Remembering Rodney Graham
Rodney Graham, one of contemporary art’s most inventive and versatile artists, died on October 22 of this year. He was 73.
While known as a photo-conceptualist, there didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t do, and wouldn’t try. His work in sculpture, video, painting, performance, music and song writing was notable for its wit and humour. His description of Vexation Island, the 9 minute-long video which he featured in the Canadian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1997, is characteristically broad ; he called it “a Hollywood version of a Fluxus performance piece”. Graham’s intelligence was everywhere apparent in everything he did.
Allegory of Folly: Study for an Equestrian Monument in the form of a Wind Vane, 2005, diptych, black-and-white transparency, Plexiglas, aluminum, installed dimensions: 306.3 x 290.1 x 18 cm. Courtesy the artist.
Read Border Crossings’ full 2010 interview with Graham, “Graham Cracklings: Rodney Graham’s Conceptual Energy,” here.
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