archive

Special-Event

12 – 5PM at the Or Gallery: 555 Hamilton Street, Vancouver.

Our 2nd annual sale of limited artist editions produced in support of Vancouver’s non-profit art spaces!

The sale presents limited artist editions by local and international artists, commissioned by the Or Gallery, Bywater Bros, Artspeak, Contemporary Art Gallery, Fillip, and Presentation House Gallery. Come and check out Motto Vancouver, our new outlet of Motto Books (Berlin, Zurich, Brooklyn) coordinated by Fillip, as well as an opportunity to see our current Mark Soo solo exhibition, Several Circles, a special project commissioned by the Or with support from Arts Partners in Creative Development.

The sale includes works by: Cranfield and Slade, Hadley + Maxwell, Ron Terada, Nicole + Ryan, Althea Thauberger, Sean Dockray, NORMA, Paul McDevitt, Tim Lee, Silvia Kolbowski, Cedric Bomford, Michael Drebert, Brian Jungen, Fia Backström, Andrew Dadson, Rodney Graham, Matthew Higgs, Colter Jacobsen, and Frances Stark, Liz Magor, Emily Vey Duke & Cooper Battersby, Micah Lexier and Christian Bök, Eric Metcalfe, Antonia Hirsch, Kevin Schmidt, Fiona Banner, Stan Douglas, Judy Radul, and more!

Proceeds from the sale of artist editions will be used to support programming and operations at the participating organizations.

www.artspeak.ca
www.bywaterbros.com
www.contemporaryartgallery.ca
www.fillip.ca
www.presentationhousegall.com

Our current exhibition will be closed from 2 – 3 PM on Thursday, December 2nd in order to hold a memorial reception for George Riste, the great friend of affordable housing and arts, who passed away the evening of November 24th.

Over the course of almost a decade, Mr. Riste resisted persistent pressure and attempts to purchase his building at 553/555 Hamilton Street to make way for the new corporate headquarters of BC Hydro. Instead, he stood by the tenants of his building and continued to provide rooms and a gallery space at rates well below market rent.

George Riste’s vision and independent spirit was remarkable and stands as an example for others. We encourage you to come and pay tribute to his life and ideals.

Exhibition

She had fallen in love so many times that she began to suspect she was not falling in love at all, but doing something much more ordinary.
– Jonathan Safran Foer

Featuring four Canadian and international artists, Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time explores the theme of failed love. Although this capricious emotion has been the subject of countless songs, films, and novels, this exhibition is particularly interested in the moment love breaks down.

Bringing together a mixture of sculpture, drawing, and video installation, Seemed Like… presents a humourous perspective on failure, rejection, and relationships gone awry. Works by Markus Vater (London), Jon Pylypchuk (Los Angeles/Winnipeg), Aleesa Cohene (Toronto/Berlin), and Alex Da Corte (Philadelphia) investigate the peculiarities of love in a self-deprecating and vulnerable manner. Depictions of futile relationships and longings between humans and animals, inanimate objects, and even supernaturals are represented in the exhibition, as are vague tales of heartbreak and undefined promises of time.

From a story of two lovesick women, to the humiliation of participating in a dating game, the exhibition provides an opportunity for viewers to both wallow and laugh at their own misguided romances. Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time does not bring finality or atonement to the viewer, but perhaps an occasion to remember that maybe things are looking up.

The Or Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, our members, donors, and volunteers. The Or Gallery and Kim Nguyen gratefully acknowledge the additional support of Canada Council for the Arts Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts. The Or Gallery is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC).

News

The Or Gallery is pleased to announce its participation in Unter dem Motto 2010, organized by Motto Berlin & Chert Gallery, Berlin

This second incarnation of the Berlin-based art book fair features over 70 publishers from around the world, and a series of talks, screenings, and other events.

Skalitzerstrasse 68
10997 Berlin

More information

Special-Event

presented by Artspeak, Or Gallery, and the Bodgers’ and Kludgers’ Co-operative

The International Chilliwack Biennial takes place July 28 and 29 at the Delta Grove campsite of Cultus Lake Provincial Park near Chilliwack, BC. The event is an open question on large-scale exhibitions and takes a consciously precarious approach. This is the DIY, near-zero budget biennial – the bodged biennial. Shoe-horned amidst other campers in a state-run camping area, the International Chilliwack Biennial quietly goes about its business. This is the biennial that doesn’t sit up quite right, that wobbles, that is, perhaps, rained-out. Offsite, contingent, last-minute favours: borrow your dad’s sleeping bag and your neighbour’s tent. The International Chilliwack Biennial hopes to make you feel different about camping.

