- November 14, 1989 to November 25, 1989
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Autobiographical drawings can be a powerful tool for self-discovery and resolution. In Margaret Atwood's recent novel, Cat's Eye, painter Elaine Risley returns to Toronto after several years in Vancouver for a retrospective of her work. In the process of installing and previewing the show the artist is confronted with the ghosts of her past and cones to an understanding of its tyrannies.
In a similar way Gail Carney's work on paper uses personal symbolism and allegory to evoke both conscious and unconscious dilemmas. Her personal vocabulary of symbols is not, however, self-absorbed and preoccupied but offers us images that luminously evoke common concerns. (For full curatorial statement see exhibition catalogue attached below)
By Gail Carney - Curated by Carol Denny, Donna Hagerman
Category | 11 Programs
Discursive Event- November 18, 1986 to December 6, 1986
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"The travelling show, entitled "Wobbly: 80 Years of Rebel Art," brought together I.W.W cartoons , illustrations and posters from the first 80 years of the Union."
By Joe Hill, Joe Troy, Leslie Fish, T.J., Theo Matysik, W.H. Henkelman - Curated by Carlos Cortez
Wobbly – 80 years of rebel art
- March 6, 2020 to April 11, 2020
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For her first solo exhibition in Vancouver, Meagan Musseau presents a body of work from her ongoing research responding to Beothuk and Mi’kmaq visual culture. Musseau uses a multi-disciplinary practice that involves archival research, land-based action, video, drawing, and sculpture to explore land, language, and design. By telling stories about cultural belongings from the perspective of a contemporary L’nu woman living on Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), Musseau’s work transfers knowledge from archived collections into contemporary visual consciousness. A braided sculpture made during a land-based action in Musseau’s home region of Elmastukwek (Bay of Islands, NL) forms the physical and conceptual center of the exhibition. While the act of endurance required to create the 22 foot braid connects to stories and nomadic histories of the Mi’kmaq, the object itself carries the history of the land in its creation. A series of tall sculptures rendered in engraved plexiglass reference Beothuk caribou bone pendants that Musseau visited during museum research. Evoking the artist’s experience of visiting cultural belongings through plexiglass cases, the sculptures re/awaken their designs by enlarging them to a human scale and presence. A site specific wall installation integrates the material qualities of the braid with graphic elements from the pendant designs. These textures surround an image of Musseau beside one of Santu Toney, a woman living in the early 1900s with mixed Mi’kmaw and Beothuk ancestry. Musseau’s work seeks to honour Santu by highlighting the transmission of knowledge that exists between past, present, and future generations. pi’tawkewaq | our people up river presents contemporary cultural belongings that index and render tangible Musseau’s active practice of building and maintaining her relationships to land and ancestor artists. She uses her perspective to overturn colonial narratives of disappearance and instead addresses the role of interterritorial relationships between the two nations as a guiding methodology.
By Meagan Musseau - Curated by Laurie White
pi’tawkewaq | our people up river
- January 11, 2019 to March 2, 2019
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This new series of work by Mexican Canadian artist Carlos Colín merges symbols of Latin American conceptualist art, and Latin American colonialist history, past and present, and its diaspora. Working with archives, books, footage, and audio material related to Latin American history, the artist creates a work based on photographs, text and/or audio with parallels between, arts, politics, religion, and society.
By Carlos Colín - Curated by Glenn Alteen
Strident Aesthetic. Towards a new liberation
- January 21, 2016 to April 27, 2019
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Spark: Fireside Artist Talks is an informal lunchtime artist talk series hosted by grunt gallery in the Native Education College’s longhouse on the third Thursday of each month. Featuring emerging Indigenous artists with diverse practices ranging from animation to street art, spoken word to sculpture. Bring a bag lunch or grab some home cookin’ from the NEC’s canteen and join in the conversation by the fire as we talk about what inspires artists to make work.
