"Installation Transformation: Objects into Art
October 11 to January 25, 2009
Women artists have played a significant role in the development of installation art, drawing materials from their domestic space and transforming them into Art."

"A recent acquisition is the installation Connecting at an Unknown Rate (2000) by Cecile Clayton-Gouthro, consisting of a projection and three dresses with matching head pieces each constructed from hundreds and hundreds of the a common clothing item–shoulder pads. The use of shoulder pads is a direct reference to the suits and dresses of "power" women in the 1980s and their predecessors in a "man's world" of the 1940s. Turned into quilt-like dresses these works clothed male and female dancers who performed a choreographic piece accompanied by a composed score when first exhibited and of which a documentation of this performance is projected on the Gallery walls. The entire work addresses issues of fashion, feminism, identity politics, art, women's labour, and craft.
Two works which share in the sensibility of Clayton-Gouthro's installation are by artist Naomi London. Orange Dress (1991) and Thinking Caps [blue] (1991) are from the artist's dysfunctional clothing series. Impossible to actually wear, (the caps are enormous; the dress lacks arm holes) the works themselves give rise to compelling and unsettling psychological realities and even sinister meanings. At first take these clothing items seem amusing but when worn the caps evoke references to torture and humiliation and the dress of containment and restraint.
All the artists included in this exhibition follow out of the traditions conceived in DADA, and Pop art, by sequestering a space in the real world (in this case the gallery) and designating it as scene for art, inviting you, the spectator to enter it. In many of the works exhibited the private world of the female artist is made public as the gallery is transformed from a series of blank walls to an area for play or contemplation. Through the acts of installing, combining, juxtaposing, sewing, canning, knitting, and so forth, the common object is transformed into Art."
The Winnipeg Art Gallery