Andrew O'Malley's Sky Spectrum in the Phenomena exhibit (Photo courtesy Andrew O'Malley).
Artists who use technology in their work not only have a tough time finding spaces to display their work in Ottawa, they also have a tough time selling it, said artist Andrew O’Malley.
In fact, the CUBE gallery in Westboro is one of the few places in Ottawa with the ability to display works like O’Malley’s, which it did Feb. 1-27 in an exhibit called Phenomena.
O’Malley’s piece, called Sky Spectrum, is made out of acrylic, LEDs, custom electronics and uses a camera and web-based software to analyze the sky’s red, blue, and green colour components every few minutes, said Don Monet, curator of the CUBE gallery.
O’Malley said he had wanted to work with weather for a long time. It took him over a year to put all of the elements of Sky Spectrum together and find a stable web service and camera – the webcam on Parliament Hill.
“I realized we had the [Parliament] Hill camera,” he said. “And the shot is 60 per cent sky.”
The software analyzes the sky portion of the camera so Sky Spectrum can respond and change colours based on the colour components. All of the analysis happens on O’Malley’s web server.
Monet said his gallery is unique in showing electronic and light art like O’Malley’s.
“Not all galleries will show that,” he said. “Every gallery is a signature of the curator.”
Monet said electronic art can pose “curatorial problems,” such as finding ways to power the art, keeping the software up-to-date, stockpiling the materials to replace them when they burn out and selling the art.
“When you sell a piece, it becomes the owner’s problem,” he said. “Luckily, most things that could go wrong on a piece of electronics is not on the aesthetic part so an electrician could probably fix it.”
Monet said he designed his gallery to accommodate light pieces like Sky Spectrum. He said he built the gallery from scratch, with all new walls and electronics. He had the electrician install power outlets five feet off the ground in the middle of the wall.
“You have to deal with how [art] interfaces with the electronics in your room,” he said. “To me, when you’re showing it, you don’t want stuff in the way.”
The raised outlets allow Monet to plug Sky Spectrum in the wall directly behind the piece so no cords or outlets are visible.
O’Malley has shown light art at CUBE Gallery before Phenomena. He said the community for electronic art is growing, and he has never felt booking an exhibit in Ottawa has been overly competitive. His struggle, he said, comes from the buying audience.
“The buying audience is very different,” he said. “A lot of people are intrigued by the work, but hesitant to have it in their home.”
Though he said he hasn’t particularly tried to create pieces for “the home,” O’Malley said working in the electronic medium does make it harder to sell to collectors.
Of his light pieces like Sky Spectrum, he said, “people compare this type of work to little mood lamps in Wal-Mart. They hear the prices and said forget it.”
The pricing issue is bigger because of materials needed to create the art, he said. “With painting, there’s the labour and time, but when you factor in the price of the raw materials and labour, you do have to price it quite a bit higher.”
He added he finds electronic art much more engaging. “It’s dynamic, it changes slowly over time . . . That’s what’s pushing me to do these things,” he said.
(Phenomena was still running when I wrote this article. Now, Monet is showing Trinary. For more information about what O’Malley is working on now, check out his blog.)
Nice post! Cube normally has a few of my pieces in rotation in the 2nd room, alongside selections from other artists.