Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonoréalistes
Art Is All Over
Artist Statement
Through our collaborative practice, we appropriate and remix themes and ideas both popular and obscure. It is through this juxtaposition of esoteric art historical knowledge and popular culture that we hope to covertly expose this information to a wider audience. This gesture is equal parts sincerity and irony as we hope that our objects, images, and performances evoke both an idolizing passion for and a satirical nudge at our source material--both the ambitions of Modern Art history and the do-it-yourself ethos of folk and lo-fi music. For the Noxious Sector window project, we propose a marrying of John Lennon and Yoko Ono's "War Is Over! (If You Want It)" billboard and poster campaign with Ian Baxter's phrase "Art is all over."
Artist Biography
Q: Are we not men?
A: We are the Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonoréalistes!
Long long ago, back when the world was young--that is, sometime around the year 2006, two individuals of musi-artistic temperament were summoned to the mountainous regions of the north. It was here, while enduring not only the harsh climes, but also bear, elk, and T-rex attacks on a regular basis, a voice of a sub-sub-genre of musical art was forged.
Mary-Anne McTrowe received her BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 1998 and her MFA from Concordia University in 2001.
Daniel Wong received his BFA from the University of Lethbridge in 2003 and his MFA from the University of Western Ontario, London, in 2006
"Self described 'art-ernative-folk rock band' The Cedar Tavern Singers (AKA Les Phonoréalistes) [...] combines unambiguous reflection on art and artists in a unpretentious, irony-laden manner with gentle melody." (Art Metropole, Toronto, ON)
