An artistically Bleak House

Slean and Upperton show their sinister, peculiar & psychotic sides
By Andrew Horan


(l-r:) Sarah Slean and Louise Upperton


When Bleak House kicks off its two and a half week run at Spin Gallery, it will be the first time Sarah Slean has displayed more than one piece of art publicly.

Canada’s reigning queen of baroque pop succinctly summed up her feelings about this in an email interview, calling it “wonderful”.

Slean recently followed in the footsteps of fellow Canadian chanteuse Feist and relocated to France to start work on the follow-up to her 2004 album Day One, as well as a second book of poetry. Her first, Ravens, also hit shelves in 2004.

Bleak Housewill also feature art by her longtime friend Louise Upperton, the art director for record label Arts & Crafts. Slean wrote that it dawned on them that it would make sense to have their first exhibit together.

The exhibition takes its name from the Charles Dickens novel and fits perfectly with the mood of art that will be on display according to Slean.

“We thought Bleak House worked as a unifying title because of its dark mood and a Victorian connection to the Dickens novel,” she wrote. “My pieces were created in a remote Northern cabin while fighting to save my enthusiasm for life.”

“So, there are themes of rebirth, search and struggle through surreal landscapes, the resulting unearthed nightmares etc., a psyche in transition.”

The pieces she will be displaying were created during the four-month period she spent at an isolated cabin in the wilderness north of Ottawa in the summer 2003. She discovered a thrift store in the basement of a local church and became enamoured with the illustrations from children’s books available for a mere five to ten cents each.

The influence of these pieces can be seen in the artwork she has posted on her website (www.sarahslean.com). There’s a sense of innocence lost in her art. The paintings she created during that time marked the beginning of a new style and “started an avalanche of work.”

“I am partial to the very first ones because they remind me of feeling excited again about creating. That euphoria you get when your heart speeds faster than your brain and it all flows out,” she wrote.

The gallery space will be divided in half with Slean’s art hanging on one wall and Upperton’s on the other. One could say this is a literal divide between Upperton’s dark and grim work and Slean’s seemingly bright and cheerful art. While the darkness in her work is less overt, she felt there are similarities between her art and Upperton’s.

Although their styles may differ, they are both admirers of Tim Burton, Edward Gorey, Edgar Allen Poe and share many other influences.

“We both deal with dark elements like fate or violence or death, but my works are sort of behind a Disney clown mask and Louise's are in full, black, ghostly wonder,” Slean wrote.

Slean recently took her art public after James Baird, the owner of the James Baird Gallery in Newfoundland, told her "if it isn't in a gallery, it's your storage problem."

“I love that,” she wrote. “He's right. You have to create and let go or you become stuck as an artist, you literally start building a fortress around yourself. I've always liked the clean pipes analogy. And I was afraid to exhibit, so that told me, it was probably something I should do.”

Creating art shares certain parallels with writing music according to Slean. She wrote they are both ways of taking ideas and emotions and presenting them to the senses.

“I see music and feel music on a visual level sometimes,” she wrote. “Music is very time-based, and essentially invisible. Art is space-based and makes NO noise whatsoever, in fact, stands blankly before the viewer with only itself as an object/image to negotiate with, it doesn't change or flow through.”

“Often, language is inadequate at achieving the instinctual, visceral understanding to those ideas/emotions that both art and music can provoke.”

Bleak House runs February 3-19 at Spin Gallery (1100 Queen St. W, 2nd floor). A portion of the proceeds from the exhibition will go towards the Royal Conservatory of Music’s “Community School Outreach” program. For more info visit Spin Gallery’s website - http://www.spingallery.ca

Courtesy image