain as the background blurs. Although this video appears black…
October 1, 2006 – 2:40 pm
One King West, Toronto, 2006 Linking the old Dominion Bank building to the new skyscraper at 1 King W. allowed for a light well and atrium, but the steel super-structure of the bank extended into the atrium space creating an imposing grid. As there are residential units with no exterior view directly across from the…
October 1, 2006 – 2:40 pm
South Central District Library, Ottawa, 2006 Shelf: 759-760 began with a visit to the Ottawa Central Library Branch. There I recorded the type of binding on the first book on each row of the fine arts shelf. These recordings dictated the colour and texture of the stained glass in the artwork, for example: a red…
October 1, 2006 – 2:32 pm
The Phrase Series of low-relief sculptures are on the edge between art and design. The industrial precision with which the steel is cut, the textured powder-coat paint finishes, and lattice-like patterns suggest that these pieces were produced as decorative metal work for the urban dweller. Where the series turns is on the discovery that the patterning…
October 1, 2006 – 2:25 pm
The smart, mass-marketed designs of Ikea are made art by printing their surfaces. The results appear decidedly modern and the viewer is left to ponder the relationship of art, design and value. There are 6 different prints in the series so far.
October 1, 2006 – 2:20 pm
CityPlace, Toronto Employing the methodology developed for the Phrase Series, the View Screens were created to partially obscure the entranceways to garages along Spadina Avenue. Since the residential towers for which they were created are called Harbour View and I was both enhancing and obscuring a view, the word VIEW is transcribed into Morse code…
November 12, 2005 – 6:21 pm
Touchless, 2005, digital video, 3min 8sec Touchless is comprised of a single, unedited sequence taken from a fixed camera as I drove through a “touchless” carwash. Like my 2-D artwork, it reflects my interest in found abstraction and modern composition. Particular to this piece is a minimalist grid upon which changes occur. If the origin of…
October 1, 2005 – 2:48 pm
North is an integrated artwork for the new Canadian Embassy in Berlin. Noting that the Embassy is situated on the former east/west division of the city, I thought the site should have a new point of orientation: no longer east and west, but north. I addressed this by conceiving of the conical-shaped Timber Hall as a…
October 1, 2005 – 2:44 pm
The Average Size of the Paintings by Individual Members of the Painters 11 between 1953-60 with a Tendency Towards Bigness The exhibition Hide In Plain Sight coupled my work with that of painter Peter Dykhuis. Having noted our mutual interest in the relationship of abstraction to camouflage, curator Gil McElroy devised an exhibition in which…
October 1, 2004 – 3:15 pm
Archer’s Field, Botanic Gardens Christchurch, New Zealand Hosted by the High Street Project August 31- September 18, 2004 As part of a series of exhibitions exploring personal utopias Göllner constructed a small one-person dwelling based on the design standards of late modern institutional architecture in Canada. The cube-shaped hut was built from coreboard plastic sheeting and…
October 1, 2004 – 3:08 pm
The Ruby Green Art Center Nashville, Tennessee March 26th – May 1st, 2004 In 1947 Hank Williams traveled to Nashville to pitch a radio show to WLAC. In the same year, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, observing the beginnings of a nuclear arms race between the US and the Soviet Union, set the Doomsday Clock…
October 1, 2003 – 3:32 pm
This book is an exploration into the relationship between abstraction and camouflage. The challenge to myself was to illustrate the reasons why things are seen -surface, shape, shadow, silhouette, spacing and movement- using the simplest of terms, a 4 x 4 modernist grid and the minimum of text. Three examples from the book are provided…
October 1, 2003 – 3:30 pm
Modern U. addressed the progressive ideas that helped shape Carleton University during its formative years, 1959 to 1972. These ideas were conveyed to a contemporary audience through a path of ten large graphics that were set against the architecture and infrastructure of the institution. Together with a walking map, accompanying text, and a website, Modern…
October 2, 2002 – 4:21 pm
International Military Aviation Insignia Series Like the UN Decorations Series, the IMAI Series borrows the pure abstraction of recognizable symbols and recontextualizes them. The grouping of small round paintings simultaneously recalls a boy’s model collection and Claude Tousignant’s 70’s, hard-edge roundels. International Military Aviation Insignia, 1997-8, Installation at Carl Davis Gallery Size: Thirty 8″ Round canvasses…
October 1, 2002 – 3:50 pm
Old Dominion University Art Gallery Norfolk, Virginia August-September, 2002 The Correspondence Series is a partial transcription of the correspondence between American President Kennedy and Soviet Premier Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Words and phrases indicative of the tone and position of either leader have been lifted from the body of the letters…
October 1, 2002 – 3:45 pm
