27 audio cassettes + 1 CD-ROM by various artists (Winnipeg, 1999)
A Relatively Small Collection consists of twenty-eight sound-based artworks that were produced by Canadian artists for an exhibition and special project held at Ace Art Gallery (Winnipeg) in 1999. It includes works by Hank Bull, Marcel Dzarma, Lorri Millan + Shawna Dempsey, and Jocelyn Robert to name only a few.
Organized by artist/curators Michael Dumontier and Tom Elliot, A Relatively Small Collection was originally conceived of as a temporary exhibition, collection, and lending library.[1]1Ace Art Gallery (Winnipeg) (1999). A Relatively Small Collection. The collection was reconstituted and acquired by Artexte in 2002 with the help of the curators of the project, the participating artists, François Dion (Artexte’s Director at that time) and curator Nicole Gingras.
The collection came to Gingras’ attention during her research residency at Artexte in 2002, and is discussed in the anthology S:ON : Sound in Contemporary Canadian Art [2]2Nicole Gingras (dir.) (2003). S:ON. Le son dans l’art contemporain canadien. Éditions Artexte.:
“A Relatively Small Collection was at once a venue, a means of dissemination and a resource that could be consulted. In a certain way, the exhibition archived a hybrid portrait of Canadian sound music production from the late 1990s.” [3]3Gingras (2003). S:ON. Le son dans l’art contemporain canadien. Éditions Artexte, p. 51.
This unique collection of sound-based artworks is an important addition to Artexte’s Special Collections, which also includes the Projet Mobilivre-Bookmobile Project collection of artists’ publications. [4]4 (2000-2005). Projet Mobilivre.
Artexte would like to thank Master of Library and Information Studies candidate Jennifer Hamilton (McGill University) for cataloguing A Relatively Small Collection during her internship with us.