Kate Craig

Kate Craig
Born	(1947-09-15)September 15, 1947 Victoria, British Columbia
Died	July 23, 2002(2002-07-23) (aged 54) Storm Bay, BC
Education	Dalhousie University, (1964–1966)[1] University of Victoria, (1966-1970)[2]
Known for	Performance artist, video artist, mail artist

Kate Craig (September 15, 1947 – July 23, 2002) was a Canadian video and performance artist, costume designer and a photographer. She was a founding member of the artist-run centre the Western Front,^[3] in 1973, and artists-in-residence program in 1977.^[4] She supported the video and performance works of many artists while producing her own body of work. She is known for her performances such as "Lady Brute," and for her video works.

Biography

Catherine Shand Craig was born on September 15, 1947, in Victoria, British Columbia.^[5] She was the third child of Sidney Osborne Craig (née Scott) and Charles Edward Craig. Her parents divorced in 1956. In 1960, her mother married Douglas Shadbolt, an architect and brother of the painter Jack Shadbolt.^[6] The family moved to Montreal and then to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Craig attended Dalhousie University starting in 1961.^[7] Craig quit her studies at Dalhousie in 1966 and began attending the University of Victoria the year after.^[8] Craig met the artist Eric Metcalfe at the University of Victoria, whom she married in 1969, as well as artist Dana Achtley who got her involved in the mail-art scene.^[9][8]

Craig and Metcalfe moved to Vancouver around 1971, where, along with friends and fellow artists Michael Morris, Vincent Trasov and Glenn Lewis, and composer Martin Bartlett, and architect Mo Van Nostrand, writer Henry Greenhow,^[10] they bought the space called the Knights of Pythias Lodge^[11] at 303 East 8th Ave,^[1] that became the Western Front in the Mount Pleasant area of Vancouver.^[12][3] Craig was, notably, the only female-identifying co-founder of Western Front.^[13]

Craig and Metcalfe separated in 1973, but continued to work together on collaborative projects. As a couple they worked on projects with Metcalfe, Lewis, Patrick Ready, Margaret Dragu and many others. Craig established and curated the Western Front's Artist-in Residence video program from 1977 to 1993.^[14] In the fall of 1973, Craig met artist Hank Bull and they would begin a relationship.^[15]

In addition to her role as the visual and performance artist, video and film maker, she designed costumes for herself or other artists which were worn in numerous performances.

In 1980 and 1981 Craig and Bull traveled through Indonesia, India, Africa, and Europe, performing Around The World in Over 365 Days. Craig married Bull in 1990 at her parents' home.^[14]

Craig was passionate about her administrative and facilitative duties at Western Front, including vigilant record keeping, and believed it to be an integral part of her artistic practice.^[16] Even after retiring from her position as Curator of Media Arts in 1993, she kept up her involvement with the day-to-day duties at Western Front.^[17] Craig spent the late 1990s preparing for a major retrospective of her work at the Vancouver Art Gallery, entitled Skin.^[18] Craig's "idea of performance was always informed by community and based on thinking life is an art project", even at end of her life.^[19] She died of cancer in Storm Bay, British Columbia, in 2002.^[20][21]

Performance art

Lady Brute

Eric Metcalfe was a fine arts student at the University of Victoria and Craig was drawn to his circle of artists and performers. In 1969, he created a mail art persona called "Dr. Brute", and Craig became "Lady Brute" also known as "Lady Barbara Brute."^[22] Kate Craig's persona, "Lady Brute," emerged in 1970 as a counterbalance to the sexual fixations of Eric Metcalfe's alter ego, Doctor Brute. Describing it as "undoubtedly a collaboration with Eric Metcalfe in the context of their marriage and shared lifestyle," she forged this persona as a distinct expression within their artistic partnership^[23]. This collaborative project created the fictional world of "Brutopia."^[22] Their collection of leopard material filled this world and the characters examined the foibles of western society. In 1972, Lady Brute appeared as the "Picture of the Week" in an issue of FILE magazine and marched in the Victoria Day parade in Victoria, B.C. Her performances were usually informal, happening in the real world rather than on stage. She would attend an opening or a dinner in her leopard regalia and that was the performance. In 1974 she performed "Flying Leopard" in Vancouver at Cates Park, and again on Hornby Island.^[22] In 1975 she produced her first video, "Skins: Lady Brute presents her Leopardskin Wardrobe".^[24] In that same year she and Metcalfe curated the exhibition "Spots Before Your Eyes" at the Western Front and A Space. The concept of camouflage, embodied by the leopard print motif present in both Craig and Metcalfe's works, carries nuanced implications. While Metcalfe's exploration, concealed beneath his persona, delved into uncovering repressed aspects of his identity, Craig's engagement with camouflage takes a different trajectory. Hers involves unmasking socially constructed gender norms through the tactic of masquerade, a notion later theorized by Mary Ann Doane. In Craig's portrayal, we witness a woman embodying and challenging the representation of the female body.^[25] Craig described: "The lady Brutes were definitely image-bound. They still are." ^[23] This could allude, on one side, to the material circumstances of her performances. During a period when technology facilitated the rapid expansion and reach of international mass communication networks, the characters within the correspondence network were inherently tied to images.The statement also suggests the entrapment within identity categories' codes and conventions, which both precede and define us as social objects. Metcalfe and Craig's enactment of identities as Doctor Brute and Lady Brute serves as evidence that identity is "constituted and hence, capable of being constituted differently," highlighting the flexibility and fluidity of identity construction. ^[26] Lady Brute continued to make appearances and participate in exhibitions through the 1970s.