Understood as a prototype, the event will consider the biennial as studio or performance. Works will be created, rearranged, consumed, found and dusted off. Tents, trailers, and other portable or temporary structures will form pavilions for international projects. At our symposia smoke may get in your eyes. We don’t have a PA system, but we may be able to offer you a marshmallow. Enjoy.

See http://www.chilliwackbiennial.org for updated information.

Park: Cultus Lake Provincial Park
Campground: Delta Grove

Directions: Cultus Lake Provincial Park is located 11km southwest of Chilliwack, BC. Access to the park is off Highway 1 at the Yarrow or Sardis exits. It is 16 km to the park entrance from Yarrow and 10 km from Sardis via the Columbia Valley Highway, which bisects the southeast section of the park.

Special-Event

As its contribution to the International Chilliwack Biennial, Or Gallery presents When a day you know to be Wednesday, starts off sounding like Sunday, you know there is something seriously wrong somewhere, a program of individual projects by Christoph Keller / Stählemühle, Gareth Moore, Heather and Ivan Morison, and Kara Uzelman.

The program takes its title from the opening sentence of John Wyndham’s 1951 post-apocalyptic novel The Day of the Triffids, and the works presented play on the novel’s attention to shifts in soundscape as well as literary connections pertinent to the novel’s distopic themes.

Christoph Keller / Stählemühle – Keller et Fils – Absinthe Traditionelle du Lac de Contance (edition 65/88), 2010
Christoph Keller, founder of Revolver Books (Frankfurt) and editor of Christoph Keller Editions published by JRP Ringier (Zürich), produces small editions of fine spirits on his farm in the Lake Constance region of South Germany. Keller draws conscious lines between his work designing and producing books to his newer practice of distilling alcohol, and these lines seem all the more apparent with the recent production of a traditional French-style absinthe. Absinthe was a drink particularly among European artists and writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuryin the rife with literary and distopic references and allusions. In the context of this series, Keller’s absinthe might be seen to stand in as the hallucinatory green meteor shower of Wyndham’s novel that leaves most of the world blind the following morning.

• Small quantities served undiluted on the evening of Thursday, July 29.

Gareth Moore – The Sound of the Ocean Brought to The Lake, 2010
Twice daily, the artist will bring a small portable stereo to the edge of Cultus Lake and play the sound of the ocean.

Heather and Ivan Morison – The J.G. Ballard Sausage
Originally developed with a pig farmer in Wales, the J.G. Ballard Sausage was first produced for the barn raising of Heather and Ivan Morison’s work Black Cloud. Ballard had just died, so the artists decided to dedicate a sausage to him.

Ideal recipe: blood, mixed meats, apples gathered from the roadside where they have grown from discarded cores by passing motorists, wild fennel (or something similar that is locally, naturally available.), seasoning and whatever is needed to give correct texture and form. They should be around one foot long, half inch in diameter and black in colour, a bit like the kind of sausage Robert Maitland might have made in Ballard’s novel Concrete Island.

• Served on the evening of Thursday, July 29.

Kara Uzelman — Shortwave Receiver and Antenna, 2010
Using materials derived from a camping vernacular (tent poles, beer bottles, wire, found speaker, recovered electronics, metal pot, AA batteries), Uzelman assembles a shortwave receiver with the goal of making attributes of the campsite’s ‘hertzian space’ audible. Herzian space is a term sometimes used to describe the invisible landscape of the electromagnetic spectrum, complete with electrogeography and electroclimate. Uzleman’s practice has long involved the use of found and salvaged materials, and with her recent work she takes increasing interest in expanding this practice to include found radio waves — normally invisible and inaudible, yet highly regulated for use by government and commercial interests.

Artist-Talk

From “The GINA Show”

With guest speaker Mark Oliver
“A Conversation with Mr. Dynamite”

It was 1980. A bunch of art school kids with video cameras talked their way into the James Brown concert at the Cave and got an interview with the music legend after the performance. Mark Oliver and James Brown talked about music, entertainment, media and satisfaction. The result became a special episode of the GINA Show. The talk at the Or Gallery will feature live commentary by Mark Oliver and footage that never made it on air.

