General Idea
Life & Work by Sarah E.K. Smith
Canadian artists.33 There was a small number of isolated commercial galleries in
Canada, with scant communication between them and no art fairs or any other signs of
a developed commercial system. Artist-run centres provided a means of artist-led selfdetermination and a key source of support for experimental projects such as video
works, performance art, and conceptual art, as well as exhibiting more conventional art
forms.34 General Idea was active in this burgeoning artist-run centre scene, which
included Intermedia in Vancouver. In Toronto the group exhibited entries from The 1971
Miss General Idea Pageant, 1971, at A Space, an artist-run centre founded in 1971.
General Idea established Art Metropole in 1974.35 The organization’s mandate is
to serve as a “collection agency devoted to the documentation, archiving and distribution
of all the images.”36 This breadth is the strength of the institution, which distributes
artists’ books, videos, audio works, posters, multiples, T-shirts, and more. Art Metropole
also disseminated writing about new media and other art forms, for example in their “by
artists” series of publications, which includes Video by Artists (1976), Performance by
Artists (1979), Books by Artists (1981), Museums by Artists (1983), and Sound by
Artists (1990).37
Cover of Video by Artists, edited by Peggy Gale, Toronto: Art Metropole, 1976
Cover of Performance by Artists, edited by AA Bronson and Peggy Gale, Toronto:
Art Metropole, 1979
General Idea founded Art Metropole in part due to the amount of mail art and
ephemera they were collecting through FILE.38 In fact, Art Metropole was conceived of
as an artwork—specifically, the archive and the museum shop for The 1984 Miss
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