Over the last 20 years Rodney Graham has been building a rich and diverse, yet, remarkably coherent body of work. As one of the leading artists of his generation, Graham offers us a new method of reflection which re-investigates and extends the conceptualism of the 1970s, and which critiques the hype associated with the culture of the 1980s. His programme of ‘appropriation,’ the re-framing and re-presentation of existing works by means of self-conscious procedures, and his exploration of the readymade and its critique of the artist/auteur, were introduced long before such strategies became fashionable among artists in the 1980s. Graham’s work transcends the discourse of the visual arts, bringing other disciplines and time frames into its imaginative field.

The exhibition at the AGYU premieres a new time-based, musical installation by Rodney Graham, School of Velocity, a work that is poetic, contemplative, conceptually rigorous, and richly allusive. It is a meditation on time through the perspectives of music and science. The work is based on Carl Czerny’s musical exercises for piano and Galileo’s time-squared theorem which describes the velocity of a free falling object.

Funding for this exhibition was generously provided by the Canada Council, Yamaha Music Canada Ltd., and the Jack Bush Endowment Fund.