Tommy Rider

ARTIST SUMMARY

Tommy Rider’s work is a continual exploration of otherness and the dramatization of it. They play with this performance of odd and unusual imagery to adopt a new lens in a conversation around ostracization. They are reframing a sense of non-belonging to a production of ads and fake roles. His research in critical theory is represented through mock characters, costumes, and props in which this fascination with the idea of a ‘persona’ leaks into the creation of posters and people, in and out of a space of interactive storytelling.

ARTIST BIOGRAPHY

Rider is a local emerging artist and currently a student at the University of Calgary completing their concurrent Bachelor of Fine Art and Bachelor of Education. He has a soft spot for 1980s to early 2000s children’s media and he enjoys consuming campy horror and Jim Henson productions to hyper-read into as a means of examining oppression and societal norms. This interest in fiction is reflected in their art practice and research.

MISSING is a print reflective of strange Craigslist ads and lost dog posters. It is a recognition of something unusual and a call for the viewers to feel connected or put off by it. This print is part of an ongoing series where they are presented in public, and the audience has the opportunity to take them at face value and play in this space of storytelling or render them too eccentric to be meaningful.

Bozos is a piece of normalizing something strange and peculiar. Clowns and drag performers wear outlandish and eye-catching makeup, calling attention to the inherent difference in their performance compared to the ordinary viewer. This photograph presents these jester-like ideals while contrasting them with a serious tone, mimicking formal portraits. This normalization of something so curious is a humanization of the “other.”