During World War One, and originating in Britain, military vessels were painted with strong geometric patterns and bold contrasting colouration so as to misinform U-boat captains. The intention was optical deception: to mislead the eye and manipulate visual perception of the size, distance, and even the direction of vessels to make their targeting difficult or impossible. These patterns came to be called "Dazzle," "Razzle Dazzle," or "Jazz." Arthur Lismer, an Official Canadian War Artist working in Halifax, documented the Dazzle ships in his work. Represented in the catalogue are the works of several other artists such as Jack Bush, Ray Mead, Guido Moninari, and Rita Letendre. From this, the use of abstraction may have shifted from the utilitarian needs of the military to the aesthetic concerns of the visual arts. An entire generation of mid-twentieth century Canadian artists thus directly or indirectly learned the lessons of camouflage - lessons that had critical impact upon the development of modernist abstract art.

Born in Metz, France, poet Gil McElroy grew up on air force bases in Canada and the United States. He studied English Literature at Queen’s University in Ontario. His poems and other works have been published in countless periodicals throughout North America since the late 1970s; issued in a number of self-published chapbooks, broadsheets, and one-of-a-kind book works; and anthologized in Groundswell: best of above/ground press, 1993–2003 (Broken Jaw Press, 2003), Side/Lines: A New Canadian Poetics (Insomniac Press, 2003), and Written in the Skin (Insomniac Press, 1999). He currently lives in Colborne, Ontario with his wife Heather.

McElroy has also been an independent curator and freelance art critic for 20 years, organizing exhibitions for public art galleries and museums in Canada and writing art criticism for magazines in Canada, the United States and Australia. A selection of his catalogue essays and reviews was published as Gravity & Grace: Selected Writing on Contemporary Canadian Art (Gaspereau Press, 2001) and in the anthology CRAFT Perception and Practice: A Canadian Discourse (Ronsdale Press, 2002). His show ST. ART: The Visual Poetry of bpNichol pays tribute to one of the great poets of the twentieth century. Originally mounted at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery & Museum in Charlottetown, P.E.I. in May through October, 2000, it later moved to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia before touring the country throughout 2001. McElroy’s curatorial essay accompanying the exhibition also won the Christina Sabat Award for Critical Writing in the Arts.

Gil McElroy's profile page

David Aurandt's profile page