Seitokai Yakuindomo 2

In her inventive rendition of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales for Four Corners' Familiars series, artist Marvin Gaye Chetwynd (born 1973) selects her favorite of the tales--the Prologue, The Miller's Tale, The Reeve's Tale, The Friar's Tale, The Merchant's Tale, The Wife of Bath's Tale, The Summoner's Tale and The Pardoner's Tale--and sets them against hundreds of collages. These eclectic illustrations reflect the artist's participatory, communal energies: many of the photographs used were sent to her by friends and acquaintances or are found images. Chetwynd creates a marvelous milieu of interlocking allusions--medieval church imagery, Baroque ornamentation, Renaissance etching, natural-history photography and absurdist, surreal imagery combines. With their intertwined, complex threads and narrative qualities, the collages reflect Chaucer's own eclecticism and produce similar moments of crude eroticism and ribaldry.