• 1974 – Dr. and Lady Brute attended Hollywood Decadence and Art’s Birthday, Elk's Lodge, Los Angeles, performing with the Brute Saxes.
• 1975 – A guest appearance with the Hummer Sisters in Toronto
• 1975 – Ace Space Show at the Western Front
• 1976 – Dr. and Lady Brute, an evening of film video, slides and performance at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria

Performance groups

In 1974, Craig was a founding member of the "ettes", a women's "postfeminist" performance group.^[27] They performed as the "Peanettes" during Mr. Peanut's campaign for mayor of Vancouver. They also performed as the Coconettes and the Vignettes in 1975. She was a founder of the Lux Radio Players in 1974, a group involved in the collaborative writing and production of radio plays performed for live audiences and broadcast throughout North America over community radio stations until 1977.^[27] She was also a founding member of The Canadian Shadow Players in 1976, performing nationally and internationally until 1986.

Lux Radio Players

• 1974 – A Clear Cut Case at Western Front
• 1975 – A Bite Tonight, Planet of the Whales (for the sendoff party, first Green Peace Anti-Whaling expedition); and The Raw and the Plucked by Mary Beth Knechtel
• 1976 – Habitart, or How to Live with Your Just Desserts, commissioned by the Vancouver Art Gallery for the Habitat Festival
• 1976 – The Thief of Gladbag, commissioned and performed for the Judy Lamarsh Show on CBC Radio, at the Hotel Vancouver
• 1977 – Weather or Naught at the Western Front

Peanettes

• 1974 – performance with the Mr. Peanut's mayoral campaign

Vignettes

• 1975 – Amy Vanderbilt Valentine Debutante's Ball at the Western Front

• Coconettes

• 1975 – Ace Space Show with Lady Brute at the Western Front

Canadian Shadow Players

• 1976 – The Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, a commission by the City of Vancouver for the Habitat Festival, the production tours
• 1977 – The Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
• 1978 – Vis-à-vis, a commission by The Music Gallery, Toronto, touring to Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton, Vancouver and Victoria
• 1982 – Aka Nada, a commission by The Music Gallery, Toronto, touring to Montreal, Ottawa, Berlin, Santa Barbara, Innsbruck, and Lienz, Austria
• 1985 – Corpus Collossum, funded by the Department of External Affairs and the Holland Festival
• 1986 – The Pataphysics of Umbrology at the Centre for Creative Music, Mills College, Oakland, California

Performances

• 1973 – German T.V. Dinner, a performance by Western Front for German TV Network, film directed by Dr. W. von Bonin^[27]
• 1974 – Flying Leopard in Vancouver at Cates Park and on Hornby Island^[27]
• 1975 – Appeared as a Supreme Court judge in Errol’s Errors, Byron Black
• 1976 – 1980 – Guest spots on the HP dinner show, CFRO-FM, Vancouver
• 1976 – Presented solo evening of video, film and slides, Langton Street Gallery, San Francisco
• 1977 – Played drums for The Young Adults, a Vancouver-based punk band
• 1979 – A video of Flying Leopard on view at Video Inn during the Living Art Performance Festival, Vancouver
• 1979 – Performed At the End of the World, in collaboration with Hank Bull at the Robson Media Center, Vancouver
• 1980 – Appeared as a frumpy desk clerk in Colin Campbell's Peachland
• 1981 – Performed La Chaise des Memes, a shadow play in collaboration with Hank Bull
• 1982 – Appeared making a mandala in Ko Nakajima’s video Mandala 82
• 1984 – Appeared as herself in Marshalore’s video installation Album
• 1984 – Appeared as a flute player in Fraser Finlayson’s Come Fly with Sunny Day
• 1985 – Appeared as one of the respirating in Margaret Dragu’s video Breath

