TROUBLEMAKERS

Angela Grossmann, New Doll, 2017, Mixed Media on Paper, 35 x 26.75 inches framed.

Angela Grossmann, Blond, 2010, Collage on Paper, 73 x 44.5 inches

Angela Grossmann, Red Hair, Oil on Paper

Angela Grossmann, Beard/Skirt, 2015, Mixed Media on vintage Carte de Visite, 6.5 x 4.25 inches

Angela Grossmann, Tomboy, 2010-18, Collage on Paper, 58 x 29.5 inches framed

Angela Grossmann, Students, 2013, Collage on Vintage Tent Canvas, 66.25 x 42.25 inches

Angela Grossmann, Bath, 2003, Collage on Paper, 77 x 44.5 inches

Angela Grossmann, Dark Garden, 2003, Collage on Paper, 66 x 44.5 inches

Angela Grossmann, Man with Thinning Hair, 1996, 61.5 x 41 inches

Angela Grossmann, Ken, 2018, Mixed Media with vintage Mug Shot, 17 x 12 inches

Angela Grossmann

MCMASTER MUSEUM OF ART

Opening Thursday, January 17th, 6-8 pm

Runs January 17th through March 9th, 2019

Angela Grossmann in conversation with curator Dr. Lynn Ruscheinsky

“Hello Dolly”, Friday, January 18th, 12:30-1:20 pm

The 68 works presented in Angela Grossmann’s Troublemakersaddress the role that performance plays in the transgression of gender and social expectation, the stigma of the unruly body and the disciplinary power of shame.

Throughout her career Grossmann has sought to re-create and re-dress the marginalized, the misunderstood and dispossessed with her strongly “feminist” dynamic mixed media works that intervene in both the physical form and visual experience of subjectivity. Troublemakerscontinues with this projectexploring concepts relating to the “wanting to be” and “not wanting to be” of identity.

The re-make is at the heart of her undertaking.From her large found photo archives, which include vintage mug-shots (retrieved from the trash atthe closure of the BC Penitentiary), risqué images of women posing in cheap motel rooms,sentimental portraits of children, tweens and toughs, her interventions strategically alter their meaning or potential meaning by dislocating them from their “normal” or expected context.Through the snip of her scissors, the deconstruction and reconstruction of body parts, the addition of doll’s clothes, feathers and felt hats, Grossmann blurs the borders between the unconscious and the purposeful and the finished and the unfinished.Certainly the most prominent, most creative and unspoken attraction in Grossmann’s work is her exceptional ability to create believable characters triumphant in their troublemaking.Her passionate provocations imply the possibility of other subject positions and with them the possibilities that the edicts of power are capable of being resisted, rewritten, and even reversed.

The show includes new and past works from Grossmann’s exhibitions:

Mistress Works ( 2017), Models of Resistance ( 2015), Alpha Girls (2006),

The Basement Show (2003), Corrections (2000), and Smaller than Life (1987-ongoing).

McMaster Museum of Art

1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, ON, L8S 4L6