Unknown Photographer. Natalie Brettschneider and unknown pianist, Banff Centre for the Arts, c. 1951. Archival inkjet print from original negative. Natalie Brettschneider Archive. Acquired with the assistance of Sarah Fuller, Banff Centre, 2012
Carol Sawyer
The Natalie Brettschneider Archive
June 29 - October 29, 2023
Contemporary Calgary is pleased to present Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive.
The Natalie Brettschneider Archive is an ongoing series of photographs, texts, music recitals, that together reconstruct the life and work of a genre-blurring historical performance artist. Brettschneider is fictional, but her story is laced with references to real people and places. The archive starts with her childhood in British Columbia, continues through her participation in the Parisian avant-garde between the wars, and includes evidence of her eccentric music and art-making practice in large and small communities across Canada after her return from Europe in the late 1930’s.
This project is a feminist critique of art historical narrative conventions: it aims to illuminate what gets left out of these stories, and the ways in which photographs are used to support cultural assumptions about gender, age, authorship, and art-making. Brettschneider is a stand-in for all of the female artists who have slipped through the gaps of history only to languish in obscurity, gain notoriety as models or muses of more famous male artists, or perhaps, like Claude Cahun, be “rediscovered.” The archive disrupts photographic hierarchies by mixing snapshots and studio portraits, tiny fragments and advertising paste-ups, fine art and fashion. It is stylistically eclectic, provocative and funny.
The Natalie Brettschneider Archive has been exhibited in galleries across Canada. A monograph on the project was published in 2020, as a collaborative project by the Carleton University Art Gallery in collaboration with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Vancouver Art Gallery, and the Koffler Gallery. Featuring articles by Erin Silver, Assistant Professor at UBC’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, as well as writings by Heather Anderson, Curator at CUAG and lead organizer of the book’s production; Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator at the AGGV; Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator at the VAG; and Mona Filip, Director/Curator at the Koffler Gallery. The book is designed by Judith Steedman, Creative Director of Steedman Design.
Video Tour
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About the Artist
Carol Sawyer (she/her) is a visual artist and singer working with photography, installation, video, and improvised music. Since the early 1990’s her visual art work has investigated the connections between photography and fiction, performance, memory, and history. In 2017 The Canada Council awarded Sawyer the Duke and Duchess of York Prize in Photography. In 2021, she was nominated for the prestigious Scotiabank Photography Award.
Sawyer earned an Honours diploma in photography from ECUAD, and a Masters in interdisciplinary arts from SFU, where she studied acting, music performance, critical theory, and music composition. As a young woman, Sawyer studied classical singing, focusing on opera and art songs, before training in extended voice with Richard Armstrong. She has performed extensively in improvised music contexts and incorporated her singing voice into her artworks in performances and videos. She has released three CDs with her improvising ensemble ion Zoo, and collaborated and recorded with American composer and trombonist Michael Vlatkovich. The much-awaited Natalie Brett Quartet LP was launched in December 2022, with music recorded at the Warehouse Studio, using vintage microphones, plate reverbs, and other historical analog gear.
Presented by
Irene Bakker
Cheryl Gottselig, K.C.
Sharon Martens
Nuvyn Peters
Carol Ryder
Karen Radford
Jan Tertzakian
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