Rodney Graham: A Little Thought is a major exhibition of internationally celebrated Canadian artist Rodney Graham. On view from September 10 through December 23, 2005, this engaging survey examines the evolution of Graham’s film, video, and sound works during his 30-year career. Jointly organized by the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and the Vancouver Art Gallery with the support of Foreign Affairs Canada, this traveling exhibition ends its tour at ICA, the only east coast venue for this exhibition.
Rodney Graham: A Little Thought features 22 works, including 6 major audio-visual installations, along with related photographic, sculpture, and text projects. The exhibition also includes props, notes, scripts, and audio works that augment the understanding of Graham’s approaches to landscape, literature and sound.
Rodney Graham: A Little Thought introduces audiences to the repetitive, layered, and familiar pop cultural references that have become the artist’s trademark. Graham investigates the specific roots of modernism, creatively splicing fact with fiction. His works are humorous and appealing, with trenchant wit and enchanting artifice, such as his photo diptych Fishing on a Jetty (2000) in which he portrays Cary Grant in Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch A Thief, and the film installation City Self/Country Self (2000), in which he plays double versions of himself—country bumpkin and urbane, bourgeois dandy. His most recognized cinematic work, Vexation Island (1997), is a Treasure Island-like vignette starring the artist in full period costume. Graham is known as a master at mixing a wide variety of mediums, and his multi-disciplinary breadth of work—including his song writing and musical performances—has often been cited as an inspiration to emerging contemporary artists.