Tom Thomson Art Gallery Exhibitions

Lisa Birke is an interdisciplinary artist whose work is a result of the collision of video, performance art, painting and installation.  She is interested in the stories that we re-cite and re-brand and how these inform our conception of the world and the tragi-comic perception of ourselves. 

Hilarious and catastrophic, enlightening yet familiar, sometimes awkward yet relatable, Birke’s video work will keep you entertained. Investigating notions of self and societal clichés, Volte-Face highlights four video and performance works produced over several years.

When sunlight hits the water droplets, it scatters according to its electromagnetic wavelength into the seven colours of the visible light spectrum that human eyes are sensitive to and can detect (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet). Many scientists, however, think "indigo" is too close to blue to be truly distinguishable, so it is common to illustrate rainbows with just 6 colours.

Basic colour theory utilized by artists for centuries employes the same six same colours as in the rainbow. Red, yellow and blue are known as the primary colours. These three colours cannot be created by mixing any other colours together. By mixing two adjacent primaries together artists can create secondary colours: red and yellow combine to make orange, yellow and blue make green, and blue and red make purple, filling in the spaces between the primaries to create the full spectrum of colour if laid out linearly or illustrated in circle in what is known by artist as a colour wheel.
 

In recent years, the rainbow colours have become widely recognized as a symbol of LGBTQ2 pride. The first versions of the rainbow flag had 8 colours and was designed by artist Gilbert Baker and were flown on June 25, 1978, for the San Francisco Gay Freedom Day parade.  Related archives state that in the early years, because it was difficult to get certain colours of flag material, the pink and turquoise stripes were removed and indigo was replaced by basic blue, which resulted in the six-striped flag (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple) that is common today.

The rainbow colours will fly proudly in Owen Sound and across the country in June as part of Pride celebrations. Owen Sound’s Pride parade is June 8, 2019.