Rehearsal for Everything is a print and sculpture installation by Libby Hague
Maralynn Cherry (curator) with the participation of the Soper Valley Model Railroad Association
Visual Arts Centre of Clarington, 143 Simpson Ave., PO Box 52 , Bowmanville, ON L1C 3K8 905-983-9889

September 7 to October 5, 2008 If you missed the opening you missed an intense performance afterwards by the Michael Snow Trio ( Michael Snow, Alec Snow and John Kamevaar) and CCMC ( John Kamevaar, John Oswald and Paul Dutton)

Thank you to the many people who helped with this installation: Maralynn Cherry, David Gillespie, Jeremy Desjardine, Richard Toms, Linda Ward, Stacey and of course, Gary Jeffrey, Ron Radcliffe, Todd Shrigley, Alan Plummer and Roy Payne from the Soper Valley Railroad Assoc.

also thank you to Jean-Michel Komarnicki who took all the installation photographs at the VAC including the ones below.
This exhibit brings together very small (1 in.) and very large (9 ft.) individuals who heroically contend with the big and small disasters that life throws at them. Surrounded by disaster, indifference and paralyzing complexity, with almost everything beyond their control - that is to say, surrounded by life - these figures are quietly courageous, simply by "doing their best".

Hannah Arendt regarded the act of inserting ourselves into the world as heroic. Perhaps this is even more true as the media overwhelm us with a facile succession of disasters where we can do little to help. This daily "news" contributes to a mood of lethargy, hopelessness and cynicism in which we can lose our sense of effectiveness. The people in this show may dispel this malaise by committing themselves to their first, next step. Such efforts, when they occur, are incredibly hopeful. Who expected hope to feel so radical?
Partial inventory: a rock slide and a safety net (attic proportions); 2 running giants (female) ; an avalanche and a rain storm; a model train 1:87; St. Maryıs Cement Factory (model only); hydro pylons (intact and less so); an injured sprinter supportedby two officials; 1 field of corn; very bad weather (heading our way) ; the Gardiner Expressway at a particularly dismal point in its future ( hardly requires any imagination); 1 broken conga line (12 parts); miscellaneous wildlife; etc.
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