Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art is pleased to announce the long awaited publication Eleanor Bond: Mountain of Shame. Featuring over 30 pages of full colour plates, an in-depth interview with the artist, and essays by beloved Winnipeg-born, Berlin-based author Rodney LaTourelle and Montreal-based art historian Johanne Sloan, this compilation marks the inaugural exhibition at our current location.

Curated by Helga Pakassar in 2010, the exhibition Mountain of Shame signifies both a new direction for Plug In ICA as an institution and a distinct shift in the work of Winnipeg born artist Eleanor Bond. Breaking from the urban and architectural spaces for which she is well-known Bond turns to the subjective and expands to include three-dimensional painted objects. Utopian spaces stand in relation to abstractly figurative paintings and enigmatic sculptural forms. Together the works produce a dynamic orientation that relentlessly pushes at the boundaries of material experimentation and radical site-specificity. Bond’s exhibition and catalogue Mountain of Shame looks to the immediate setting of Plug In ICA’s new cohabitation with the University of Winnipeg – and extends outward to incorporate larger local and global contexts while simultaneously centering on the personal, psychosocial experience. The works come together in Mountain of Shame as a unified body while simultaneously producing a series of distinct objects that cross language and materiality.

Designed by Zab Design & Typography and edited by Wayne Baerwaldt who interviews Bond in “What If The Soul Has No Culture”, drawing out her references and influences, Eleanor Bond: Mountain of Shame expands the life of this generative exhibition as an exquisitely designed and thoughtfully constructed monograph that pays just dues to its contribution to the field of expanded painting and a breadth of intellectual and art historical references. Other texts include “Clouds and Things” by Johanne Sloan and “Bad Objects” by Rodney LaTourelle. As Bond concludes her tenure in Montreal and returns to her hometown of Winnipeg this book creates a timely and intimate portrait of the artist that links Mountain of Shame to an impressive range of contemporary concerns and critical reflections as disparate as object oriented ontology (Sloan) and social movements such as the Black Bloc and Occupy (La Tourelle).

This publication holds immeasurable import for us as an institution and extends to the greater Canadian and International art milieu of which Bond has been an active and formative member for over three decades. In addition to the provocative and rigorous texts Eleanor Bond: Mountain of Shameincludes sixty-four colour and black and white images giving readers a complete picture of her works as autonomous subjects, their place in relation to Bond’s practice as a whole, and as they were installed during their exhibition at Plug In ICA in 2010, and at the Illingworth Kerr gallery in 2011.

$45

Softback
117 pages
64 b/w and colour illustrations
7 1/3” x 9 1/3”
ISBN13: 978-0-921381-41-9

DISTRIBUTION:
Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art,
Unit 1–460 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg, MB,
Canada R3C 0E8 • plugin.org
+ 204.942.1043

To purchase from the Plug In ICA online store: https://shop.plugin.org/products/eleanor-bond-mountain-of-shame

Alberta College of Art + Design, 1407 14
Avenue NW, Calgary, AB, Canada T2N 4R3
+ 403.284.7600

The exhibition Mountain of Shame by Eleanor Bond curated by Helga Pakassar was presented at Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, Winnipeg, Canada in 2010 and at Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta College of Art and Design facilitated by Wayne Baerwaldt in 2011.

Plug In ICA extends our gratitude to our generous donors, valued members and dedicated volunteers. With special thanks to our Director’s Circle.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council and Winnipeg Arts Council. We thank the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts for their support of our 2016 and 2017 program, as well as Payworks and Wawanesa Insurance for the direct support of our youth programs.

The Alberta College of Art and Design is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

This book would not be possible without the generous financial support of Concordia University.

Plug In ICA relies on community support to remain free and accessible to all, and enable us to continue to present excellent programs. Please consider becoming a member of Plug In ICA and a donor at https://plugin.org/supportor by contacting Angela Forget: angela@plugin.org

For review or distribution copies or for more information please contact Erin Josephson-Laidlaw info@plugin.org. For media inquiries please contact Sarah Nesbitt: sarah@plugin.org.