Lucy Pullen

series of snapshots taken in Value Village, in Dartmouth N.S. Canada, circa 1998, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

‘Supercollaborators: The Collaborative Work of Sandy Plotnikoff and Lucy Pullen’ by Jenifer Papararo describes “the incidental to redefine the notion and meaning of "chance occurrence." Her essay begins with a quote. ‘There are a great number of events which could possi­bly occur (N, say) and which might deserve the title "coincidence". (Each of these may have a very small probability of occurring in any given week (p, say). Now N is large, and p is small, but the average number of occurrences (i.e., the product Np) may be of reason­able size.’ - Geoffrey Grimmett, Probability Theory, an Introduction, (Oxford Universily Press, 1986)

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

Coincidences happen all the time, some resonating more than others. Picking up the phone at the exact time the person you are calling calls you is a peculiar occurrence that is hard to ignore, while seeing the same stranger in two unrelated places in one day is both easy to miss and dismiss.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Coincidences occur naturally, but what happens when you start looking for them? Artists Sandy Plotnikoff and Lucy Pullen shift the casual, accidental nature of coincidence by increasing the likelihood of occurrence. They stack the deck, so to speak, with colour. For Plotnikoff, noticing that the phone matches his red gloves, and the chair next to the phone matches his mint green sweater constitutes coincidence, while Pullen supplies the material of coincidence. As part of an ongoing series, Coordinator, Plotnikoff takes self-portraits of himself stiffly posed next to buildings, signs, vehicles or some element that matches the colour of his hooded sweatshirt.' Plotnikoff's collection of well over 200 thrift store hoodies improves the probability of incidental, yet colour-coordinated, occurrences. In 1997, for Chance Operation with Blue Buttons, Pullen offered visitors an end­less supply of round blue pin-on buttons.' An opportunity for contact was created when people took and wore the free buttons outside the gallery, with chance meetings of those sporting buttons occurring beyond the exhibition's dura­tion.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Plotnikoff and Pullen force the incidental to redefine the notion and meaning of "chance occurrence."They amplify probability factors by simultaneously limiting and multiply­ing the variables. Plotnikoff isn't limited to one colour in particular, but to colour in general. Pullen formalizes a common experience beyond the gallery exhibition with a take-away object. They orchestrate coincidence in their collaborative practice as well. Their collaboration is more than the collision of two solitary practices; it is an intentional reaction to each other's work.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Bun Bun, 1994, an intervention by Plotnikoff, signifies the beginning of their collaboration. In Kelowna, British Columbia, Plotnikoff scattered ten thousand buns, collect­ed from a bakery garbage bin, in a park the morning before a local radio station held their annual Easter egg hunt. Labels with the words "'bun bun" were pinned to each of the buns. Complaints made to police regarding the bun inva­sion incited a run of press in local papers. Eventually, the "quirky" story got picked up by the associated press and made provincial papers across Canada and the United States. One paper ran the headline "Cops Hunt Bun Wacko" and called the unknown suspect "an obviously sick and demented person." After meeting Plotnikoff and hearing about Bun Bun, Pullen produced Eat Your Words. She baked trays of sugar cookies in the shape of the word "words" then packaged them to simulate a grocery store item, going so far as to fabricate a Sobey's barcode. She placed them in the cookie displays of five supermarkets. Again, daily papers hyped the event with headlines like "Who Cooked These Up?", and by printing photographs of Pullen's cookies in a Ziploc bag marked "Evidence" next to a frowning police constable.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

Bun Bun and Eat Your Words resemble each other in that they are a literal play on a word. Even though Plotnikoff did not intentionally seek "bad" press, he and Pullen recog­nized it as central to the project. The press offered the work a life beyond the park, documenting the project in a way the artist couldn't. Eat Your Words offered them both a way to work through what was an unforeseen element of the earli­er piece. Pullen didn't call the press, but she did conscious­ly look for representation by bringing the work into a super­market and disrupting the controlled system of buying and selling.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

