Videos

Mary Rawlyk - Printmaker 1987

This original VHS  tape was converted to  digital format in 2016 through the services of the Agnes Ethrtington Art Centre, at Queen's University, in Kingston Ontario.

Co Producers, -  Mary Rawlyk  and Andrew Grenville
Production assistant John McLeod

7.8 minutes

This video was made in the kitchen of the Rawlyk  household which was the daily domestic workplace of Mary Rawlyk, housewife, and mother. It was also the source of her imagery when she had time to make prints.

The View from My Room is Great 1983

This original VHS tape was converted to digital format in 2016  through services of Queen's University Archives.

Producer - Tom Evans ,  with a Canada Council Grant through the K.ingston Artist's Association Incorporated.
Videographer - Derek Redmond of the Film Studies Department at Queen's University.

30minutes

The first few minutes of the original tape have developed tracking interference because of the age of the tape and the now out dated technology of the tape. Fortunately, this interference clears up shortly as the tape proceeds.

In 2006, this video was shown  at the opening of the exhibition, Slow Boil at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University. In her introduction to the video, Jocelyn Purdie made the following remarks:...

... “In my research for this exhibition I was fortunate to find not one but two documentaries about Mary that featured her work from the 70s and 80s, which this show focuses on. I chose this particular one for a number of reasons, one because of the work that is being discussed in the documentary, second because of its feminist content and third, because in combination with the Rosler Video and the Rawlyk prints in slow boil, it allows us to consider Mary's work in the broader international context of feminist art practice that was taking place during that time.

There were three series of prints produced by the artist during this period, two of which -the domestic object/domestic  chore series(from the early-70s) and the housewife/housework variations(from the early 80s)--a selection of which are featured in slow boil. The prints presented in this documentary are from the third of these bodies of work, the Apron Series, which were made in the mid-late1980s and will, I think, in combination with the works in slow boil, provide a sense of the scope of Mary's practice during this time. Also, in tone and content, the Apron series compliments the works in the exhibition, infusing slow boil with an intensity that speaks to the underlying frustrations and issues of the day but that also, I think, provide a lens through which contemporary art can be considered.

The documentary begins with the artist demonstrating and describing in detail, her printmaking process, allowing us into her studio to witness her inventive use of materials. Gradually the layers of meaning and content in the work surface when Mary discusses current issues around women and the domestic sphere-her dialogue shrewdly interwoven with actual footage from a session in the House of Commons in the early 1980s. The Video runs for approximately half an hour...