I Killed the Group of Seven

Participating Artists: Marc Adornato, Dane Atkinson, Lily Butter, Chiko Chazunguza, Adam Davidson, Christopher Lea Dunning, Allen Egan, Laura Lynn Eggleston, Bing He, Chance Jackson, Mathieu Laca, Petr Maur, John F. Marok, Dan Martelock, Patrick John Mills, Alexander Putov, Dawn Sandey, Ali Sztepa, Zaneta Pernicova.

Artists that are bored with safe traditional landscapes tired of happy flower paintings, and same old colorful commercial crap art... Artists that push art in a new direction: fresh ideas, cutting edge, emotional, think outside the box, non conformist... will be showing their work in this exhibition.

Featured Sculpture Angela Verlaeckt Clark.

November 11th - Dec 2nd , 2010.

Meet the Artists: November 11th. Thursday 6 - 9 pm. Grand Opening.
Meet the Artists: December 2nd. First Thursday 6 - 9 pm.

Patrick John Mills Contemporary Fine Art Gallery
286 Hinchey Ave. Ottawa. Ontario. Tel: 613 729 0406
Thursday - Saturday 12:00 - 5:00 p.m. (or by appointment)
www.PatrickJohnMills.ca

A common question I am asked is, How did you come up with the title, "I Killed the Group of Seven"?

My mother has been battling cancer for two and a half years and has had six operations. She had to have an emergency operation for she was unable pass food. She had a complete blockage of her intestines. Failure for her to hold down the necessary mediation for the CAT scan result in another emergency operation in less than 48 hours.

I few out to see her. Her home is in Nelson BC. The hospital was in Trail. It is an hour distance between her home and the hospital. So I rented a car. Each morning I would arrive before 10 am. We would talk. I would only stay 45 minutes. Then she would rest.

I would return to her bedside around 1 pm. Again I would only stay 45 - 60 minutes. She would rest.

I would return again a little after 4 pm to my mother's bedside.

While my mother was resting I would go to the car in the parking lot. I would go get lunch in town, and return to the parking lot at the hospital. I would do some drawings, read, think, write poems. While passing time in the rental car I came up with the title, "I Killed the Group of Seven."

After 17 days of not being able to eat, drink, pass food. Her body recovered.

I over heard a conversation between two nurses in the ICU. They were commenting on my mother's intense determination and remarkable high level to rehabilitate her self. I am so proud to have her as my mother.

Something I would like to share with you. I started painting at age twenty. After six years of painting I starting approaching art galleries in the hope to exhibit and sell my paintings. At the time I was living in Vancouver

Finally I felt I had a healthy body of work. I selected my twelve best works out of three to four hundred paintings. Countless letters of rejection.

After two years, every month I visit the art galleries in Vancouver. The art that was being show I considered to be very professional, commercial, well done, but it failed to emotionally stimulate any inner dialogue. The only response I encountered after visiting 12 or more galleries was frustration. The art was just too safe, too happy, too pleasant.

I left to London England. I lived there for six years. I managed to make something happen. When I returned to Ottawa I knew I had to start my own gallery.

I have always been attracted to the Group of Seven. I especially love A.Y. Jackson's paintings and Lawren Harris' work.

In Canada I have found that we have an abundance of culture. But this culture is happy, joyful, juried, family friendly culture.

So I made 120 black and white posters "Call to Artists - I Killed the Group of Seven". Aswell as posted it on the internet.

The response I received was overwhelming. In under a month I received over two hundred postal submissions, countless email submissions from artists all over the world.

This is going to be a great show.

Hope to see you there.

Patrick

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Something wild
raw emotional killer art at Patrick John Mills

Submitted by Wig. by Allison Smith

If you live or work in Ottawa's downtown core, chances are you've been wondering who killed the Group of Seven. Luckily, you needn't worry too much, all the members of the Group of Seven passed away decades ago. Foul play is not suspected. (Their pal Tom Thomson is another story.)

I Killed the Group of Seven is a group exhibition being held at the Patrick John Mills gallery that aims to show cutting-edge contemporary artwork that goes beyond flower paintings. Mills takes issue with artists working in the tradition of the famous Canadian artist group who end up creating work that is commercial and that lacks true expression.

"An artist that really needs to paint, and really needs to create something, doesn't need to go to Algonquin (Park) to do it," says Mills. "They just don't."

This is summed up in one of the only paintings in the exhibition that addresses the Group of Seven directly: a small-scale copy of Tom Thomson's famed painting Jack Pine in which the ground beneath the tree is covered in three-dimensional pieces of garbage. This speaks to the inherent cheapness of commodity art and to how allowing commercial art to drive the marketplace can lead to a prevalence of trash.

The rest of the gallery is packed with a wide range of paintings, most of which take the form of a landscape of some sort. The viewer’s understanding of the landscape, however, must expand to include an abstract blood-and-guts series, a battle scene between armed animals and dying humans, and a meat landscape detailing the dissection of the side of a cow.

"It's about trying to have something new,” Mills says. “It's about trying to have new artists — raw emotional artists that generally don't get shown. There is a huge abundance of culture in Ottawa but it’s all juried. If you go to City Hall or any of the public art spaces, everything is censored. Everything is friendly. Everything is polite. And most artists are pissed off."

After his call for works, Mills received well over 500 submissions from artists in just one month.

"People always respond to catchy marketing," he says. "When I did the standard type of promotional things it worked, but only about one-tenth as well as this did."

Mills says the motive behind his massive downtown postering campaign is to start a conversation.

"People don't even have to go to the art exhibition and they can talk about the idea of killing the Group of Seven and what that means,” he explains. “It's a way to get people stimulated and thinking about art."

Not everyone has been pleased with Mills's aggressive marketing strategies. "I've had a lot of meetings with bylaw officers,” he reports. “They've been coming here frequently for two years. And I get a lot of hate emails."

In the corner of his gallery, Mills reveals two boxes packed with 4,000 new posters ready to be plastered around the city. “Naked Naked Naked,” screams the large black-on-white text in one pile; this will be the title of his next exhibition, scheduled for March.

"I've put out a call for people to donate their bras and underwear," says Mills. "I will be putting up people's underwear all over the city with the posters — it's going to be fucking wild."