Cafka September 21-29, 2002 Kitchener, Ontario The line between propaganda and advertising is a thin one. Star Power presents the viewer with a series of ads that mix communist iconography and images of hydro electricity. Bold and visually stopping, the images further confuse the question of who is in control of electrical power in Ontario:…
October 1, 2002 – 3:20 pm
September-October, 2002 Sumter, South Carolina Like much of my work, this installation combined interests in advertising, abstraction, and the Cold War. You Are Here saw a large vinyl appliqué placed on the storefront window of an old print shop in downtown of Sumter, South Carolina. Appearing to be an official commeration of some sort, the…
October 1, 2001 – 9:28 pm
The Temple Bar Gallery Dublin, Ireland July 2001 During preparations for an exhibition at the Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin I noticed that some mailed correspondence took considerably longer to arrive than others. As a way of exercising the distance between Ottawa and Dublin, I designed an artwork. Everyday for 192 days I mailed a postcard-sized piece…
October 1, 2001 – 6:27 pm
‘…and then we take Berlin’, Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener, artworks .01 Kitchener, Ontario September, 2001 Along with 17 other artists from Canada and abroad, I was invited to create a site specific work for the City of Kitchener, Ontario. My contribution, Org Chart, placed an organizational chart of the city’s municipal structure onto the windows above…
October 1, 2001 – 5:51 pm
Goethe’s Theory of Colours, Graphed A Statistical Analysis of Goethe’s 1810 Treatise on Colour The Goethe-Institut, 47 Clarence, suite 480, Ottawa, Canada November 19th – December 13th, 2001 Make no mistake, this series is intended to be light-hearted. But in taking what is decidedly wrong-headed approach to the analysis of Goethe’s Theory of Colours, something…
October 1, 2001 – 4:09 pm
Carleton University O-Train Station, 2001 The People’s Plan is my contribution to a series of public commissions for Ottawa’s O-Train. Ad cases at each of the five stations house images created by local artists. I designed two images for Carleton University station and a third for my own amusement. The light box images at Carleton…
October 2, 2000 – 1:08 pm
Pancho Villa, Mexican Revolutionary, as rendered in $254.95 worth of Canadian Tire Money La Torré de los Vientos, Arte-in-Situ Mexico City, Mexico November, 2000 This piece was created for Borders and Boxes, an exchange exhibition between Mexico City and Ottawa on the theme of globalization. As a way of expressing the dynamic between inexpensive consumer products…
October 2, 2000 – 1:04 pm
True Advertising was an exhibition of three billboard images in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in the summer and fall of 2000. The billboards promoted three new products, all of which were a little too good to be true. People wanting to find out more about the products or complain about them were directed to the True Advertising…
October 1, 2000 – 4:15 pm
Singular:Fissions Exhibition at the Diefenbunker Carp, Ontario July-October, 2000 As a way of extending the physical scope of the singular:FISSIONS exhibition and reminding urban dwellers of their vulnerability in the case of nuclear attack, I created a series of Civil Defence posters. Placed in ad cases of bus shelters in downtown Ottawa, the posters reflect…
October 1, 2000 – 4:02 pm
Singular:Fissions Exhibition at the Diefenbunker Carp, Ontario July-October, 2000 The Loose Lips Series is the first of three series I created for Singular:Fissions, an exhibition in a decommissioned Cold War bunker outside of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on the theme of fear and the Cold War. The series employs 1960’s style hard-edge graphics in the creation…
October 2, 1999 – 4:12 pm
Clock Box Big Bens Clock Box installation Clock Box was an installation of wind-up alarm clocks. In the 4′ x 14′ space of terminal, I arranged 81 of my favourite alarms in a single, continuous row along the wall. With the space entirely painted in matte black, one was left with only the dimly lit…
October 2, 1999 – 3:38 pm
Technology, the internet and your next home. October 2- 9, 1999 The LeBreton Flats, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada A project by Artengine and KIT Tapping into childhood conceptions of what the future might hold, Artengine, KIT and local high-tech professionals built a robot designed to explore and settle new territory. The robot, controlled by visitors to the…
October 2, 1998 – 2:52 pm
Now the Cold War can be fun for the whole family! This full colour set of 20 trading cards is not only entertaining, but it’s highly collectible as well. Think of the hours of quality time you and your loved ones will have pouring over these timeless momentos. Postscript In response to CNN’s coverage of…
October 2, 1997 – 4:34 pm
I often employ other people’s selections of colours and patterns as the basis for abstraction, but here the selection is one of discontinuance. The connotations are numerous and it turns these otherwise modernist grids into something mildly foreboding. The series is comprised of 48 small canvasses and some vinyl signage.