The GINA Show is exhibited courtesy of the artists and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia. Archival materials and works are courtesy of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and VIVO Media Arts Centre. This exhibition is curated by Allison Collins, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

Exhibition

A new exhibition about The GINA Show, John Anderson’s television art project, will be shown nearly thirty years after its initial broadcast in 1978 on Vancouver Cable 10, at the height of the punk and media DIY movement in Vancouver.

Ninety-some episodes were made from 1978-1981, in close association with the artist-run centre, PUMPS, and with the active involvement of a large community of performance and media artists and musicians. A stronghold of experimental media art, performance, punk and new wave the show formed among a sea of undefined local public programming, and then disappeared from public view. After surviving a fire that damaged the original video cassettes, 63 episodes have been transferred from fragile 3/4-inch tapes into archival and digital formats.

This installation brings together this vast record of video, performance documentation, interviews, promotional spots, music, and digital art with related materials and documents from PUMPS, for a close look at the local cultural underground circa 1979.

For the duration of the show, Or Gallery will host The GINA Show archive, where all surviving episodes will be available for view. A short-wave broadcast will occur on site and related evenings of video screenings will take place in conjunction with the exhibition.

Included are works by John Anderson, Byron Black, Taki Bluesinger, Gary Bourgeois, The Braineaters, Susan Britton, Hank Bull, Donna Chisholm, Elizabeth Chitty, Kate Craig, Jim Cummins, Gina Daniels, Maddalena Di Gregorio, Keith Donovan, Stan Douglas, David Enblom, The Government, Ken Lum, Eric Metcalfe, John Mitchell, Mark Oliver, Gerard Pas, Andrew James Paterson, The Pointed Sticks, Patrick Ready, Randy and Berenicci, Anne Rosenberg, TBA TV, Kim Tomczak, Vincent Trasov, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Paul Wong, and many more.

This exhibition is curated by Allison Collins, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

Works courtesy of the Morris and Helen Belkin Archives at The University of British Columbia.

WEBSITE:
http://theginashow.orgallery.org

SCREENINGS:
VIVO Media Arts Centre, 1965 Main St.

Uncut Video: Selections from the Gina Show – Wednesday, 16 June, 7:00PM
Randy and Berenicci, Hank Bull, Kim Tomczak, Elizabeth Vander Zaag, Paul Wong

Unbasic Cable: Episodes from Television Art History – Wednesday, 23 June, 7:00PM
Byron Black, Tom Sherman, David Shulman, John Watt


AFTER PARTY:
Club 560, 560 Seymour Street., 10:30PM until late
Music from the GINA Show, with John Anderson

Video Credit: John Anderson, The GINA Show, excerpt from Season 3, Episode 5, intro sequence. Originally broadcast December 8, 1980. 1:08 min. Courtesy of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia


Image Credit: John Anderson, The GINA Show, still from Season 1, Episode 2, Gina Daniels reads from Strike. Originally broadcast November 21, 1978. 27:10 min. Image courtesy of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, The University of British Columbia

curatorial-talk

Reception to follow

Or Gallery
555 Hamilton Street
V6B 2R1

Or Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, and The Canadian Embassy in Berlin co-present a public presentation with: Anja Casser, Janneke de Vries, and Dr. Martina Weinhart.

Please join us for three introductory presentations by German curators Anja Casser, Janneke de Vries and Dr. Martina Weinhart, each of whom are participating in a research trip across Canada organised by the Canadian Embassy Berlin and the Canada Council for the Arts. The focus of their trip is examining artist-run culture, and their presentations will be followed by an informal conversation with local curators Jonathan Middleton (Director/Curator, Or Gallery) and Jenifer Papararo (Curator, Contemporary Art Gallery) drawing out particularities in Canadian and German systems and envisioning new future models.

