Linda Duvall is a visual and media artist who works and presents within gallery contexts, on the web, and within defined public communities. Linda Duvall’s projects focus on how individual identities are formed and revealed within a societal context. Her work often mimics the fieldwork of sociologists as she collects oral histories and records ordinary conversations in order to discern meanings hidden in mundane and familiar language. Her work consistently addresses public knowledge and presentation posited in contrast to the more intimate and possibly private material that is initially hidden.
Duvall's projects address the subjective constructed nature of narratives. She starts by setting up conditions or a framework and then lets the process unfold. She puts strangers together in a situation for interaction. This interaction with its surprises and tensions, rather than any final resolution, is her primary point of focus. She looks for ways to engageaudiences in this interaction.
Compound Arts
Linda Duvall is also Acting Director of Compound Arts, an evolving curatorial and conversational project, based in the rural area of Montrose located 60 KM south of Saskatoon, along the South Saskatchewan River. The site is run as a productive small holding and working farm focusing on fruit-bearing plants such as haskap, raspberry, rhubarb, plum, apple, hazelnut and sour cherry.
This is paired with an ongoing programme of events, projects, and community activity that develop the contemporary arts in alternative directions, focusing on the rural and performative experience.
Compound Arts is centered on the development of new contexts and functions for contemporary art, particularly concentrated on how rural environments can contribute to an emerging dialogue around intangible cultural production and social practice.
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Living in 10 Easy Lessons
An amazing essay by cheyanne turions at
http://www.gallery44.org/sites/default/files/Livingin10EasyLessons_essay%20by%20cheyanne%20turions.pdf
See the article by Leah Sandals in the Toronto Star on Thursday Nov 1
http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/visualarts/article/1279778--living-in-10-easy-lessons-by-linda-duvall-and-peter-kingstone-at-gallery-44-review
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Linda Duvall is an invited participant in :
DECOY
July 06 to August 06, 2012
Reception: Sunday, July 29, from 7:00 - 9:00pm
Affinity Gallery, Saskatchewan Craft Council
A decoy can be a person, device, or event meant as a distraction, to conceal what an individual or a group might be looking for. Decoy will feature work created by Emma 2012 International Collaboration participants and invited artists that conveys the notion of Decoy.
Curated by Michael Hosaluk.
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Linda Duvall's video Tumbleweed was included in
ISEA2012 Albuquerque: Machine Wilderness
at The Albuquerque Museum of Art and History
on Wednesday Sept. 19th, 2012
Albuquerque, New Mexico
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Linda Duvall's video Tumbleweed was included in
Currents: Santa Fe International New Media Festival
June 22 - July 8, 2012
in Santa Fe, New Mexico
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Linda Duvall and Peter Kingstone presented at the
Open Engagement Conference
in Portland Oregon
in May, 2012
For the panel at Open Engagement Duvall and Kingstone presented a few brief clips from the project Living in 10 East Lessons. They initiated a discussion concerning implications of this project.
Areas of discussion included the significance of the artists reversing the traditional teacher-student role, and in the process opening up areas of knowledge that are often undervalued or not available to a broader public. Other areas included the implications of one of the artists being physically visible in each interview, and the reasons behind not identifying the lifestyles of the participants.
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Linda Duvall participated in the
collaboratively-structured artist residency
d’Clinic - Mixer
in Lendava, Slovenia in September 2012
This residency involves working in a studio setting in which one is paired with others from very different cultural and artistic backgrounds. The residency focuses on process and research with a public presentation at the end, including a published artist’s book that highlights the various stages of research and production during the residency.
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Linda's video Tumbleweed was included in the screening
SPANE Performance Art in the Natural Environment
at Artscape Gibralter Point, Toronto 2011
and in PAVED Media Arts Members' Screening
Saskatoon 2011
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Linda presented at ISEA 2011 Istanbul
Her talk was entitled
CTRL – O Confronting Barriers to Communication in Interdisciplinary Projects
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Linda presented at the
International Sociology Conference in Vancouver in July 2011
on the panel
Speech Acts: Conversation and collaboration in research-based visual art and media art practices (Canada & UK)
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"Duvall’s work is as much about sociology and anthropology as it is about art. She takes, however, the role of ‘rebel sociologist’ … her interest is less in scientific methodology than in constructing work that fascinates in its final presentation."
Linda Jansma 'Sanctioned Deception' in catalogue Linda Duvall Enough White Lies 2005
"Linda Duvall engineers temporary relationships between strangers. Her social engagement art works bring people together to share stories across divides of culture, class and region. She uses artifice to encourage authenticity. These initially awkward meetings soon melt barriers to reveal a common humanity. The projects are fuelled by a faith in the healing properties of purposeless dialogue. Success is measured by feelings of quality engagement rather than the achievement of some end. The work is goalless but not guileless. The encounters are not ephemeral; Duvall records some of the sessions, others can be eavesdropped, so we can marvel at the richness of interpersonal discourse."
David Garneau 'Engaging Strangers' in catalogue Linda Duvall Where were the Mothers? 2009
