Rodney Graham
Since the early 1980s, Canadian Rodney Graham has shown himself to be a distinctive artist whose diverse practice encompasses many things – a painter, photographer, sculptor, video-maker, actor, performer, producer, historian, writer, poet, sound engineer and musician. Defying easy categorisation, his works are informed by psychology, literature and story-telling. His cyclical narratives are layered with puns and references as various as Lewis Carroll, Sigmund Freud, Raymond Roussel and Kurt Cobain, and are all infused by a sense of humour that betrays Graham’s place in the post-punk scene of late 1970s Vancouver. Avant-garde experimentation has always informed Graham’s practice demonstrated here with a survey of film works and an important presentation of photographic light boxes.
Astute, contained and profound, Graham’s work has a strong contemporary relevance. This major exhibition includes work made from 1993 through to the present, and is organised in partnership with the Baltic Centre, Gateshead.
