Show Me Your Fish And I'll Show You..: James Prior "Fishing With John James" at Skol Gallery

"Little fish. big fish. Swimming in the water."

PJ Harvey






Last week I saw a show by an artist I had never heard from (I think) named James Prior at Skol Gallery (Montreal), and which was called "Fishing With John James".



It looked like a series of different pieces but apparently,
the artist meant the whole to be an installation, and so
didn't title anything.


Here in details are the seven "stations" that were included:


- One large portrait of an old fisherman sitting in a landscape.


- Another large, quite pittoresque, photograph of same man walking along a woody coast.


- A third large photograph of the inside of a fisherman's camp.


- A full wall patch of at least 60 photographs of different sizes and resolution, showing fishermen holding their fish captures, with related images (the more you watch this, the more you realize the photographs often represent the same people).


- A large collector's glass cabinet showing items pertaining to fishing activity, from a boat motor to a small canoe oar, to fishing lines to a plethora of fish hooks of all sizes and origins.


- A video installation of 6 or 7 "besided" monitors showing loops of boat motors eitheir in full stop or motion.



What to make out of all this?


Here are key terms: Male | Fish | Identity | Stereotype | April's Fool



The images of a dozen men showing their fishes should already speak for themselves. There is something homoerotic about this work, though I'm not certain this was the artist's intention. But what was the most interesting function of this exhibit, is the way it fabricated narratives from the adjointment of personal photographic archives from a real hardcast fisherman (named George Riddell), with a few "artificial ones", specifically shot for this show.


Throughout this assemblage we are welcomed to create in our mind the ideal
identity of a non-existing character, John James: the ultimate, the absolute,
Mr. Fisherman.



Most, if not all, of the photographs are pictures of our original fisherman and his friends, transformed here into archetypes of identity. Archetypes not only of men, but also of photography, since all these photos represent different periods of recent history.


How did these "real men" managed to stay so exact to themselves throughout all these years ?

What is this portrait on manhood that Prior is proposing us, and how do we respond to
it, especially now that fishes are momentarely magnified , thanks to art, as extentions of masculine identity?


By insisting on this male bonding activity of photographing fish captures as being a common expression of masculine pride, Prior seems to aim at unleashing the hidden mechanisms at the bottom rock formation of male chauvinism. The question is open-ended as far as what fishes may represent symbolically, either as objects connotative to sexuality or linking back to an idiom of self-foolishness.

You are free to decide in the end: men are either predators or prey, of themselves...



Please invite your dad or uncle to this
show (if it settles iself somewhere else). It was really meant for them. I dare say that this exhibit hits so good that it will never make you see the activity of fishing the same way again.


The hooks in the cabinet, sort of installed in the shape of an ancient natural history curio, all looked like over-used tools representing as many failed attempts at capturing gender identity: let it all hang out sort-of drill. Or was it that it represented how the false images that replaced it are so firmly pierced in?


The outboard motors on the video monitors seem to be fueling on testosterone, fighting for some pride concourse: which can rumble the best or the longest. To me they looked like video-fountains, and I surprised myself to find their arched panoramic view quite relaxing.


There is nothing to say against this exhibit, apart from
the fact that I feel I'm gonna have to wait that museums
buy some of the works to get their titles right.


The only minus to the A tag that Chris Zeke himself gave to this show, is that it's not exactly the first time that the theme of fishing and male identity is brought up together.


I can think of various loose examples, but one worthy of mentioning is the maritime artist whom I'm so forgetting his name right now, and have no idea what is up to these days, but used to play out themes of gay identity with many campy works using mediums and images related to fishing culture. He had a show at B-312 in the late 90's. It will come back to me soon (this part is pending to be edited).


But Prior's work is first and foremost a terrific essay on the photographic territory
of identity.



Cedric Caspesyan
centiment@hotmail.com


James Prior
"Fishing With John James"
14 January - 12 February 2005
Skol Gallery
372, rue Sainte-Catherine Ouest
espace 314