A lens into the mind of Mark Bovey
When home at Christmas in 2006 I found this tome – an industrial age leather bound ledger – become scrap and scribble book – by itself on the bottom of a book shelf at my parents home. I came to learn that the book surfaced when my grandparents auctioned off the contents of their home. My father, who is not a particularly sentimental man, reluctantly decided to hang on to the dilapidated object and what I found has inspired the past three years of work while linking to my ongoing explorations. There are now 17 works in the printed suite, and three have been interpreted for “Last Frontier” as installation with plans for more to come….
Contained inside what seems to be an almost biblical text is the fragmented history of the first 40 years of the 20th century against a back drop of credits and debits overlaid by all sorts of stories and images, scribbles of children practicing math and the pasted scraps of teens longing for objects of desire and collecting early popular culture, war news and religiosity. This time capsule seemed to define my ongoing interest in the polarities of contemporary experience, which seemed oddly relevant within a current context of capitalist decay where the real numbers are buried behind the blur of progress. In addition to this I was interested in giving life to the dying pages by reviving or restoring it. The scale of the book is exactly twice the width and twice the height.
I was moved to add to it after discovering that my great grandmother Almina Pecor-Bovey and subsequently my grandfather John (Jack) Bovey were the primary contributors to the volume after its latency period as an accounting ledger. And so this readymade object became a place to play for me as it was for my ancestors. The question of what to add was at hand, and how to make it art. In these works there are many subtle or not so subtle alterations and rather than demystifying the experience I hope to entice the viewer to read the work from their own experience, to travel the distance between my grandfather’s hand in 1933 and our current collective concern for the planet, between the illusion of an actual book and the virtual reality that technology promotes, between the still information of the printed page and the always moving image of real time experience which should be celebrated while cautiously navigated. The installation is also intended to extend the suggestion of present and future technology, which the bays of the gallery promote.
I also hope beyond any declared meaning that you enjoy the experience of looking at the work first and foremost.
Guest blog post by Mark Bovey, an artist living in Halifax, Associate Professor, Division of Fine Art, Printmaking at NSCAD University. His recent work can be viewed at the Art Gallery of Nova Soctia’s The Last Frontier Exhibit
Photo Credit: Mark Bovey, Bluenose, inkjet from a digital matrix 46.75×35 inches
