Redacted (The Colvin Memos) (2010)

For the exhibition Giving Notice: Words on Walls (Dalhousie Art Gallery, 2010) Kennedy created two wall-text paintings: his large scale NEW!—a subsequent iteration of his NEW! canvas paintings exhibited in TWO NEW WARS (Emerson Gallery, Berlin, 2006)—and Redacted (The Colvin Memos). 

In Redacted (The Colvin Memos), Kennedy painted a large scale version of an email memo written by Canadian Diplomat Richard Colvin which reportedly exposed the torture of Afghan detainees, however, the version released to the public was too heavily redacted to reveal any incriminating or pertinent information. In Redacted, Kennedy re-employs the colour scheme from his 2007 work THE COLOURS OF CITIZEN ARAR, which references to the torture of Mahar Arar during his detention in a Syrian prison. The colours Kennedy selected nod to the colours Arar referred to in a 2006 government inquiry: the orange of his prison jumpsuit, the black of the electrical cable used for torture, the red of his skin after the abuse, and the yellow and blue bruises which followed. Redacted (The Colvin Memos) was installed in a small alcove in the Dalhousie Art Gallery, encircling the viewers with fragments of text and this weighted field of colour. 

Giving Notice: Words on Walls was curated by Peter Dykhuis and also included work by Brad Buckley, Cathy Busby, Gordon Lebredt, Micah Lexier & Christian Bök, and Lawrence Weiner. A catalogue with essays by Peter Dykhuis and Jessica Wyman is available from the gallery.