PHOTO ESSAY
That '60s Show
The National Gallery embraces the flower power decade
By Liz Hodgson
 View of Victoria Hospital, Second Series by Greg Curnoe. Courtesy National Gallery of Canada. |
Greg Curnoe (1936-1992) View of Victoria Hospital, Second Series
1969-1971
Oil, rubber stamp and ink, graphite, and wallpaper on plywood; in Plexiglas strip frame, with audiotape, tape player, loudspeakers, and eight-page text
Greg Curnoe’s View of Victoria Hospital, Second Series combines a number of media and materials, including oil paint, rubber stamp and ink, graphite, even wallpaper. Painted on plywood and framed in a Plexiglas strip, it also comes with an audiotape, a tape player, loudspeakers and eight pages of text. The work plays with several ideas. One is a reference to painting by numbers. “The numbers relate to actual events in Curnoe’s life,” says Leclerc. The coloured figures correspond to every kind of phenomena that Curnoe viewed from his studio window: weather conditions, light effects, birds, traffic. Not all numbers represent actual events. Look in the upper right area of the canvas: you’ll see an American B-58 Hustler bomber being shot down by a Canadian. Curnoe, like many of his Canuck cohorts, was virulently anti-American. Ironically, when Curnoe was killed in a cycling accident, his body was taken to this hospital.
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