By Michael Dang, 2024

A sense of absurdist whimsy characterizes many of the collaborative projects made by the artists associated with Western Front in the first decade of its inception. Case in point, this costume was made by Kate Craig specifically for Eric Metcalfe for Piranha Farms (1978), a performance-based collaboration between Metcalfe, Hank Bull and Jane Ellison. This costume is known to be made by Craig, as many artists associated with Western Front had asked her to help them construct costumes. Craig was a talented seamstress who had worked on costumes for various theatre companies and owned an industrial-grade sewing machine.¹ The costume is a bright orange head-covering, with a nun’s habit-like cape, an attached harness-like torso-covering and an opening for Metcalfe’s face. While wearing the costume, Metcalfe’s face was encircled by a series of sparkly triangular “piranha teeth” and flanked by a pair of large googly eyes on each side of his head. One wonders: is Metcalfe the piranha? Or is he being eaten by the piranha? Either way, there is Metcalfe—grinning ear to ear, in garish stage makeup—twenty minutes into the film version of Piranha Farms (1979), wearing the orange garment underneath a sparkly blazer, surrounded by large cutouts of piranhas and playing a vibraphone. Accompanied by Ellison as the mermaid Vertical Venus and Bull as Clammy Clones, Metcalfe is credited at the end of the film as playing the titular role of Piranha Farms.²

I was chomping at the bit to dive in and discuss Piranha Farms with Hank Bull and Jane Ellison. I had many questions regarding the impetus for the work (how it came a-boat), for example, why is so much of the found-footage war-themed? However, I stumbled upon a mental iceberg: should I have listened to Clammy Clones’ advice when he said to not “look for any deep meanings, we’re only in it for the halibut ourselves! There’s no porpoise to this piece”? However, behind the nuttiness of Piranha Farms was a pointed critique of mass media, “a sense that the growing information economy was plunging society into a surreal phantasmagoria, McLuhan’s Global Village gone coocoo,” as Bull eloquently explained. Ellison met Metcalfe and Bull through the Western Front, starting in early 1975 when she began taking dance classes at what would later become the EDAM (Experimental Dance and Music) studio. Ellison remembers that when she arrived, the newly-founded Western Front was a “dynamic, exciting and convivial” artistic community. She responded to a notice seeking models for a drawing class taught by Metcalfe and her friendship with the two artists “went from there.”

Bull remembers that the title of Piranha Farms came from Metcalfe’s “unique lexicon” and was a “spin on Pepperidge Farms, a commercial baking enterprise that specialized in things half-baked.” Ellison remembers the jingle for a Pepperidge Farms commercial advertising frozen desserts went, “more than we need for a late-night snack.” The motif of the ever-hungry piranha signified the capitalist and consumerist greed of the postwar economy exemplified by companies like Pepperidge Farms. Metcalfe was also interested in masculine-coded “war imagery, pornography, jazz and the like,” motifs he shared with the novelist Yukio Mishima whom he was influenced by. Newly accessible technologies were also instrumental to the work’s conception, specifically the ability to record television and transfer it to videotape.³ Bull remembers the art world was “a pretty serious place” at the time and to tour with such a “silly proposal” had required him, Metcalfe and Ellison to “really stick [their] necks out.” It was Fabio Mauri, artist-in-residence at Western Front at the time, who encouraged the group to tour with Piranha Farms with the help of a Canada Council grant and the support of the international network of artist-run centres. The tour took them to New York City where Bull and co. were part of a festival at the infamous avant-garde space The Kitchen with performers such as Kipper Kids and Anne Bean. The film version of Piranha Farms was the graduate project of BCIT student Bruce McCrimmon who had access to a television studio. This film differs slightly from the live performances as it was much more necessarily structured, rehearsed and does not contain “video-sound collage which formed a one-hour backdrop and soundtrack” as in the touring version. Ellison recalls that the live performances were improvised and unpredictable each night, with the video collage backdrop providing the basic structure for the performers to riff on. Bull remembers that he, Metcalfe and Ellison “basically vogued” in front of this backdrop accompanied by a “small wooden marimba, part of a Carl Orff music teaching ensemble” that Metcalfe played while Bull played the piano. Looking at this orange piranha mask, nearly fifty years later, what is most apparent to the viewer is the sense of fun and play that was hared between the artists involved in Piranha Farms.

Watch the Piranha Farms video

Images: Kate Craig, Hank Bull, Jane Ellison and Eric Metcalfe, Piranha Farms costume, 1978. Gift of The Western Front and Hank Bull. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography. Costume support: Ken Labun