Photographic works

• 1977 – Flying Leopard, photo-serigraph on paper 18/24, Collection of the Burnaby Art Gallery^[28]

Solo exhibitions

• January 31 – May 3, 1998, Skin, Vancouver Art Gallery^[29]
• September 21 – October 20, 2002, Kate Craig, Charles H Scott Gallery

Group exhibitions

• February 14, 1989 – May 21, 1989: Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes 1974-1988, National Gallery of Canada
• October 28 – November 1, 1998: Pinholes in Paradise: A Fundraiser for Presentation House Gallery^[30]
• January 24, 2000: Recollect, art from the permanent collection at the Vancouver Art Gallery^[31]

Costumes

1. Lady Brute and Dr. Brute, 1972
2. Shark Fin Swimming Caps, c.1973
3. Rubber Skirt, c.1973
4. Pink Dress, 1975
5. Pink Shirt, 1975
6. Pink Vest, 1977
7. Piranha Farm, 1978^[32]
8. Straight Jacket, 1980^[33]
   • Craig recounted that due to the amount of sewing required to create the costume, the satin acetate became a strong, very tight material.^[34] Craig chose the pink material as she believed that pink clothing was psychologically calming, and sought to go against the prejudice of using the colour pink at the time.^[34]
   • “The straight jacket I designed and made out of hot pink acetate satin. (It was to be of silk but at $32.00 a yard what can a poor girl do!) The camera is stationary and the focus fixed; it is the straight jacket and the single light source that move.” – Kate Craig
   • Like many of her collaborators and fellow artists at Western Front, craig developed personas that brought together multidisciplinary experimentation synthesizing art and life in avant-garde practices. One of Craig’s personas was characterized by the colour pink referencing traditional ideas of femininity identity. In in Vancouver Art Gallery published book, Kate Craig: Skin Grant Arnold quotes Craig “As a woman, why would you associate yourself with pink if you had any kind of feminist point of view? It was sort of retro.” In creating the garment in an opulent pink satin, festooned with a line of double bows down the back, Craig collapsed traditional ideas of femininity into an institutional device for control. A short film work of the same title in 1980 has Craig modeling the straight jacket. Lit with a single spotlight only the garment is visible in an other wise black space. The garment is framed so that the garment fills the frame. Craig rotates displaying how the bespoke items fits her body. The sound consists of Craig, accompanied by a piano, and a base, singing a song she wrote for the film. The work comments on the condition of social expectations on the female body. The opening title frames and the credits at the end are letters and pictograms cut from the same satin fabrid. Lighting by E. Chitty, Music by H. Bull and M. Ready. Hank Bull’s voice is heard of the credits, “Special thanks to the Western Front. And (inaudible) playing the base”

The Western Front

In 1973 Kate Craig and seven other artists (Martin Bartlett, Mo van Nostrand, Henry Greenhow, Glenn Lewis, Eric Metcalfe, Michael Morris, and Vincent Trasov) purchased the former Knights of Pythias lodge hall and founded the Western Front Society.^[35] An artist-run centre, The Western Front became a centre for artistic exploration in many disciplines.^[36] Craig was "acutely aware" of her position as the only woman-identifying co-founder of Western Front and worked to invite other female artists to work there including Margaret Dragu, Granada Venne, Sanja Ivekovic, Gathie Falk, etc.^[37] In 1976, Kate Craig took charge of organizing the Western Front's video production studio. The following year, she established and curated the Artist-in-Residence Video program. Craig's significant administrative role within the society, her leadership in video production, and her prominence as a performance and video artist in Vancouver all contributed to the establishment of a strong presence of local, national, and international women artists at the Western Front. Among the women who have been actively involved with the Western Front over the years are Jane Ellison, Daina Augaitus, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Karen Henry, Annette Hurtig, Susan Milne, Babs Shapiro, Corrine Wyngaarden, Elizabeth Chitty, Margaret Dragu, Mary Beth Knechtel, and Judy Radul. One notable collaboration of Craig's is the performance "Back up," which she co-created with Margaret Dragu. This performance encompasses a variety of activities and narratives, challenging gender stereotypes and exploring new roles enacted by women. Without overtly political themes, Craig and Dragu portray the lifestyles of schoolgirls, pool-hall tough girls, scientists, upper-class debutantes, and domestics^[38]. Craig established and curated an Artist-in-Residence video program in 1977. In addition to creating her own work, she fostered and produced video works with an impressive array of Canadian and international artists, including Stan Douglas, Mona Hatoum, Tony Oursler and Robert Filliou. In 1993 she retired from her position as curator of media arts.^[17]

The Western Front continues to support exhibitions, concerts, workshops, performances and maintains an extensive media archive.

