PLAY THING | ALEX GIBSON AND PM | January 2022

This edition of SPAM features a collaboration between visual artist Alex Gibson and drag/ performance artist PM. The resultant project is a catalog of images featuring painted body parts, found objects and costumes, all of which explore body, gender, drag, and camp through the transformative potential of newly generated forms. 

Considering non-binary forms as they relate both to humans¹ and non-humans, the artists merge plant and human fragments, drawing connections to gender fluidity as it exists in nature. An armpit sprouting ferns, a cone bra weighed down by pebbles—despite their fractured shapes, Play Thing’s body of images incites a sense of weight, pull and movement. Viewers are encouraged to click, rotate and zoom in on images to explore and play with the anthropomorphic forms.

The flattened colours and exaggerated positions in these digital renderings highlight an absurdity integral to camp, while making reference to historical drag performances, interviews and imagery. Drag is always a performance on display, but this project gives us the opportunity to get up close and personal with a moment—rendered a sculpture—and consider the possibilities it implicates, the fluidity it represents and to imagine queer possibilities.

Alex Gibson (they/them) (b. 1994) is a queer, non-binary, Barbadian interdisciplinary artist based in Vancouver, BC, working on the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) First Nations. They are interested in exploring transgressive queer identities in relation to their Caribbean background. Forthcoming work includes an exhibition with Capture Photography Festival 2022 (Vancouver). Their work has been exhibited at Wil Aballe Art Projects (Vancouver), Tomato Mouse (New York), Artists Alliance Barbados (Bridgetown), Art Toronto.

Desi Rekrut is a non-binary performance artist based in Vancouver, B.C. Rekrut is the drag performer know as PM; Vancouver’s gender-fluid drag bimbo. Mixing both their contemporary-ballet background and off-beat style, PM’s goal is to continually bend gender and sexuality. They are 1/4 of The Darlings (Drag Collective) in Vancouver BC; a multi-disciplinary non-binary drag quartet. They competed and won Vancouver’s Next Drag Superstar in 2019.  Rekrut trained at Arts Umbrellas, in their 2-year post graduate diploma program. There, Rekrut danced in new works by: Crystal Pite, Cayetano Soto, Fernando Hernando Magaden, Emanuel Gat, and Tom Weinberger. They also had the pleasure to be part of restaged works by: Crystal Pite (Emergence & Parade), Sharon Eyal (Sarah & Killer Pig), Marie Chouinard (bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS), and Azure Barton (Busk).  In the summer of 2017 they toured Europe with AU, taking part in many workshops in the Netherlands, and did shows such as the IT'S Festival as well as Shortcuts, XL (hosted by NDT (Netherlands Dans Theatre). Upon arriving back from Europe, Rekrut apprenticed Telford’s company Inverso, and performed in her work “Spooky Action at a Distance,” and now is a full time drag entertainer, host and show runner in Vancouver. 

This project is supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

SPAM (Special Presentation Art Mail) is an email-based art series where artists work collaboratively to create a digital artwork. Through the link below, viewers can sign up to partake in the project by volunteering to receive upcoming interactive Number 3 Gallery emails.

For the most part, the only art we encounter these days arrives via digital means. You may receive emails announcing exhibitions—both online and in person (often by appointment)—and documentation of process work on your feed in lieu of studio visits or art crawls. When we consider how this changes our perception and relationship to artworks we might also reflect on how many folks have been exclusively viewing artwork this way long before our current infectious disease concerns. This said, online art can just as easily connect us as it can be ignored entirely. If we start to question whether the work we see is losing something to these platforms we might also note how art and technology are almost irreducibly connected—be it the tools we use of the visual influence it can catalyze. 

This is not a new dynamic; mail artists have long used postal technology as a way to share snippets of their progress or work, which often intentionally took the place of formal in-person exhibitions. Not unlike our current email subscriptions, mail art (an inherently collaborative medium) would enclose participatory or interactive project and publication opportunities. Given that technology is presently the lifeline to connectivity for many of us, what better time to reconnect with the spirit of the early mail and e-mail artists who used their choice method of distribution as a transfer of aesthetic information to surmount geographical and cultural boundaries. 

To view the project please contact number3gallery@gmail.com