Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White, detail, floor to celling wall-text painting in superstar shadow font, Cold City Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Photo: Cold City
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), detail, room painting and installation in Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings and Related Works, 1974-1995, Owens Art Gallery (OAG), Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, 1996. Photo: OAG
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), detail, room painting and installation in Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings and Related Works, 1974-1995, Owens Art Gallery (OAG), Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, 1996. Photo: OAG
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), detail, room painting and installation in Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings and Related Works, 1974-1995, Owens Art Gallery (OAG), Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, 1996. Photo: OAG
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), detail, room painting and installation in Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings and Related Works, 1974-1995, Owens Art Gallery (OAG), Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, 1996. Photo: OAG
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), detail, room painting installation in Work of Four Decades, National Gallery of Canada (NGC), Ottawa, 2000. Photo: NGC
Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room), entry way detail, room painting installation in Work of Four Decades, National Gallery of Canada (NGC), Ottawa, 2000. Photo: NGC
Conrad Black and Bob White (1988)
In 1988, Conrad Black and Bob White is exhibited for the first time at Cold City Gallery (Toronto). Using his variation of the Superstar Shadow font on the flat white gallery walls, Kennedy painted the names of these two public figures—Conrad Black, a conservative newspaper publisher and Bob White, the President of the Canadian Auto Workers union—in the colours of their respective surnames. A folder containing Black and White's—as well as Kennedy's—biographical information accompanied the exhibition.
In 1996, Kennedy installed the Conrad Black and Bob White (Reading Room) for his exhibition Garry Neill Kennedy: Wall Paintings & Related Works 1974-1995 at the Owens Art Gallery (Sackville, NB). There, he staged a sparsely furnished lounge room with one half entirely in white and the other in black and each persons biographical information placed on the wall on their side of the room. Another version of this room was subsequently staged at the National Gallery during Kennedy's retrospective, Work of Four Decades, in 2000.
Kennedy speaks to the details of the initial Cold City installation:
"The names Conrad Black and Bob White were painted on the walls — from floor to celling. They were painted in the altered Superstar Shadow typeface that I used in the two Garry Neill Kennedy: Superstar Shadow works...The painting commenced at the entrance (left) with the word "Conrad", then travelled throughout the office, reception area, exhibition —walls, and continued across the windows until it ended near the door —to the right, as one enters. "Black" was painted in gloss black on the flat white walls and "White" was painted in gloss white on the flat white walls. Between their names (after the "K" in Black and before the "B" in Bob), I placed on the wall the announcement folder for the show which contained the Black and White entries from The Canadian Encyclopedia. I was assisted in its painting by John Kennedy. Loretta Yarlow was the Director of Cold City."
—Garry Neill Kennedy, Wall Paintings & Related Works 1974-1995, pg. 147