BIOS
Anja Casser is the director of the Badischer Kunstverein (Baden Art Association) in Karlsruhe, where she has curated exhibitions such as Susanne M. Winterling, Through the looking glass, Anja Kirschner & David Panos: The Last Days of Jack Sheppard, Learn to Read Art – A History of Printed Matter (co-curated by AA Bronson, 2009), Come in, friends, the house is yours!, Pop! goes the weasel (with, among others ,Steven Shearer, 2008) and Matts Leiderstam – Nachbild / After Image (2007). Casser has edited a number of catalogues and other publications, most recently Andrea Büttner – I believe every word you say (2009) and Matts Leiderstam Nachbild / After Image (2010).

Janneke de Vries is the Director of the GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst in Breme, where he has organized solo-exhibitions with artists such as FOS, John Stezaker, Kathrin Sonntag, Özlem Sulak, Cezary Bodzianowski, Matt Mullican, Susanne M. Winterling, Florian Hüttner and Sarah Ortmeyer as well as the international group-show Space Revised #1. Friendly Takeovers. For the group-exhibition An einem schönen Morgen des Monats Mai… (One fine morning in May…), taking place in May 2010, Gareth Moore will develop a new work. Moreover his work will be presented in a solo-exhibition which is planned to take place in 2011. In fall 2010 GAK Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst will present the first solo show by Shannon Bool, a Canadian artist based in Berlin.

Dr. Martina Weinhart is a curator at the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. In that capacity she has organized solo exhibitions by Jonathan Meese (KÉPI BLANC, NACKT, 2004), Costa Vece (La fin du monde, 2004) and Terence Koh (Captain Buddha, 2008). She has also curated various surveys and thematic exhibitions on contemporary art such as At Your Own Risk (co-curated by Markus Heinzelmann, 2003), 3’ (Schirn Kunsthalle / CGAC Santiago de Compostela / In Progress, Film Festival Locarno; co-curated by Max Hollein and Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2004), Ideal Worlds, New Romanticism in Contemporary Art (co-curated by Max Hollein, 2005), Nothing (2006), Op Art (2007) and, The Making of Art (2009). In collaboration with Boris Groys she organized Dream Factory Communism. The Visual Culture of the Stalin Era (2003) and Total Enlightenment. Moscow Conceptual Art 1960–1990 (Schirn Kunsthalle / Fundación Juan March, Madrid, 2008).

Screening

The Or Gallery is pleased to present SW1, a video programme for No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents at the Tate Modern, London.

SW1 features Terrance Houle’s Friend or Foe (2010), Kevin Schmidt’s Long Beach Led Zep (2002), and Kathy Slade’s Tugboat (2007). Each of which have been previously exhibited in Vancouver, and were made in, and in relation to, an area that might loosley be termed Canada’s South-West. The videos each employ humour and the motif of the singular figure against south-west landscape to touch on its politics, industrialization and the sublime.

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Tate Modern is hosting No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents. For this free arts festival, Tate Modern has invited 70 of the world’s most innovative independent art spaces to take over the Turbine Hall. The festival will fills the iconic space with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film from May 14th to May 16th, 2010.

No Soul For Sale is curated by Cecilia Alemani, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, and produced by Tate Modern. The first edition of No Soul For Sale took place in June 2009 at X initiative in the former Dia Center for the Arts in New York.

Independent arts organisations taking part in No Soul For Sale include: 2nd Cannons Publications (Los Angeles), 98weeks research project (Beirut), Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul), Arrow Factory (Beijing), ArtHub Asia (Shanghai/Bangkok/Beijing), Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund (New York/Tel Aviv), Artists Space (New York), Artspeak (Vancouver), Auto Italia South East (London), Ballroom (Marfa), Barbur (Jerusalem), Black Dogs (Leeds), Capacete Entertainment (Rio de Janeiro), casa tres patios (Medellín), Cinématèque de Tanger (Tanger), cneai= (Paris-Chatou), Collective Parasol (Kyoto), Dispatch (New York), e-flux (Berlin), Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel – 220 jours (Paris), Embassy (Edinburgh), Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Lisbon), FLUXspace (Philadelphia), FormContent (London), Galerie im Regierungsviertel / Forgotten Bar Project (Berlin), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila), Hell Gallery (Melbourne), Hermes und der Pfau (Stuttgart), i-cabin (London), Intoart (London), K48 Kontinuum (New York), Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), Latitudes (Barcelona), Le commissariat (Paris), Le Dictateur (Milan), Light Industry (New York), Lucie Fontaine (Milan), lugar a dudas (Cali), Mousse (Milan), Next Visit (Berlin), New Jerseyy (Basel), Not An Alternative (New York), no.w.here (London), Or Gallery (Vancouver), Oregon Painting Society (Portland), Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Peep-Hole (Milan), PiST/// (Istanbul), Post-Museum (Singapore), PSL [Project Space Leeds] (Leeds), Rhizome (New York), Sala-Manca & Mamuta (Jerusalem), Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Scrawl Collective (London), studio1.1 (London), Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art (New York), The Mountain School of Arts (Los Angeles), The Museum of Everything (London), The Royal Standard (Liverpool), The Suburban (Chicago), The Western Front Society (Vancouver), Thisisnotashop (Dublin), Torpedo – supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Tranzit.cz (Prague), Viafarini DOCVA (Milan), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Western Bridge (Seattle), White Columns (New York) and Y3K (Melbourne).

