NICE: nice is the new fuck you
August 17, 2008 @ The Back Gallery
Montreal Quebec Canada

Tegan Forbes does not want you to be nice, and she doesn't want you to call her nice either. What she wants is for you to engage the spaces of your existence, to recognize your place, and to act in the face of oppression. Regardless of what that oppression may be, and regardless of what the means to the end encompass, she's just asking for some participation.

Forbes' exhibition consisted of a performance-based work where 100 red balloons were painted with a black stencil of the word "nice" over about an hour.  At the back of the gallery sat, on a podium, a bottle of Jaggermeister on ice with a few shot glasses. The drink was free to anyone who wished to pass a gas-masked Forbes who was busy spraying toxic aerosol paint onto the balloons while a few photographers documented from outside the door. This required the spectator to put themselves at a little bit of risk and added an enticement to participate in the, dare I say, relational-aesthetic of the exhibition.

The use of a pollutant brought an element of irony into the performance. As we all participate daily in a city where pollutants keep the economy moving while persecuting smokers from our idling cars and generally ignoring the ubiquity of the fossil-fuel burning extravaganza, the idea of a threat or tension in the gallery space could manifest itself into recognizing what's occurring beyond in the daily. The public space is not far from the gallery space; they are perhaps one in the same under certain circumstances.

The exhibition stemmed from Forbes experiences in the former GDR, a place she has frequented in the past few years. An interest in communist red, uncovering and understanding how much of an effect the past has had on the contemporary and how former oppressive slogans can be turned to capital all inform the work. Although the questions come from experiences abroad, they are issues that are relatable to our home here in Canada. How do we deal with an oppressive and turbulent past of colonial rule? Can we acknowledge our past without being bound to it? Are we reducible to those rules defined by an elite post-national committee of the rich? Or, can we, through the reclamation of public and private spaces, the subversion of dominant codes and signs, the recognition of historiography as a concept of control to perpetuate difference, enact change through a creative act which has been bagged and tagged as Art?

Nice is the new fuck you.

review by Mike Rattray August 2008
photos by kg Guttman and Larissa Holmes