Video works

• 1975 – "Skins: Lady Brute Presents her Leopardskin Wardrobe" (b/w, 60 min.)^[27]
• 1976 – "Still Life: A Moving Portrait" (colour, 30 min.)^[27]
• 1978 – "Backup" in collaboration with Margaret Dragu (colour, 36 min.)^[27]
• 1979 – "Delicate Issue"^[39] (colour, 12 min.)^[27]
• 1979 – "Clay Cove, Newfoundland" (b/w, 20 min.)^[27]
• 1980 – "Straight Jacket" (colour, 7:08.)^[33]
  • Shown at Western Front (1980),^[40] Festival ‘82 (A Celebration of Women in the Arts)(1982), and at Vancouver Art & Artists at the Vancouver Art Gallery (1983).
  • "Straight Jacket" was a collaborative project with Elizabeth Chitty as a lighting workshop. Craig set up the camera in a fixed position, whilst Chitty, with one quartz light, “danced with” Craig during the filming.^[41] Video monitors were set up for the pair to see the results as they “played with light and movement”. The accompanying song was written after filming.^[34]
• 1983 – "Canada Shadow" in collaboration with Hank Bull
• 1986 – "Ma"
• 1989 – "Mary Lou"

See also

Storm Bay (British Columbia)

References

Sources

• Arnold, Grant; Gingras, Nicole; Canyon, Brice (1998). Kate Craig: Skin. Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery. ISBN 978-1-895442-25-0. OCLC 39664005.
• Craig, Kate; Lewis, Glen; Metcalfe, Eric; Morris, Michael; Trasov, Vincent (1979). Art and correspondence from the western front. Vancouver, BC: Western Front. ISBN 978-0-920974-00-1. OCLC 1119113026.
• Craig, Kate; Bull, Hank; Sava, Sharla (1998). "Skin: a conversation with Kate Craig, Hank Bull and Sharla Sava". BOO Magazine (11). Vancouver, BC. ISSN 1203-1801. OCLC 1082719731, 36183683.
• Francis, Daniel (2000). Encyclopedia of British Columbia. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publications. ISBN 978-1-55017-200-3. OCLC 318249993 – via Internet Archive.
• Henry, Karen (2004). "Kate Craig: Living in Character". In Mars, Tanya; Householder, Johanna (eds.). Caught in the Act: An Anthology of Women In Performance. Toronto, Ontario: YYZ Books. pp. 175–181. ISBN 978-0-920397-84-8. OCLC 645826492.
• Scott, Andrew (2017). The Promise of Paradise: Utopian Communities in British Columbia. Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing Co. Ltd. ISBN 978-1-55017-772-5. OCLC 962422372.

Further reading

• Art & Correspondence from the Western Front (Vancouver: Western Front, 1979) ISBN 0920974007
• The F Word (Vancouver: Western Front, 2009) ISBN 9780920974452
• Gingras, Nicole (1998). “Kate Craig Le Mouvement des choses”, Parachute, 90.
• Golden Streams (Mississauga: Blackwood Gallery, 2003) ISBN 0772782075
• Kate Craig: Skin (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1998) ISBN 1895442257
• Luminous Sites: 10 Video Installations (Vancouver: Video Inn / Western Front, 1986)
• Rebel Girls: A Survey of Canadian Feminist Videotapes, 1974-1988 (Ottawa: National Gallery of Canada, 1989)
• Shifts and Transfers: On Some Tendencies in Canadian Video (Ottawa: Ottawa Art Gallery, 2003) ISBN 1895108977
• Under Scrutiny: Video at the Western Front (Vancouver: Western Front, 2003)
• Vancouver: Art and Artists 1931–1983 (Vancouver: Vancouver Art Gallery, 1983)
• Whispered Art History, Twenty Years at the Western Front. Edited by Keith Wallace. (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1993)

External links

• "Kate Craig fonds: Description & Finding Aid" (PDF). Western Front. 2017-06-16. Retrieved 2024-03-13. Archives at Western Front
• "Eric Metcalfe fonds". MemoryBC. Retrieved 2024-03-13.