October 2, 1997 – 4:34 pm
The paintings of the Bedroom Fighter Series are condensations of what one might find in a boy’s bedroom. They are at once part couch, part airplane wing, part headboard, and part modeling kit. For a boy’s bedroom they are certainly over indulgent; for a gallery they raise male juvenile sensibilities to an almost surreal level….
October 2, 1997 – 4:29 pm
The Armstrong Linoleum Tile pieces are large modernist grids of commercial floor tiling. They take aim at the distilled manners of late modernist abstraction and the starched atmosphere of the contemporary gallery. That said, I enjoy the visual relationship that sets up between the large coloured tiles, the fleck pattern within them, and the plywood…
October 2, 1997 – 4:16 pm
The Bed Sheet Fighter Series combines two trends in my work: the use of found objects in lieu of modernist stylings and the creation of illustrative renderings for boy’s bedrooms. Bed Sheet Spitfire I, 1997 Size: 2(2’7″ x 2’7″) Medium: Bed Sheet and Oil on Canvas Bed Sheet Spitfire II, 1997 Size: 2’9″ x 5’6″…
October 2, 1995 – 4:37 pm
The Birmingham (B’Ham) Suite is a bit of an anomaly. Created in the space of two weeks while on an exchange in England, these simple couplings of found materials and fabric samples, although satisfying as abstractions, lack my usual tongue-in-cheek posture. Each element, be it a jacket, a sweater, or a pee stained mattress cover,…
October 2, 1994 – 5:46 pm
Graham Bolton and Adrian Göllner, 1994 This public artwork was commissioned by the Region of Ottawa-Carleton for the Walkley Transitway Station. Beneath an overpass the history of Ottawa is concisely described through six sets of dates, words and maps. While the subject matter is historical, the appearance is contemporary. The artwork is rendered in sand-blasted…
October 2, 1994 – 5:42 pm
Strathcona Park Ottawa, Ontario Summer, 1994 This piece was part of a City of Ottawa program in which local artists were commissioned to paint wading pools. Having just completed the UN Decoration Series, military service ribbons were fresh in my mind. The coincidence of basic pool colour, lane markings and some UN Peace Keeping ribbons suggested…
October 2, 1994 – 5:36 pm
The works of the UN Decoration Series consist of painted renditions of military ribbons abutted one atop the other to create a 60’s/70’s hard edge composition. These renditions are then presented on museum-like mounts surfaced with Formica. The military duty represented by the ribbons is subjugated to the overall decorative appearance of the piece. Here,…
October 2, 1993 – 5:50 pm
This series of nine paintings combine Scottish tartans and wood panelling, both elements recalling a suburban North American rec room. Employing techniques of both hard-edge abstraction and abstract expressionism, the paintings poke a little fun at high art, especially as these pieces seem more destined for Sears than an art gallery.
October 2, 1991 – 5:55 pm
Once I started building stretcher frames in the studio, my sculptural sense asserted itself and I started stacking the canvasses. At first I stacked one atop another to create a landscape type composition and then I started massing small, bare stretchers to create a wooden Parkay floor-type border on the bottom. The pieces then became more…