Œuvre d'art public
Loose Lips Series
Artwork creator(s):
Göllner, Adrian
Text author(s):
Göllner, Adrian
Installation year:
2000
Remarks on location:
Salles (402 A), (161 A), Salle des machines/Machine room, clinique médicale
Description:
Affiches lumineuses avec des messages d'alerte et des consignes de sécurité.
Text of the artwork:
[Affiche 1 : Bunkroom, niveau 4]
SPOT THE RED
Close ranks on communist infiltrators.
[Affiche 2 : clinique médicale/medical centre, niveau 4]
They walk among us.
The communist threat is real.
[Affiche 3: Salle des machines/machine room, niveau 1]
Them in Europe. Us in Europe.
Tactical nuclear weapons keep Europe free.
Artwork theme:
Guerre froide
History:
L’exposition Fissions singulières présente le travail de treize artistes contemporains dans le bunker antinucléaire que le gouvernement canadien avait fait construire dans le plus grand secret à Carp, petite localité située à 35 km à l’ouest d’Ottawa, à la fin des années 1950. Cet abri souterrain devait servir de centre de communication et de quartier général pour le gouvernement canadien et la défense, advenant une attaque nucléaire sur le continent. L’édifice de quatre étages, entièrement souterrain, n’a jamais été utilisé pour sa fonction première, même si l’ensemble était parfaitement opérationnel et fut maintenu comme tel par la Défense nationale jusqu’en 1994. Il a été depuis déclaré site national historique et sa revitalisation a été entreprise, sur une base bénévole, par un groupe de citoyens de la région.
Event date(s):
2000 Dimensions:
Height:
0.86m
Width:
0.68m Note(s):
I created three different series for the exhibition: the Loose Lips Series, the Hygiene Series and the Civil Defence Series.
The Loose Lips Series is the first of three series I created forSingular: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 of faux anti-communist propaganda. Placed at crucial junctures in the bunker, the back-lit posters cautioned bunker personnel that enemy spies are lurking. Most visitors took them to be original to the facility.
My artworks address particular contexts. Given a billboard on which to work, I designed mock advertisements; allowed to work in a military bunker, I made some propaganda. When faced with a conventional gallery space, I am inclined to play off the stylings of contemporary art. Within the above however, there are constants. I have an abiding interest in abstraction and the history of the last century. Of specific interest are those points where design and art cross, i.e.: the Bauhaus, the Soviet Avant-garde, and American industrial design of the 1930s. Stylistic references to these movements are referred to, coyly, to enhance my investigations into the Cold War, architecture and our consumer society. My intent is to satirize, but I hope I do so with a degree of subtlety. By closely emulating graphic styles and employing commercial production techniques, I am able to hide my own hand and create images that defy easy interpretation as art. The results are mildly subversive.
Adrian Göllner (2008). Adrian Göllner: Loose Lips Series.
Artist's biography:
Adrian Gollner Document(s):
Syndicate