The Or Gallery would like to thank Anne Duffau, Anca Rujoiu, and Erica Shiozaki for their assistance on this project.

Exhibition

In celebration of its 10th anniversary, Tate Modern will host No Soul For Sale – A Festival of Independents. For this free arts festival, Tate Modern has invited 70 of the world’s most innovative independent art spaces to take over the Turbine Hall. The festival will fill the iconic space with an eclectic mix of cutting-edge arts events, performances, music and film from May 14th to May 16th, 2010.

As its participation in No Soul For Sale, the Or Gallery is pleased to present Kristina Lee Podesva’s Brown Globe at the Tate Modern.

Tangential to Podesva’s colourschool project*, Brown Globe marks the first in a series of colour studies undertaken by the artist that engages exclusively with the colour brown. Despite its regular appearance in everyday life, the colour brown does not exist on the visible light portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, and, as pigment, cannot be made without mixture. It posesses no pure, nor singular, nor truly opposite form…It is a special case.

Brown Globe, thus, refers to the multiple and paradoxical meanings inherent in its chromatic coding and pairs them with a smooth, gaseous, and cartoonish representation of the world to propose questions on how we understand and recognize globalization. In lieu of binary formulations such as the universal/the particular, the global/the local, East/West, North/South, or Black/White, Brown Globe offers another way, and it is brown.

Kristina Lee Podesva is a Vancouver-based artist, curator, writer, and editor of Fillip. Her art work, projects, and texts have appeared in exhibitions, screenings, and publications in Canada, the United States, and Europe. She was the founder of *colourschool (2006-2008), a pedagogical project dedicated to the speculative research of five colours; black, white, red, yellow, and brown, and was the inaugural artist-in-residence at the Langara Centre for Art in Public Spaces. She was co-founder of Cornershop Projects and co-creator of online works such as the Google Emotional Index, youareherebetweenus, This is a Vehicle, and Free for All.

No Soul For Sale is curated by Cecilia Alemani, Maurizio Cattelan and Massimiliano Gioni, and produced by Tate Modern. The first edition of No Soul For Sale took place in June 2009 at X initiative in the former Dia Center for the Arts in New York.

