What: Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana
Where: Joint exhibition with Open Space gallery (510 Fort St.) and Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
When: Sept. 19 to Jan. 3 at AGGV, exhibition and residency at Open Space Sept. 19 to Oct. 24
Artist talks: Friday at the AGGV on Friday at 8 p.m. and Saturday, 4 p.m., at Open Space
Victoria-born Anna Banana is probably Canada’s most important banana artist. Then again, she may be this country’s only banana artist.
One thing is sure: she’s finally getting her due.
If you love bananas —and who doesn’t? — you may be interested in a pair of Anna Banana retrospectives poised to be peeled in this city.
On Saturday, Banana has exhibitions opening at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and Open Space gallery. They’ll be jointly unfurled as Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A Banana.
Anna Banana: 45 Years of Fooling Around with A Banana is also the title of a 159-page hardcover commemorating the occasion. Heralding Banana as a counter-culture heroine overlooked by the mainstream, the book contains essays by Open Space director Helen Marzolf, AGGV chief curator Michelle Jacques and others.
This is the first time Banana’s career has been fully documented. The 75-year-old artist says she’s never attracted this kind of attention before.
“It’s kind of mind blowing really, because my work has never been taken that seriously,” said Banana.
The artist, who lives in Roberts Creek, is known for many things. It all started in the early 1970s, when she prowled the streets of Victoria as the self-proclaimed Town Fool (Banana says her father, an insurance salesman, was “horrified”). She became a performance artist, published satirical magazines and became a pioneer of mail art.
And always, at the core of it, was the banana.
In the name of art, Banana once covered her body with giant banana stickers. She’s made banana stamps, banana fans, faux banana currency. She created the Flag of Bananda, a parody of the Canadian flag, out of real bananas. She’s awarded graduate degrees in “bananology”. She wrote and distributed her own newsletter, the Banana Rag.
When Banana received first prize from Mayor Peter Pollen way back in 1972 for her Victoria Day Parade entry, she wore a banana costume. In 1980, she oversaw the Banana Olympics in Surrey (this government-funded event drew the ire of a Surrey councillor who didn’t view it as art).
Recently Banana (original name Anna Long) visited Open Space, inspecting the banana-themed items she’s received over the decades. They’re on display; many will be given away. They include: squirt gun, phone, dessert dish set, pencil case, harmonica, stuffies, tea candles, Warhol-style poster and a six-foot-long inflatable banana-shaped boat.
There’s also a long furry banana stuffed into a plastic Air Canada bag intended for skis. Banana says this comes with a story. An airline had dictated that the toy needed to be bagged. But one employee became embarrassed during the bagging process, which looked a little risqué.
“Finally this woman said, ‘This is disturbing. I’m not going to do this any more,’ ” the artist said with laugh.
Weirdest banana gift? A German once gave her a decomposing brown banana, contained in a box with a clear plastic top so one might admire it.
Banana says the public may claim certain banana objects from the Open Space exhibit. However, before receiving their gifts, they’re required to do homework. Recipients must complete a catalogue form, offering information about themselves and their banana object. And they’ll be asked to draw a picture.
There are 1,158 banana items, all carefully catalogued by Open Space. Banana will dispense her objects as the lab-coated character Doktor Anna Freud Banana.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” she said. “I hope it largely goes.”
At Open Space, she’ll also present her Encyclopedia Bananica, a set of 23 scrapbooks containing banana-themed articles from magazines, newspapers and other information.
The AGGV’s exhibition will cover the full span of Banana’s career. There are photographs, documents and publications. And there’s some of her rarely seen collages, which are more political in content.
“It’s not all bananas,” said Banana.
To some, her art practice will seem peculiar. Yet it’s rooted in artistic tradition: Dada, Fluxus, Futurism and Theatre of the Absurd. AGGV curator Jacques says Banana, although influential in certain artistic circles, is “most definitely” underestimated in a general sense.
The problem, in part, is that her art tends to embrace the ephemeral. Banana says she thinks of art as a process.
“My motto,” she said, “is I don’t make ‘things,’ I like to make things happen.”
Much of her work is performance based, with an emphasis on audience participation. And mail art, for which Banana is renowned, revolves around small objects sent via the postal service. As Jacques said: “If you just look at a piece of mail art, it can’t compare to a Jackson Pollock.”
In some ways, Banana is a product of her time — someone who found herself during the counter-cultural fervour of the 1960s.
Born and raised in Victoria, Banana excelled at art in high school. She took lessons from Herbert Siebner.
In 1958, she moved to Vancouver, where she married, had a child and became a teacher. Then in 1969, she went to Esalen Institute, a groovy California retreat that teaches meditation, massage, yoga and such. It changed her life. She decided to abandon her middle-class lifestyle and become an artist. Or as she puts it: “That’s when I went bonkers.”
OK. But … why bananas?
Banana says it goes back to her elementary teaching days. A group of kids called themselves the Monkey Patrol. And they nicknamed their teacher Anna Banana.
The clincher, though, was something that happened at a party in Big Sur. A drunk guy ran past Banana, knocking her backwards.
“I landed quite softly. I looked around to see what saved me, and I found I was sitting in a box of bananas. At which point I said, ‘OK. I got the message. I’ll do it.’ ”
