Exquisite Corpse (and its friends)

By a wonderful coincidence, Port Coquitlam, the town just across the river from Pitt Meadows, had two new exhibitions, one by the BC/Yukon area of SDA (Surface Design Organisation). I went along to the preview and met up with CQ member Catherine Nicholls, one of the organisers of this show.

Quoting from the brochure: "Exquisite Corpse: A game of folded paper which consists in having several people compose a phrase or drawing collectively, none of the participants having any idea of the nature of the preceding contribution(s)."
It has evolved from a parlour game called "Consequences", and was played by the Surrealists - capturing spontaneous, irrational words and images. The exercise "revels in the idea of chance and results in fantastic bodily forms" - it's "still pertinent to today's obsessions with the body - as sexual object, as metaphor, and as the site of mortality and political contestation."
The 39 works on show used all manner of textile and paper-based surface design techniques. Among the 3D works was one that came all the way from Whitehorse, Yukon (about 2700 km) -
I loved the subtle colours of this hooked visage -
To make each figure, people worked in teams and agreed on (or drew straws for) who would do which section. Some teams made three sections each, then got together and decided which would go where - and which of the results would be entered in the show.
One team decided on an aquatic theme, and divided up the piece of background fabric -
The team who made the piece on the left worked in a way that's traditional to the paper version of the game, folding over their section and covering it before handing it on for the next section to be added -
In a workshop room, visitors were invited to participate, using images from pages torn out of magazines -
Of course I had to have a go; my creature ended up with a big nose and long bare legs, and a handbag as a blouse -
These had been prepared earlier -
The works in the exhibition by Salmon Arm artist Wendy Browne were difficult to photograph without reflections - they were "transformed from snips, rips and slices of paper" -
When we played Exquisite Corpses at a family gathering recently, we used four sections - head, neck to waist, waist to knees, and lower legs and feet -
A fun game - even for the "but I can't draw!" people.