Raiders Made

Unbeknownst to most people in Port Moody, for about twenty-five years some of the leading artists from across Metro Vancouver have been periodically gathering to paint ceramic plates in the Port Moody home-studio of well-known ceramic artist, Gillian McMillan. How these gatherings came to be is a longer and interesting story but in short, Vancouver artist Eric Metcalfe, seeking help in 1995 to create a leopard-print-painted ceramic tea set, connected with McMillan for guidance and assistance. Metcalfe began making trips to McMillan’s studio to paint plates and platters and he would then come to invite other groups of artists to join him. The trips continued in what came to be known as “raids” on the studio where the gathered artists took up blank slab plates and earthenware as blank slates for their own artistic elaboration.

During these day-long gatherings the Raiders make space together to share with one another where there are no grant applications or final reports or expected outcomes except to be with one another in individual acts of creation. There is also no obligation to collaborate – collaboration is in fact rare and artists author their own individual works. Rather, the artists participate in something that composer and musician Brian Eno calls “cooperative intelligence.” According to Eno, while all great ideas are articulated by individuals, these great ideas are, in their turn, always generated by communities. A raid is the creation of temporary creative community. In these shared spaces of a raid, ideas of all kinds are freely exchanged, thoughts about art and technique and life swirl around the large working table (and the lunch table). In this creative space distinguishing from where or from whom an idea, artistic or otherwise, comes would be a challenge were such things a concern. Intelligence is generated by the community and finds its way into each plate or platter of each member of that community.

For the works in Raiders Made, the curator invited a selection from among the dozens and dozens of Raiders who have participated in even more raids over the years to offer a work or two of their own choosing. Given the number of Raiders over the years, and the space available for this exhibition, necessitated that only a fraction of artists could be included. In selecting the nine artists, the curator invited the participation of Raiders with whom the curator has had a personal or professional relationship over the past thirty-ish years who collectively, in their turn, form another kind of community.

Gregory Elgstrand