In the Galleries
Not-So-Simple Simon
Britain’s Starling brings his provocative conceptualism to the Power Plant By David Balzer
Image credit: Courtesy The Power Plant
No one raises ire quite like a Turner Prize winner. British artist Simon Starling is a crashingly good case in point: his work is equal parts opaque, compelling and infuriating, its importance lying as much in its making as its completion. In honour of the Power Plant’s unveiling of a new $40,000 Starling commission, a breakdown of his greatest hits, and what they may or may not mean.
Infestation Piece (Musselled Moore), 2007–08
Genesis: Intrigued by Toronto’s storied relationship with English modernist Henry Moore, Starling immersed an iron copy of Moore’s Warrior With Shield in Lake Ontario, and allowed it to collect zebra mussels, a species not native to Canada and thus, like Moore, imported.
Simon says: “I thought it would be nice to throw it into the lake, leave it for six months, grow lots of mussels on it, then hang it in a gallery.”
We say: Given that Starling is also an import, we suspect he may be having a bit of an ideological laugh at our expense.
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