Photo with hand drawn outlines marking the placement of original wall lines (1978), Installation, Drawing of Gallery, installation view, graphite on gallery walls, exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1974.
6B Rub Off, triptych detail, graphite on 41.5 x 29.5'' paper, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
6B Rub Off, dark detail, graphite on 41.5 x 29.5'' paper, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
6B Rub Off, medium detail, graphite on 41.5 x 29.5'' paper, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
6B Rub Off, light detail, graphite on 41.5 x 29.5'' paper, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
Untitled, installation detail, graphite on 60 x 60'' canvas, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
Untitled, detail, graphite on 60 x 60'' canvas, Works on Paper and Canvas exhibition, California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, USA, 1975.
Untitled (Summary Drawing) (1977), detail, exhibited in Recent Work, Art Gallery of Ontario, 1978. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography
Installation, Painting of Three Walls, mid-installation view, wall painting, Garry Neill Kennedy exhibition, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge, 1978.
(left) Untitled graphite on canvas series (1975), (right) 6B Rub Off triptych (1975), exhibition view from Work of Four Decades, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS), Halifax, 2000. Photo: AGNS.
Art About Art (1974-1978) (1974)
In the early to mid 1970s when Kennedy was getting back to a studio art practice he began examining and thinking deeply about the materials artists traditionally use: graphite, paint, paper and canvas. He carried out a number of systematic large and small scale studies looking at the normalized parameters of both art materials and exhibition spaces in order to re-thinking their limits.
In his 1975 series, Untitled, Kennedy meticulously drew all the thread lines in three of 60 x 60'' canvas' with graphite; tracing over horizontal and vertical threads, and diagonal warp and weft intersections, as a means of noting and describing the fabric itself. In his 1975 triptych, 6B Rub Off, Kennedy developed a conceptual study to look at the limits of this soft pencil. Within pre-decided parameters, he began drawing with the pencil until the paper could not hold anymore graphite, then he loaded his fingers up with the build up and rubbed them off in the next square, repeating this 'rub off' process with the third.
For his installation works, Kennedy set out to examine the parameters in a given exhibition space to push the possibilities and expectations of both making and viewing art. For Installation, Drawing of Gallery (1974) he used a pencil to trace the edges of the mezzanine gallery at California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) (Valencia, USA). Four years later Kennedy made Installation, Painting of Three Walls (1978) at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG) (Lethbridge, AB), shifting the focus to the wall itself as each of the three walls, painted by a general paint contractor with acrylic artists' colour red oxide, were defined by a margin denoting the end of each wall and the beginning of the next.
Kennedy's systematic innovations in these material description studies expanded the parameters of both the mediums and galleries with which he was working.
Both 6B Rub Off (1975) and Untitled (1975) were shown in Works on Paper and Canvas (CalArts, 1975), Recent Work (Art Gallery of Ontario, 1978) and Work of Four Decades (National Gallery of Canada/The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, 2000). Installation, Drawing of Gallery was created at CalArts in 1974 and Installation, Painting of Three Walls was installed at the SAAG in 1978. Photographs of both installations were later shown in Recent Work as well.