Critical Writing Index

I'm Not Myself At All

by Sarah E.K Smith

Kingston: Agnes Etherington Art Centre, 2015

This catalogue marks the first major exhibition of Allyson Mitchell and Deirdre Logue’s collaborative work. An exuberant revision of feminist and queer horizons, I’m Not Myself At All features new video, uncanny oversized soft-sculpture dolls, wallpaper, crochet spider webs, needlepoint, drawings, and papier-mâché facsimiles by Toronto-based artists Deirdre Logue and Allyson Mitchell. At turns playful and aggrieved, the artists sort through discarded feminist pasts, flirting with what curator Sarah E. K. Smith identifies as “potentiality, belonging and representation.” The work represents the artists’ longing for a queer future, presenting a vision of an idealized and magical—although hard-won—possible world. Through giant paperbacks and green-screen performances, the artists summon key feminist and queer texts into conversation with familiar rhetoric and everyday life. Essays by exhibition curator Sarah E.K. Smith and queer theorist Heather Love elaborate upon a contemporary predicament that the artists mark by both its sticky setbacks and momentous imaginaries.[taken from AEAC website]

ITEM 2015.059 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Deirdre Logue

Allyson Mitchell