FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE (2005)

FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE was shown at McMaster Art Gallery in Hamilton , ON, in 2005.

"This was a two-person exhibition with Cathy Busby. The McMaster gallery consisted of two spaces; a larger space entered through a pair of glass doors with a smaller, about one third its size, located directly to the left as one enters. My work occupied all the walls of the smaller gallery along with a portion of the walls leading into and out from it. Cathy Busby's work occupied much of the larger space. 

Starting to the left of the glass doors I painted the text "failure of intelligence" in Superstar Shadow from floor to ceiling. The work was to traverse 10 walls in total. The ten base colours, one for each wall, were painted with the colours that included in their names the word Persian or Arabian. (I selected these from the list of 75 colours that I used in The Middle East (And Beyond) (1991) and this work is included in this ever-growing series of the same title.) 

The text (shadow) applies to wall #1 was painted the base colour of wall #2 and the text on wall #2 was painted the base colour of wall #3 and so on, until the end where the text on wall #10 is in the colour of wall #1. Each colour extends beyond its corner the distance of one foot. In the centre of the small gallery I placed a pile of approximately 20 Oriental carpets that were assembled by the curator, Alexandra Pierce, in response to her call to the University community asking interested persons to lend their carpets for the purpose of exhibiting them as part of my work. 

The work is concerned with the war in Iraq and as I attempt to so in much of my work, it references the particular i.e. the place where it is exhibited and the people who work and live there."

-Garry Neill Kennedy, Superstar Shadow (1984-2005), pg.124