YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND I'LL SCRATCH YOURS IN THE COLONIAL ROOM (2004)

Part of his Ethics 101 series, Kennedy's installation YOU SCRATCH MY BACK AND I'LL SCRATCH YOURS IN THE COLONIAL ROOM  is a large scale wall-text painting exhibited at Articule, Montreal, in 2004. 

Kennedy speaks to the work:

"Susie Major, president of Articule, asked me to do a wall painting that would inaugurate the recent expansion of the gallery's space. I decided to use a Superstar Shadow text piece from my recently developed Ethics 101 series and so had handy a string of words, You Scratch My Back and I'll Scratch Yours, that would be accommodated and (vice versa) by the many running feet of the expanded Articule. But even so, I thought there might still be the need for space to be filled—that's when I thought of colonial colours, an idea that had been with me for some time but never used—hence the inclusion of the Colonial Room—in the title only, as the back-scratching part filled the space. Twenty years ago when I first found the naming of colours (or the naming of any product for that matter), when appearing with regularity, as a significant indicator of cultural biases or historical markers, the word colonial often popped up. It appeared more frequently back then and gradually diminished (but not yet replaced with post-colonial) to the point where it's hard to buy a good colonial colour any more. So the work in a way signifies the decline of colonialism (although, old fashioned as it may seem, few really believe that the U.S. will ever vacate Iraq.) The poster, which was designed by Bob Tombs, also reinforced the colonial idea. The text for the poster was taken from a TLS ad soliciting approval or consent from non-locatable parties—people, institutions, governments, businesses, etc. for permission to use material they own, for the Winston Churchill Archives. I had used this text earlier in a Goodwater installation. Its dense list of names, places and dates reeks of late British colonialism. The work was painted by using the same processes as in Failure of Intelligence...It was installed by a well co-ordinated Articule crew of volunteers and organized by Alain Martin, chief technician at Articule." 

—Garry Neill Kennedy, Superstar Shadow, pg. 92