Camp Fires: The Queer Baroque of Léopold Foulem, Paul Mathieu and Richard Milette

Camp Fires: The Queer Baroque of Léopold Foulem, Paul Mathieu and Richard Milette will explore the concept of “Camp” as manifested in the works of three important francophone Canadian ceramic artists: Léopold Foulem, Paul Mathieu and Richard Milette.  “Camp” has been identified as a concept, an aesthetic sensibility, and a form of oppositional critique central to gay and lesbian culture.  Camp has been variously understood to include elements of irony, exaggeration, excess, humour, sentimentality, theatricality, artifice, parody and devotion; as a disputed field of appropriation and counter-appropriation and of alternative signifying codes.

Léopold Foulem, Paul Mathieu and Richard Milette have made “Camp” and gay male culture a central part of their respective artistic practice for more than three decades.  Their shared perception that they are outside of the artistic and social mainstream has helped drive them to create an aesthetically powerful and intellectually engaging body of work that is rooted in and critical of conventional art history, ceramic history and contemporary culture.

The exhibition will present a survey of the artists’ oeuvre spanning their careers, and will address three sub-themes essential to understanding their work: Subversive Historicism; Clay as Concept; and Queer Identity and Sexuality.  Camp Fires will deploy the concept of Camp, not as a fixed attribute of specific objects, but as an inherently political Queer signifying practice, strongly associated with performative identity and with subversive appropriation.  Its particular relationship with the Baroque and with Queer oppositional adaptation of aristocratic modes of presentation and perception will be explored in the main curatorial essay.

There will be a catalogue in French and English and video interviews with the artists in English with French surtitles for presentation in the exhibition gallery and on the museum or gallery website.  Labels and didactic panels will be produced in French and English.

May 29 to September 24, 2014
Gardiner Museum
111 Queen’s Park, Toronto