1994. CIPHERS FROM THE MUNIMENTS ROOM: DRAWINGS 4' x 18" First exhibited in a solo exhibition at Hart House Gallery, University of Toronto. And subsequently at Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, and AKA Gallery, Saskatoon. Available for purchase from the artist. Medium: Polaroid transfer and colour drawing on rag paper including references to shorthand manuals, the Bayeux tapestry and a book written by an ancestor of mine, Anne Newdigate, called "Gossip from the Muniments Room".

Cipher: O.E.D. : (a) a secret or disguised way of writing. (b) a person or thing of no importance.

Muniments Room: O.E.D. : (a). a document kept as rights or privileges etc.

(b) an archive.













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These five drawings (each 4' x 18") continue a persisting theme in my work that had, for many years, responded to the authority of dominant narratives in some manuals and text books. It has been my practice to place references to the manuals in a context where their authority could interact visually with an alternative version of the same history. The CIPHERS DRAWINGS were an intervention in the authority of A.L Burt's "Romance of Canada" (1947) which, for many years, was used in primary schools in Canada. Found text from this social studies text book provided the main impulse for the layered concepts informing the CIPHERS: ARRIVAL and CIPHERS: LETTER work.