Gerard Pas, Un Autre Faux Pas (detail), 1978. Performance documentation courtesy of Tobey Anderson.
McIntosh Gallery
1151 Richmond Street North
London, Ontario
Date
Curator
James Patten
London artist Gerard Pas has been a pioneer of disability arts in Canada since the 1970s. He is among the first generation of international artists who expressed their identities as disabled people in order to challenge prevailing attitudes and stereotypes.
Editors' Comment
Recent years in Canada have seen a higher profile, at last, for cripping the arts (including a conference titled with that same phrase). Now, in 2020, this new London, Ontario, exhibition focuses on a practitioner, Gerard Pas, who provides precedent for some of these dialogues. Raised in Holland and active in Canada, Pas, as the McIntosh Gallery states, had an “art practice [that] embodied the intersections of disability, migration, class and the negation of social systems that were at the core of punk aesthetics. Standing in front of the Kingston Penitentiary, his left leg behind his head, he lit a cigarette in defiance and contempt of the penal system’s rule-based authority and emphasis on eroding individualism by controlling and standardizing the body and everyday life.” Most definitely worth experiencing, especially if you have been following disability arts discourses of late. —Leah Sandals, content editor