The Royal Art Lodge

Michael Dumontier, born 1974; Marcel Dzama, born 1974; Neil Farber, born 1975)
Winnipeg, Canada 

The Royal Art Lodge is a Canadian artists’ collective, founded by Marcel Dzama, Neil Farber and Michael Dumontier.  The Lodge convenes to create collaborative works which appear as mysterious as intimate jokes whispered amongst friends and as familiar as the advertisements, book illustrations and comics of our childhood. Playfulness flows through the work, as a social and creative process; however, this does not detract from its power, tragedy and beauty. A style, immersed in a comic tradition, emerges which is particular and yet, through its multilayered voices, defies simple categorisation. Each small canvas offers a vignette of poetic absurdity, underpinned with the logic of a distinctive humour and outlook. What is achieved is a pure moment of artistic freethinking, using dichotomous relationships, such as play and violence, detail and abstraction, to create a narrative that mimics the ludicrous texture of real life.

The Royal Art Lodge Garbage Day was commissioned by the Liverpool Biennial and exhibited at the Bluecoat in September 2008.  Their successful touring show Ask the Dust in 2003-2004 travelled from The Drawing Center, New York to the Power Plant, Toronto, De Vleeshal, The Netherlands and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles.  The catalogue for the same show has become a collector’s item.  The Lodge has also recently exhibited at the Yerba Buena Center, San Francisco, the National Gallery of Canada, Ontario, Musée d’Art Contemporain, Lyon, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, Dublin and the Centro de Arte Caja, Burgos, Spain.

 

 



The Royal Art Lodge (Michael Dumontier, Marcel Dzama & Neil Farber), Please Give, (detail), mixed media on board, 10 panels, 2 x 2 in each, 2008.