Court donated to the National Gallery of Canada

Rennie Collection is pleased to announce the donation of Brian Jungen's Court (2004) to the National Gallery of Canada.

Acquired by the Rennie Collection in February 2004, Court is an important work that deals with the themes of cultural identity and social injustice that are central to both the Rennie Collection and Jungen's oeuvre.

Brian Jungen was born and raised in Fort Nelson, B.C., and moved to Vancouver to pursue his post-secondary education at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. He has exhibited work in over fifty institutions, including the Musée d'art contemporain in Montreal, New York's PS1, and the Tate Modern, London. He is best known for his manipulation of readymades into commodity-based sculptures, such as his Prototype for New Understanding series of Haida-inspired masks made from Air Jordan sneakers.

Jungen has cited Harlem as Court's source location, making references to tensions between Harlem's history as a pre-globalization locale of sweatshop labour and the sweatshop-driven industry of basketball today. Court was fully funded by the Rennie Collection during its production for the Triple Candie Gallery in New York's East Harlem, and since its first showing has also been exhibited at the 5th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea.

Originally comprised of 231 lacquered vintage sewing tables, painted lines, two rolling steel warehouse ladders, and two basketball hoops each with net and backboard, the work is invitingly staged as an accurately sized half-court. However, it is made unplayable by the holes originally cut into the tables for sewing machines. Like most of Jungen's work, it raises questions about culture, appropriation, the relationship between production and consumption, and eloquently speaks of a certain kind of "new world hybridity" that is relevant to Canadian cultural identity today.

A work of this nature possesses resonance that hinges on public interactivity. By donating Court to the National Gallery of Canada, the work is returned to the public domain and able to function in the way the artist originally intended. This donation will enable Court to become one of many cultural objects activated by the National Gallery's variety of curated contexts, and ensure the widespread accessibility of Jungen's particular socio-political commentary to present and future generations. We hope for this to be the first of many donations to the National Gallery of Canada.