Independent arts organisations taking part in No Soul For Sale include: 2nd Cannons Publications (Los Angeles), 98weeks research project (Beirut), Alternative Space LOOP (Seoul), Arrow Factory (Beijing), ArtHub Asia (Shanghai/Bangkok/Beijing), Artis – Contemporary Israeli Art Fund (New York/Tel Aviv), Artists Space (New York), Artspeak (Vancouver), Auto Italia South East (London), Ballroom (Marfa), Barbur (Jerusalem), Black Dogs (Leeds), Capacete Entertainment (Rio de Janeiro), casa tres patios (Medellín), Cinématèque de Tanger (Tanger), cneai= (Paris-Chatou), Collective Parasol (Kyoto), Dispatch (New York), e-flux (Berlin), Elodie Royer and Yoann Gourmel – 220 jours (Paris), Embassy (Edinburgh), Filipa Oliveira + Miguel Amado (Lisbon), FLUXspace (Philadelphia), FormContent (London), Galerie im Regierungsviertel / Forgotten Bar Project (Berlin), Green Papaya Art Projects (Manila), Hell Gallery (Melbourne), Hermes und der Pfau (Stuttgart), i-cabin (London), Intoart (London), K48 Kontinuum (New York), Kling & Bang (Reykjavík), L’appartement 22 (Rabat), Latitudes (Barcelona), Le commissariat (Paris), Le Dictateur (Milan), Light Industry (New York), Lucie Fontaine (Milan), lugar a dudas (Cali), Mousse (Milan), Next Visit (Berlin), New Jerseyy (Basel), Not An Alternative (New York), no.w.here (London), Or Gallery (Vancouver), Oregon Painting Society (Portland), Para/Site Art Space (Hong Kong), Peep-Hole (Milan), PiST/// (Istanbul), Post-Museum (Singapore), PSL [Project Space Leeds] (Leeds), Rhizome (New York), Sala-Manca & Mamuta (Jerusalem), Sàn Art (Ho Chi Minh City), Scrawl Collective (London), studio1.1 (London), Swiss Institute / Contemporary Art (New York), The Mountain School of Arts (Los Angeles), The Museum of Everything (London), The Royal Standard (Liverpool), The Suburban (Chicago), The Western Front Society (Vancouver), Thisisnotashop (Dublin), Torpedo – supported by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA), Tranzit.cz (Prague), Viafarini DOCVA (Milan), Vox Populi (Philadelphia), Western Bridge (Seattle), White Columns (New York) and Y3K (Melbourne).

More information: http://www.nosoulforsale.com

The Or Gallery would like to than Anne Duffau, Anca Rujoiu, and Erica Shiozaki for their kind assistance on this project.

Artist-Talk

The Or Gallery and Fillip are pleased to co-present a talk with Brooklyn-based artist
David Horvitz.

A prolific, and incredibly diverse artist, Horvitz’s practice incorporates photography, publishing, performance, and mail art, often through collaboration with friends and strangers. Many of his projects are completed through ASDF, a collaborative entity formed Mylinh Trieu Nguyen in 2007. Recent projects have included The Wikipedia Reader (2008–09), One Hundred $1 Grants (2009), and Songs for the Arctic Ocean (2009).

Following up on his visit to Vancouver last spring, Horvitz will present recent and upcoming projects, including Drugstore Beetle (Sitodrepa Paniceum), a bound exhibition set containing works of 27 artists that were mailed out as gifts to various international libraries. This project operates through a sense of generosity and open distribution that are at the forefront of his practice.

Exhibition

Friend or Foe features new work by two renowned Canadian artists – Rebecca Belmore and Terrance Houle. The exhibition explores the stereotyped First Nations body within contemporary social contexts. Belmore will present a new video projection based on a recent performance held at The University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology. The performance explores both the relationship between First Nations and the Museum and the homeless aboriginal body. Alongside this work will be, Victorious, a reconfigured video work from the 2009 Hive Festival. Houle’s contribution includes a recent series of pin-hole photographs documenting and questioning aboriginal stereotypes within the context of First Nations dioramas at the Calgary Stampede alongside a new video projection, which examines the myths and proliferations of “Indian Sign Language” and the question of identity within this context.

Friend or Foe boldly questions how the Aboriginal body may be utilized to create and dismantle First Nations stereotypes. Belmore and Houle, each in their own way, utilize their own body and the performance medium to delve into and explore colonialism and the social affects of racial stereotyping.

Anishinabe born Rebecca Belmore bases her practice in Vancouver, British Columbia. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale.

Terrance Houle is an internationally recognized multi-disciplinary artist of Blood Tribe ancestry based in Calgary, Alberta. Houle studied at the Alberta College of Art & Design earning a BFA in Fibre in 2003. In 2004, his short, The Wagon Burner, won the Best Experimental Film Award at the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto.

CURATOR’S TALK:
Saturday, May 29, 2010 4:15pm
As part of the Canadian Art Gallery Hop
http://www.canadianart.ca/microsites/vancouverhop/talks

This exhibition is curated by Darrin Martens, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

Performance

Anza Club
3 West 8th Avenue
3$ at the door.

An evening of extreme noise and spoken words, Clamour and Toll: Church draws a tension between the sensory phenomenon of sound and the intellectual experience of language.

