Biography
In a collaboration that has spanned well over a decade, Winnipeg multi-disciplinary artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan have created a body of internationally acclaimed work that addresses feminist, lesbian, and social concerns with biting wit.
Dempsey and Millan’s controversial music video, We’re Talking Vulva, represented Canada at the 3rd Istanbul Biennial, and has screened to an estimated audience of a million people, world-wide. Their video, A Day in The Life of A Bull-Dyke, and the companion mock-Life magazine, In The Life, have received numerous awards, including the Manitoba Arts Council Prize for Innovation and Excellence, and second place at the 1996 United States Super 8 Film and Video Festival. Dempsey and Millan’s body of art video and film work has been the subject of many retrospectives, and includes titles such as Good-Citizen: Betty Baker (Manitoba Motion Picture Industry Association Award “Best Short Drama”, 1999), What Does A Lesbian Look Like? (aired in rotation on Canada’s music video station Much Music, 1994-5), Homogeneity (created in residence at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre and funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation), Object/Subject of Desire (created at the Western Front and purchased by the Canada Council Art Bank) and the recent half-hour mock-u-mentary Lesbian National Parks and Services: A Force of Nature.
Dempsey and Millan have created performance pieces that twist traditional mythology and iconography, explore notions of the lesbian body, and look at the devolution of modern-day language and democracy. These works include The Dress Series, costume-based work in which the traditional female costume is reconstructed out of unexpected materials. Other performances such as Co-op Collective’s Grocery Store, an installation and functioning food store, and the Lesbian Rangers tours-of-duty as part of the ongoing Lesbian National Parks and Services represent their site-specific work.
Other artistic activity has include residencies and special projects, such as a bi-lingual performance (English/Japanese) which toured Japan, and residencies at Headlands (California), Hallwalls (Buffalo, New York), Banff Centre (Alberta, Canada), Brisbane Powerhouse (Australia), and Western Front (Vancouver). Dempsey and Millan have created several public art installations and have self-published Handbook of The Junior Lesbian Ranger. In 2002 Pedlar Press published a long-awaited manual to bushcraft, the 270-page Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America: Flora, Fauna and Survival Skills.
Recently, this duo has created new stage works, Unruly and Target Marketing, and a multi-channel video installation commissioned by the Royal Ontario Museum entitled Archaeology and You. Their terrorist organization, Consideration Liberation Army, unleashed “The Summer of Thought” upon the city of Winnipeg in 2007 with video communiqués, audio bombs, actions, graffiti and manifestos. In 2006, 2007 and 2008 they also curated three significant group exhibitions for The Winnipeg Art Gallery: supernovas, In The Blink of An Eye, and Subconscious City.
Performance artifacts, films and videos by Dempsey and Millan are held in collections including the Winnipeg Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Regina Public Libraries, Planned Parenthood USA, American Indian Reservation Centre, and colleges and universities throughout North America.
Finger in The Dyke Productions
