Instances: 30 Years of Modern Fuel and the K.A.A.I.

The exhibition addresses the need to preserve and document the histories of alternative art practices in Kingston at the same time that it questions the accessibility of that past, the reliability of memory, and the very impossibility of presenting a total account, that any history will be partial, selective, and subjective.

Instances​ presents an oral history of Modern Fuel in the Main Gallery space. It was produced following ​Amy Uyeda​’s proposal that called for interviews with artists who had exhibited in the early years of the gallery. Uyeda’s proposal addressed the act of reminiscence in order to create a dialogue between the past and the present, speaking to the on-going process of history-making. ​Brittany Wray​, working as MF’s Special Project Research Coordinator this summer, contacted and conducted interviews with numerous individuals who have been involved with the gallery throughout the years. Representing each year between 1977 and 2006, a selection of clips from those interviews (featuring the recollections of ​Joseph Babcock, May Chan, Jeff Childs, Julie Fiala, Dave Gordon, Bruce Grenville, Sandra Jass, Alana Kapell, Troy Leaman, Jocelyn Purdie, Bill Roff, Gjen Snider, Aida Sulcs, Lisa Visser, Jan Winton​, and ​Lenni Workman​) was produced by Wray, and will be available as an audio tour of Modern Fuel. ​Debbie Hurry​ and ​Kym Watson​, from the Canadian Hearing Society, worked with Modern Fuel to produce a sign language interpretation of the audio tour, and ​Catherine Sullivan​ converted transcripts of the clips into Braille. The presentation of the materials is intended to mark a duality, fluctuating between various modes of accessibility and inaccessibility. Another outcome of this project is a list, now available on Modern Fuel’s website, compiled by ​Kari Cwynar​, of the all the people involved in the organization as staff or board members and an overview of all of Modern Fuel’s past programming.

In the State of Flux Gallery, Modern Fuel will be presenting a program entitled ​“That ’80s Show!”​ featuring selections from the cable television productions made by the organization throughout the 1980s, one series entitled “K.A.A.Eye” produced by the Kingston Video Group, and another later series, “Artwaves.” ​Talie Shalmon​ proposed a focus on these productions, which not only served to enhance public awareness of contemporary art, but also provided a training ground for local artists, journalists and media technicians interested in exploring a different avenue of creative production and distribution. Modern Fuel thanks Queen’s University Archives for assistance in the production of this program and exhibition.