Remembering Names, detail of Kennedy writing names, temporary installation, CSA Space, Vancouver, 2018. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Remembering Names, detail of Kennedy writing names, temporary installation, CSA Space, Vancouver, 2018. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Remembering Names, exhibition detail, temporary installation, CSA Space, Vancouver, 2018. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Remembering Names, detail of Kennedy writing names, temporary installation, CSA Space, Vancouver, 2018. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Remembering Names, exhibition detail, temporary installation, CSA Space, Vancouver, 2018. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography.
Saint Catharines Saint's Basket Ball Champions, print detail, Kennedy remembering names of his old basketball team, Vancouver, 2018.
Remembering Names at NY Tech, page detail, New York, 1990.
An attempt to recall the names of the people I met during my visit to Cal Arts, Valencia, California, from Jan through March 1974, scan detail, 1974.
List of Names, scan detail, Saint Catharines, ON, 1972.
Remembering Names Montreal, scan detail, Montreal, QC, 1969.
My Fourth Grade Class, Kennedy remembering names of his class mates from Côte-des-Neiges School (Montreal, QC, 1946), 55.9x76.2cm lithograph print (edition of 50), 1972.
Page. 141, page work, Studio International Journal of Modern Art Volume 184 Number 948, New York, October 1972.
Remembering Names (2018)
Remembering Names was exhibited at CSA Space in 2018. For this installation, Kennedy returned to his long-time practice of remembering names at a point in his life when he was living with dementia and actively trying to remember as much as he could. Over a several week installation period, Kennedy sat in the gallery, accompanied by a family member or a friend, and “remember[ed] the names of everyone I ever met," writing them in pencil on the wall of the gallery. Alongside with this installation hung Saint Catharines Saint's Basket Ball Champions, a photograph of Kennedy's high school basket ball team over which he'd written the names of the players.
Remembering names was an ongoing practice for Kennedy dating back to the early 1970s. Over the years he would create lists of people from places he used to live (St. Catharine's and Montreal) or after stints away from home (NY Tech and Cal Arts). In 1972, he made My Fourth Grade Class, a series of lithographs remembering names of his elementry school class mates from Côte-des-Neiges School (Montreal, QC, 1946).
While grounded in a memory work, for Kennedy, this practice was also a means of taking stock and acknowledging those around him. In 1972, when asked to write a piece for Studio International Journal of Modern Art about innovative education practices in Nova Scotia, rather than describe it in a narrative, Kennedy created Page. 141. This page work consisted of a dense list of the entire Nova Scotia College of Art and Design community including maintenance workers, students, faculty, visitors, and administrators.