COPY - CUT - PASTE on view in the Members’ Gallery, 2023.
COPY - CUT - PASTE was an exhibition that includes 44 UBC Okanagan painting students and their instructor, David Doody. Together they explored how Google Image Search and the ‘meme’ culture have impacted imagination, image making and storytelling in the post-digital era.
Hito Steyerl's essay, ‘In Defence of the Poor Image’ was used as a reference point to guide the students’ search for value and meaning within the rising tide of imagery that subsequently submerges and defines contemporary culture.
Individuals were asked to collect 12 images from the internet. This collection of 528 digital images were then pooled together and rendered real by printing on paper. Students were then tasked to sift through the material of flotsam and jetsam of ‘poor images’ for a glimmer of inspiration.
“Search for things wild, weird or whacky, search for things serious, scientific or sad…These images can be sampled from anywhere online whether photographic, digitally animated or artistically rendered sources. These images can be sampled from 90’s television shows, classic movies, famous paintings, AI generators or your favorite Memes…”
Working intuitively by remixing these images and relying on the nature of collage, the group discovered dynamic constellations of narrative emerging from the shared pool of sampled images. Over 300 new and unexpected compositions were generated through this process.
In the continued spirit of collaboration, and to further question notions of authorship and originality of the “poor images” of the internet, students were encouraged to choose any one of the group's 300+ collages as the basis to create a painting. Over the next three weeks students were guided through the painstaking process of constructing their paintings using thin veils of acrylic washes on watercolour paper.
Once the painting process was complete, students turned back to Hito Steyerl's written wisdom and compiled a series of fragmented excerpts from the text. The students worked in tandem with the UBCO technicians and started experimenting with decoupage as they used a laser to directly cut out sections from their paintings. Textual voids were carved away from their painting compositions and once again new and unexpected sequences of value and meaning were born.
COPY - CUT - PASTE was on view in the Members’ Gallery from March 24 - April 22, 2023.
COPY - CUT - PASTE featured work by Audrey Allan, Serena Arsenault, Eunis Au, Abigail Wiens, Amy Bugera, Chandler Burnett, Faith Bye, Taylor Carpenter, Gabe Cipes, Paige Coleman, Emily Cornwall, Ella Cottier, Nadia Fracy, Cadence Gau, Hailey Gleboff, Elly Hadju, Asahna Huges, Stephen Ikesaka, Chloe Jenkins, Bella Jiang, Lauren Jonhson, Rhea Kjargaard, Peyton Lynch, Connor McCleary, Sarah McNeil, Katya Meehalchan, Mariah Miguel-Jaun, Carrie Mitchelle, Karina Nardi, Grace Nascimento-Laverdiere, Kate Nicholson, Dama Ozkalay, Julia Pearson, John Prendas, Anna Semenoff, Nick Tai, Fredrik Thacker, Katya Torin, Delainey Vogan, Christine Wakal, Odelle Walthers, and David Doody