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TASKMASTER
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Rachelle Sawatsky presents a talk about the early history of Essondale, one of Vancouver’s earliest hospitals for the mentally ill.
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FLATGREY
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Neal Rockwell presents a new monologue.
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RUSALKA
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Donato Mancini reads his poem “ligature”.
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THE RITA
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Performance

The Candahar Bar
PTC Studio, 3rd Floor
1398 Cartwright Street
Granville Island, Vancouver, BC
10$ (with 5 dollars redeemable for food/drinks)

Please NOTE: Due to capacity we suggest you arrive early.

Clamour and Toll is the first in a series of evening performances based in Vancouver’s robust noise/performance community. Vancouver has a history of conflating experimental music and performance art. In the 1960’s and 70’s, free improvised jazz influenced the performances of artists such as Eric Metcalfe, Hank Bull, Al Neil and others. Since then spaces such as the Western Front, Blim, 1067, Sugar Refinery, and Emergency Room have served as hubs for performances where sound is an important component. This series seeks to explore this element of performance, where sound is the agent that propels the performer creating an immersive world in which the performance takes place.

symposium

Six Acres (map)
203 Carrall Street
Vancouver, BC

Invented by Portland novelist/publisher Matthew Stadler and curator Stephanie Snyder, Public Speakers is a collective of autonomous cells in five cities that commissions and presents new public lectures for a popular audience. Past events include Psychedelic Logging and Monkey Wreaks Havoc in Suburbia.

Eight times an unknown quantity brings together eight — or more — speakers presenting lectures for Vancouver’s first-ever Public Speakers event.

Betsey Brock (Seattle)
Eric Fredericksen (Seattle)
Hadley + Maxwell (Berlin)
Jonathan Middleton (Vancouver)
Jeanne Randolph (Winnipeg)
Kathleen Ritter (Vancouver)
Matthew Stadler (Portland)

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Exhibition

Ginger Goodwin Way is an exhibition of contemporary art that engages with contested stories and histories: re-interpretations, misinterpretations and unofficial versions.

As one version has it:

In 1918 Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, a miner, and vice president of the British Columbia Federation of Labour, organized a strike that shut down an iron mine and smelter in Trail BC for a number of months. During the strike, even though he was almost blind in one eye, suffered from rotten teeth, stomach ulcers, and bad lungs, he was suddenly conscripted to fight in the First World War. Goodwin fled from Trail to Cumberland BC, on Vancouver Island, where local coalminers helped him hide out with some other draft evaders in a small cabin on Forbidden Plateau. After a few months police Constable Dan Campbell tracked Goodwin down and shot him dead with a soft nose bullet. Campbell, who claimed he fired in self-defense, was never brought to trial. There was a huge funeral procession for Goodwin that filled the streets of Cumberland, and Goodwin’s death resonated in Vancouver, sparking the first general strike in Canada’s history. This synopsis of Goodwinʼs story is one of many, and the facts change depending on where you find it.

I first heard the story of Ginger Goodwin from my aunt, who lives below the Forbidden Plateau in the Comox Valley, but her story focused not only on Ginger Goodwin the man, but also on a sign for a stretch of the Island Highway near Comox named Ginger Goodwin Way. In 1996, to commemorate the fallen miner and to recognize the importance of his story to the history of the region, the provincial New Democratic Party government named a small section of the highway after him. Since it was installed, however, the road sign has generated great debate, and in 2001 the newly appointed provincial Liberals had it quietly removed.

At the time of the removal, B.C. Federation of Labour President Jim Sinclair wrote “Ginger Goodwin was not only an Officer of the Federation, he was a miner, an organizer, a community leader and a tireless advocate for the rights of working people… At least five BC communities have streets commemorating coal baron Robert Dunsmuir. Ginger Goodwin Way provides a very modest balance.”

The story of Ginger Goodwin has always been plural and ambiguous: one figure’s story with many variants. In many ways his story could be seen as a point of contestation between official narratives and those that circulate by other means.

Some local residents protested the removal of Ginger Goodwin Way through an ongoing campaign replacing the sign with makeshift versions: each sign disappeared shortly after it was put in place.

The artists in the exhibition Ginger Goodwin Way take a similar approach by re- interpreting and taking ownership of narratives that are either in danger of being lost, or are only told from one dominant position. The exhibition itself derives from the idea that a story can be told within a story or beside a story without being the only anchor of the particular narrative. Goodwin’s story then, becomes an entry point to approach the diverging stories present in the exhibition itself.