How did Amazing Group come to be?

“This is what happened. I got this idea for an object where you could buy and entire exhibition, carry it home under your armpit and show it in your own home. It would have to happen in a box and made of prints. At first I thought, I’ll do it all myself, and then I thought it would be more challenging to bring in a group of people. And Alan Flint brought that Vandercook press to open studio. We had two high-yield industrial printing methods at our disposal and I think we wouldn’t have had the project without that. I invited, David, Gene, Caroline, Alan and Libby Hague down in my basement apartment and everybody said yes. And someone said we’re an amazing group of artists, it was Caroline Birks… it got started at the kitchen table.”

What was the product?

“The box was, what it did was it opened from the back. At the front it had a cut-open with acetate, fake glass and built into the box was a top and bottom flap with holes it. A frame and the box was screen printed.”

What was the scene like?

“I think there were all of these terrific initiatives. There was Nether Mind, Cold City had been around for awhile, The Red Head and this terrific installation show in the Dufferin Mall called Neopolitan. The initiatives of the 80’s like Chromazone, Eye Review and Republik got together there was almost this great establishment of artists acting entrepreneurially. Yeah, this can work!”

Why being entrepreneurial was important to Amazing Group

“What I think, At least for me, the entrepreneurial felt a little rebellious. It’s like ‘screw you’ I don’t feel like writing an artists statement this month. I think we grew up in the sixties, we were kiddies in high consumerism. We were kiddies in television spots that went from a minute to 30 seconds and we grew up with commerce. There was commerce all around us. So it seems quite natural that we would use it as a lab and start to experiment. Even if we did very poorly. I think we did great!”

“Like fuck it, we’re artists, we make stuff. Like making an ad, making a little organization, making a system, it’s kind what we do.”

Marketing and the Amazing Group of Artists

“Well you get something that’s a hell of a lot better than some dried out, academic statement that preens to intelligence but comes across as the worst form of advertising, boring, boring, boring.”

“If a show was being mounted there was this whole school of thought where the advertising couldn’t outshine the art. And as a result you got really boring advertising. Now in the Red Head that was really starting to be kicked to pieces quite nicely. And what was so great about An Amazing Group was we totally dispensed with the idea that the advertising had to allow the art to shine. We pulled out all the stops on everything that was in that project. We said, let’s have fun with the promotion and we actually risked eclipsing the object we made. And I thought that was so great that we did that.”

Open Studio

“Open studio. First of all. None of this would happened if we did not have access to Open Studio.”

“But it was also the fact that Open Studio had 24 hour access. They were much looser back then. It’s hard to believe but things keep getting more and more complicated.”

“I don’t know if any of the other groups mention this, we have day jobs. And again if you didn’t have access to a 24/7 facility, no way again.”

The Grunt Show / Vancouver

“We had the Amazing Group of Artists/ It Better Be Beautiful in the gallery and then we had the truck which was decorated with tassels and pendants and the actual boxes with everybody’s charming portraits.”

“It was really funny because the truck went out for the week and nobody came for most of the days of the week and we were like ‘holy shit!’ And the guys at the Grunt were like ‘this is great, keep on doing it!” and then the final night of the truck we’re all at Spanish Banks.”

“We decided to have a pot luck BBQ on Spanish Banks with the truck. We got beer, there’s chicken hanging out of our mouths, we’re noshing away and in a drunken, stoned state we said, ‘HEY, there’s art in the truck!’ and that’s when we got the attendance. That’s when we had success. Hell we were just having fun. We weren’t even trying.”

What’s your fondest memory?

“Actually, that night when we were sitting around and we came up with the story of the beaver woman.”

“Tom Thompson begat our mother with a beaver. She became the darling of the NY art world. And she met Michael Snow. So it was our Grandmother who was the beaver? Yes, she was only half-beaver. She gets refused entry into the States and Michael Snow abandons her at the border. I think this is so important to our identity.”

Why did the Amazing Group of Artists end?

“It was centered around one object. Once the object was made, had a show and got a little distribution, we lost out focus.”

“I think in a really vibrant art community you need things like an Amazing Group of Artists and maybe it’s not so important that they last for 20 years or 30 years, maybe it’s almost better that they last for 20 months and that there’s a buzz of energy going on. Because what happens is that all of these groups have left their activity and if you leave that other artists can look at it and go ‘oh yeah!’ That’s happened and it can happen again.”

“And Toronto grew a lot. Like Toronto in the 70’s, the 80’s, the 90’s. As we were doing our bit as artists the city kept growing and growing. More and more graduated from more and more art schools. So, they’re churning them out. I mean, God only knows what the future is going to be like.”