Jo-Anne Balcaen’s practice looks at how objects gain emotional, psychological or financial capital through their association with important institutions or artists. Her recent work draws on her experience working as an exhibition coordinator to reveal the relationship between artist and audience, authorship and mythology and the meaning of success. Text and narrative are often used to shape the viewer’s desire to ‘read into things’. For Inventory, a recent work, Balcaen used didactic text and display strategies to enhance an object’s perceived value. Tools and materials from an art gallery’s preparatory room were presented with an accompanying wall label that fused the disparate jargons of museum didactic panels and mail-order tool catalogues to provide a behind-the-scenes, personal account of the materials’ association with well-known artists who presented their work at the gallery, thereby inverting the subordinate role they played in relation to ‘esteemed’ artworks. Balcaen is an artist working in video, audio, installation and print. Her art practice-often using wry humor-extends across a variety of media bringing together references to popular culture, music, fandom, and more recently, arts administration.

Jo-Anne Balcaen (born 1971, Montreal, Canada) has exhibited her work in festivals and galleries throughout Canada, the United States and Europe, including solo exhibitions at Truck, Calgary; Ace Art Inc., Winnipeg; eyelevel gallery, Halifax; Centre Clark, La Centrale Galerie Power House and Galerie B-312, Montreal. She has received provincial and national arts grants and has attended residencies at the Banff Centre.