Two From Billy Mavreas : “B V A”

I received a generous sampling of wares from Montreal multi-media artist Billy Mavreas some time back (hey, I did say I was taking last week off from writing to catch up on my reading), and while his work generally falls outside the standard definition of “comics” (except when it *doesn’t*), I nevertheless feel like it’s both right in my wheelhouse as a reader and critic, and certain to be of a fair amount of interest to many of *you* good folks, particularly those of you who are into the experimental visual arts. If not, hey, fair enough, but for those of you who are still in the metaphorical building —

The first of two ‘zines we’ll be taking a look at is B V A, a “concrete poetry” project published by Ottawa-based above/ground press in 2019 that has about as tight a self-imposed remit as possible to conceive of, but still bears all the hallmarks of a genuinely organic work, being that Mavreas happened upon a stack of unused provincial election stickers with the three letters in question (and apparently nothing more) on them, and decided to put these “found objects” to use. Don’t ask me what the provenance of this particular acronym is, but I guess that the voters north of the border are probably familiar enough with it, and so who knows? This handsomely minimalist publication may hold a higher level of significance to them over and above whatever we Americans are able to glean from it. Or not. All I know for certain is that what we’ve got here is a damned interesting thing indeed.

Each of these pages represents one visual poem assembled from the hand-torn remnants of one sticker, and certainly the permutations and vagaries of this unique approach to the creative process are well-nigh endless even if the “raw materials” Mavreas had at hand were anything but — it’s debatable as to whether or not there’s anything of, say, *emotive* value happening here, but I do think there’s a defining statement that emerges vis a vis the artist’s intentions, that being : the medium is the message, but that message is in no way consistent, even when the tools of its conveyance *are*. I mean, every page here is a B, a V, and an A, but not two pages pages look the same, and consequently no two are *absorbed* or *understood* in the same fashion.

All of which would leave this project open to charges of being utterly pretentious, perhaps even bordering on the navel-gazing, if it were put together by someone with an inflated sense of their own importance, but Mavreas is nothing if not utterly inquisitive above all. One gets the sense of a practically-driven approach at the heart of these “wordless” poems that isn’t unlike the Burroughs “cut-up” method transposed ever-so-slightly to another medium, and for altogether different purposes. Making do with what you have is something all artists need to come to grips with, of course, but rather than simply accepting that as a working truism, Mavreas invites us to view it not as a constraint, but as a key to unlocking the potentialities of a thing — hell, of anything.