Derek Liddington: A Father, His Bus, and His Son
Father:
It’s not time to make a change,Just relax, take it easy.
You’re still young, that’s your fault,
There’s so much you have to know… I was once like you are now, and I know that it’s not easy,
To be calm when you’ve found something going on.
But take your time, think a lot,
Why, think of everything you’ve got.
For you will still be here tomorrow, but your dreams may not.
Son:
How can I try to explain, when I do he turns away again. It’s always been the same, same old story. From the moment I could talk I was ordered to listen. Now there’s a way and I know that I have to go away. I know I have to go.Wayne and Derek Liddington—father and son—share a sentimental journey with riders on The Performance Bus. Through a combination of experienced and inexperienced memory, Derek, a Toronto-based artist and Wayne, a Mississauga Transit driver, reenact one of the most important moments of sharing and learning between a father and son: learning how to drive. Only now the stakes are increased (and so is the size of the vehicle). Using The Performance Bus as a context and as a prop, they tenderly explore this historic moment of exchange and coming of age experience as a public conversation that has wider implications concerning pedagogy, participation, and performance.
The free Performance Bus departs OCADU on Wednesday February 5 at 6 pm sharp en route to the opening reception of the Centre For Incidental Activisms #2 (CIA#2) at AGYU and returns downtown at 9 pm.
Derek Liddington works and lives in Toronto. He obtained his MFA from the University of Western Ontario and BFA from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Liddington’s work has also been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions, most recently at Art Gallery Mississauga, Art Berlin Contemporary, Onagawa AIR, Japan, and at Daniel Faria Gallery, where he is represented. In 2011, Derek Liddington was shortlisted for the Toronto Friends of the Visual Arts Artist Prize.
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