By Alanna Edwards, Amanda Strong, Anchi Lin, Anne Riley, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Chandra Melting Tallow, Cole Pauls, Dusty Hagerüd, Elle-Máijá Tailfeathers, Hans Winkler, JB the First Lady, Jeane Riley, Kali Spitzer, Krystle Coughlin, Lacie Burning, Larissa Healey, Levi Nelson, Madelaine McCallum, Mark Igloliorte, Meagan Musseau, Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, Raven John, Rodrigo Hernandez-Gomez, Sarah Shamash, T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, Vi Levitt, Whess Harman - Curated by Alanna Edwards, Amanda Strong, Kylie Joe, Maize Longboat, Whess Harman
Spark: Fireside Artist Talks
- November 2, 2018 to November 13, 2018
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Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2018 takes place from November 2 – 13, 2018 as a series of free public events, panels, conversations, and screenings that highlight artist-run centre archives, artists working with archives, and the intersections between contemporary art practices and social movements in Vancouver. The program significantly expands on the work begun through previous archival projects: Activating the Archive and Vancouver Independent Archives Week. Taking the focus and format of these events as a starting point, Recollective broadens the context, understanding, and awareness of independent archives by exploring what is at stake when artists and arts organizations confront the tasks of arranging, describing, preserving, and providing access to material history. In 2018, Recollective features perspectives and approaches to archival practice through grassroots strategies, collective organizing, hybrid models, DIY spaces, open source solutions, and counter- archives that facilitate ownership of community memory by and for community. This series of events will emphasize the reciprocal influence between contemporary culture and social movements by drawing attention to shared experiences and struggles across diverse communities.
By !Kona, Casey Wei, Christine D’onofrio, Cindy Mochizuki, Dr. Anne Murphy, Dr. Glenn Deer, Dr. JP Catungal, Dr. Sunera Thobani, Elisa Ferrari, Elizabeth MacKenzie, Josh Gabert-Doyon, Laiwan, Laura Cuthbert, Melanie Hardbattle, Raghavendra Rao K.V., Salia Joseph, Samantha Nock, Sid Chow Tan, Syrus Marcus Ware
Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week
- April 19, 2019 to April 21, 2019
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Together Apart has been envisioned as a way of making and holding space for 2SQ/Indigiqueer folks to come together and to be in dialogue with one another so that we might centre the conversations we’d like to hear or that we feel have been absent in our communities. However, our intentions are also simple: to celebrate and enjoy one another’s creativity and dedication to our practices, and to recognize one another in such a way that speaks across the distances we experience in our living and movement through our worlds.
By Afuwa, Anne Riley, Arielle Twist, Bo Dyp, Cease Wyss, Chandra Melting Tallow, Demian DinéYazhi’, Edzi'u, Evan Ducharme, fabian romero, Kali Spitzer, KERUB, La Tisha Rico, Lacie Burning, Lindsay Nixon, Mourning Coup, Niilas Helander, Ostoro Petahtegoose, Riley Kucheran, Storme Webber, Vi Levitt, Whess Harman, With War - Curated by Kali Spitzer, Whess Harman
Together Apart, Queer Indigeneities
- May 25, 2017 to May 29, 2017
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grunt gallery launched of Journey to Kaho’olawe, an artist publication by Hans Winkler and T’uy’t-tanat Cease Wyss. The artist book is the result of a four year process centred on the Hawaiian Island of Kaho’olawe, a sacred site to the Hawaiians in recovery after being occupied as a practice range by the American military. Returned to the Hawaiians in the 1990s, the island is being remediated and returned to its natural state. The publication also documents the Kanaka presence in British Columbia since the late 1700s when Native Hawaiians travelled to BC with some staying and marrying into the Squamish peoples on the BC Coast and many other indigenous communities throughout the region. With texts by Wyss and historians Jean Barman and Bruce McIntyre Watson in addition to Hans Winkler the book represents the four year research project by the artists. In conjunction with the launch of the publication grunt gallery and the artists presented a week long series of events celebrating Kaho’olawe and the Kanaka presence in BC from May 25 to the 29th, 2017.
By Hans Winkler, T'uy't-tanat Cease Wyss - Curated by Glenn Alteen
Journey to Kaho’olawe
- September 6, 2019 to October 19, 2019
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Anton Cu Unjieng’s intricately taped, fired, and stacked ceramics are a response to recent political actions in his homeland in the Philippines. The Duterte regime’s mass killings have been officially classified as nanlaban, Filipino for ‘fought back.’ The stack arrangements in Cu Unjieng’s work are not only a monument to the regime’s precarious strength, but also to the possibility of fighting back.
By Anton Cu Unjieng - Curated by Glenn Alteen