The social nature of the artists' practice goes beyond responding to one another's work-they intentionally build ideas. Pullen takes the spontaneous gesture of lines drawn freehand and transforms them into a signature pattern. The design is obviously a repeated freehand drawing but she manufactures it into wallpaper and formalizes it as a print. Plotnikoff takes the essence of a line and brings it into the pages of The Face, a British lifestyle magazine. Starting with the cover and ending on the back page, he draws a connecting line in black marker under the nose of every face in the magazine. Plotnikoff and Pullen's separate works fuse into a corresponding series that not only follow each other in time and place, but also come together to address a central concern.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village: Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Both artists' work converges on the reproducibility of a simple line, taking it across a variety of surfaces. Carrying the formal concerns of the line through various spaces, Pullen installs her wallpaper in the offices of Ernst & Young and Plotnikoff brings the line into the pages of a popular magazine. The work lingers, but not necessarily through a simple remounting of the same work. Instead, they search for innovative ways to extend formal and conceptual aspects of individual works.

LITTLE COCKROACH PRESS #12, 1999 (artist book: published by Art Metropole, Toronto Canada, 16 pp., 20 x 12.7 cm., full colour, double sided, offset printed paper, edition of 1000 (25 signed), collaboration: Sandy Plotnikoff)

Bookworks play an important role in addressing this con­cern and remain a tangible way to distribute their work. In 1998, the pair documented themselves in a thrift store, try­ing on an assortment of multicolored clothes all at once. They layer themselves in turtlenecks, absurdly squeezing into eight at a time. In another photograph, they pile on a stack of brightly coloured baseball caps and weigh them­selves down with bulky sweatshirts and jackets. Under the auspices of an Art Metropole Little Cockroach Press pub­lishing project, they consolidated the snapshots in a book­work.' The artists also print bookworks in relation to larger projects, like Superballs (1997), where they let 2,500 multi­coloured superballs live up to their name by dropping them from the roof of a seven-storey building.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village; Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

As opposed to reinventing old work or simply documenting it, they develop new ventures out of a familiar language. This process embodies the way they will collaborate for an upcoming exhibition at the Helen Pitt Gallery in Vancouver. For one aspect of the show, Plotnikoff will travel to meet Pullen in Philadelphia, where she is currently studying, a shoebox of 4" x 6" photographs. Pullen will contribute her own collection of snapshots to combine their separate archives in an overall composition based on colour, form, and meaning. They plan to adapt source material and content of current and earlier works to emphasize the nature of their exchange, beginning with the promotional poster, which will be a collage of the press clippings from Bun Bun and Eat Your Words.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village, Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: L. Pullen

Even though many works exist independently, Plotnikoff and Pullen bring them together as something larger and more comprehensive. A work which previously carried only one of their names is incorporated into one cohesive installation, leaving a purposeful vagueness as to who has made what.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village, Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

The pair's collaborative work is a reaction to the singular. It takes them out of their solitary practices and offers up a platform to acknowledge the value of their exchange.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village, Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Meeting one another had an immediate impact on Plotnikoff's and Pullen's separate practices. However, they didn't come together in full-fledged collaboration until three years after that meeting, with Superballs. Pullen refers to Superballs as a metaphor for their collaborative practice: "bouncing ideas back and forth between us over years, months, days, hours, minutes." The exhibition at Helen Pitt allows for an opportunity to formalize the ephemeral nature of this unique collaboration, showing a ceaseless connection between individual works. Like the single super­balls left to linger and to compel on the streets of Halifax, Plotnikoff and Pullen's individual production references a larger whole.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village, Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

Jenifer Papararo is a writer and independ­ent curator. She is currently a member of Instant Coffee, an ambiguously sincere collective with lofty intentions of facilitat­ing artist production as well as participat­ing in it. Instant Coffee recently exhibited as part of the Present Tense series at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Snapshot, 1998, taken in Value Village, Dartmouth N.S. Canada, 4 x 6 in [10 x 15 cm], photo: S. Plotnikoff

citations include:

(1) 'G.R. Grimmett and D.J.A. Welsh, Probability Theory, an Introduction, (Oxford Universily Press, 1986)

(2) 'First exhibited at YYZ Artists' Outlet, Toronto as part of a two-person show with Joe MacKay, May, 2000.

(3) 'First exhibited at Saint Mary's University Gallery, Halifax, 1997

(4) 'Little Cockroach Press #12, Art Metropofe, Toronto, 1999