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On the Block 2: Jess MacCormack for ARTSIDA

More : ACCM, ARTSIDA, Jessica MacCormack, Work Equals Worth Equals Innocence

by RG - 2B staff on March 6, 2012

Jess MacCormack donates to ARTSIDA for the first time this year with a haunting watercolour from her recent series. Her socially engaged and critical queer work will make a heartfelt addition to the auction’s forth edition April 7th at the Musée d’art contemporain.

On April 7 2012, AIDS Community Care Montreal (ACCM) will host the fourth edition of ARTSIDA, their extravagant art auction to benefit one of the few AIDS service organizations in Montréal to keep growing in recent years.

2Bmag got a special sneak peak at two perhaps less well-known visual artists who have donated work for the auction that promises to be one of the biggest charity art events of the year. Jessica MacCormack and François Escalmel represent two very different approaches to why artists make images, but their authenticity and penchant for the enigmatic will make you look twice when they go on the block at the Musée next month. Watch for these works at the ARTSIDA auction this year!

"Poppy Cat Head" (2011, detail) by Jess MacCormack

Poppy Cat Head (Watercolour, 2011, detail)

Jess MacCormack

Working with animation, video, painting, drawing, installation and intervention, Jessica MacCormack’s work has the look and feel of outsider art, even though she currently teaches in the Fine Arts Department at Concordia University. MacCormack is specifically interested in “how modes of violence are perpetuated collectively through popular narratives, concepts of justice and denial of accountability.”

Frequently engaging with communities and collectives, her practice eschews individual authorship in favour of collaboration. This has included an ongoing commitment to working with women and youth who are in conflict with the law, through the creation of art projects in prisons as well as at numerous centres that support marginalized people.

While her video work may be known to some from festivals like Image + Nation and Berlin’s Entzaubert, her watercolours are a rare extrapolation from her animation work, and a testament to a troubled, but deeply caring soul. Her blog, workequalsworthequalsinnocence.wordpress.com is a testament to victims of police abuse that grew out of a project for last year’s VIVA! ART ACTION festival with Galerie La Centrale. The action and web-based project questions how mental health challenges can be construed as risk, and the dangers of police brutality.

ARTSIDA: Sat. April 7, 2012 at the Musée d’Art contemporain de Montréal (185 Sainte-Catherine Ouest). The cocktail @ 6pm, auction 7pm, followed by a raucous after-party in the Musée’s Main Hall featuring the beloved DJ Robert de la Gauthier. For the full list of artists and works on the block, check out www.artsida.org