Not your granny's cross‑stitch

Gallery goers mull over the lyrics in Michele Provost's "It's Only Rock and Roll." (Nick Pearce photo)

It’s already a minor urban legend. When the Dal Art Gallery’s new exhibit, Close To You, opened, it generated an impromptu think tank — folks trying to identify the sources of song tidbits embroidered into Michele Provost’s “It’s Only Rock And Roll.”

Close To You – “contemporary textiles, intimacy and popular culture” — is a mixed-media exhibit running until November 25 in the basement of the Dal Arts Centre. It features works by international and intergenerational artists, whose works are linked together under the catch all “pop culture.” Japanese New-Yorker Ai Kijima creates collage-quilts of Spiderman, white rabbits, roses, cats, cops and corsets, out of found objects like handkerchiefs, tablecloths and curtains. Mark Newport knits superhero outfits of his own design, such as the pink and fluffy send-up “Bobbleman.” Scott Kildall’s “Handwork” is a Warholian parody piece, a 21-minute looped video depicting his increasingly frustrated attempts to knit. And it’s Michele Provost who generated all the buzz with her salon installation “It’s Only Rock And Roll” – the satin-stitched pieces feature wildly varied lyrical snippets – from No Doubt’s I’m Just A Girl to David Bowie’s Space Oddity. Her chosen backgrounds range from pastoral to animal-print to nursery-rhyme, her lyrical choices from poetic to political.

Allyson Mitchell's Big Trubs.(Nick Pearce photo)

The gallery’s new curator Peter Dykhuis explains the show is part of a larger “neocraft” exhibition, started at Halifax’s NSCAD and branching outwards.

So, what’s neocraft? “Neocraft is just this phrase that’s been bandied about … ‘neo’ is ‘new’,” Dykhuis explains. “It’s a new craft … or a new way of thinking about craft.”

Mr. Dykhuis has nothing but praise for the varied work of these even more varied artists. Of the super-suits, he grins, “[Mark Newport’s] aping the garments that superheroes wear … [they’re] garments your mother would knit for you. If you were Superman, you’d need a warmer outfit.”

Asked about the campus legend of Michele Provost’s bewildered onlookers, he confirms the story, but adds that there’s a text provided for stumped spectators – I, and by extension presumably everyone else, don’t notice it until he points it out. A white sleeve of paper can be hard to miss when Pink Floyd is yelling off the walls.

He also raves over Allyson Mitchell’s send-up of the Playboy bunny in “Shebaca,” a reclining, bestial nude rendered in fun fur, and her sculpture “Big Trubs,” an exploration of the feminine.

When asked to describe the exhibit, Dykhuis doesn’t hesitate. “Cheeky,” he says. “It’s a twinkle in the eye.” An entry in the guestbook offers another perspective: “Mark Newport’s work is bomb.”

Rebecca Schneidereit is a second-year arts student at Dalhousie.