PRESS RELEASE FOR T O C I A

Antonia Lancaster Gallery presents the September show t o c i a
Opening reception Saturday, September 6th, from 2 - 5pm
80 Spadina, 5th floor, Toronto.

t o c i a

A 2 installation show by Toronto artists
Tina O. Clark and Isaac Applebaum
Director & curator: Antonia Lancaster

German artist Tina O. Clark has been working with both sound and sculpture installation since the early 1980’s. Her work has been exhibited in Germany, Denmark and Canada and is part of the collection of the Kunsthalle Bremerhaven, Germany. Her permanent installation ?Umwandlung? (?transformation?) at a market square in Bremen includes golden cones on four streetlight poles .

In 1992 O. Clark received a grant to live and work in Paris, France at the Cite Internationale des Arts . Her installation “Zwischenzeit” (“in the meantime”) was part of the International Sound Sculpture Symposium “Eye & Ear” in Toronto in 1999.

O. Clark’s installation at the Antonia Lancaster Gallery titled “Unspoken” includes wishbones, objects, large drawings, and sound. Tina O. Clark has lived in Toronto since 1995.

Tina O. Clark
e-mail martina.oehmsen-clark@sympatico.ca


Isaac Applebaum has been a photo installation artist exhibiting nationally
and internationally since the early 1980’s. Many of his projects have been involved with the conditions of war/renewal and racism.

For the Antonia Lancaster Gallery show this new work, while still reflecting on previous themes, approaches them through media previously unused by him and in this way brings new emphasis and ideas to the work. This untitled mixed media piece incorporates sound, a light - moving picture, dust and objects to investigate aspects of our socio-political condition.

Isaac Applebaum
e-mail: i.applebaum@sympatico.ca

WISHBONE HISTORY
Pre-400 B.C., Etruria

Two people, making several wishes, tug on opposite ends of the dried, v-shaped clavicle of a fowl. For the person who breaks off the larger piece, a wish comes true. The custom is at least 2,400 years old, and it originated with the Etruscans, the ancient people who occupied the area of the Italian peninsula between the Tiber and Arno rivers, west and south of the Apennines.

A highly cultured people, whose urban civilization reached its height in the sixth century B.C., the Etruscans believed the hen and the cock to be soothsayers: the hen because she foretold the laying of an egg with a squawk; the cock because his crow heralded the dawn of a new day.

The Hen Oracle

People would draw a circle in the sand and divide it into 24 segments, the number of the alphabet of the time. Grain would be placed into the segments and a chicken placed in the middle of the circle. A question would be asked, and the bird would pick the beginning letter of the answer. (“What shall be the name of my child?”)

After this oracle game the sacred fowl was killed, the bird’s collarbone was laid in the sun to dry. An Etruscan still wishing to benefit from the oracle’s powers had only to pick up the bone and stroke it (not break it) and make a wish; hence the name ‘wishbone’.

For more than two centuries, Etruscans wished on unbroken clavicles. We know of this superstition form the Romans, who later adopted many Etruscan ways. Roman writings suggest that the practice of two people’s tugging at a clavicle for a larger half sprang from a simple case of supply and demand: Too few sacred bones, too many people wishing for favors.

Tina O. Clark, 2003
For the installation ‘ Unspoken’