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Programs

Holding Our Breath

January 4, 2013 to February 9, 2013
Exhibition
“Holding Our Breath” by Adrian Stimson, is a large-scale installation based on the artist’s first hand experiences and observations at a military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The work is informed by conversations Stimson had with soldiers, some of which were First Nations, and his impression with daily life occurring at the military base situated in the vast Middle Eastern landscape. The work includes the Stimson’s own personal perspective of serving in the military as well as his family’s history serving in the Canadian military as soldiers and historically as Blackfoot warriors. These experiences, in addition to Stimson’s time spent in Kandahar, allows the artist to approach these topics from a perspective that questions the essence of conflict and how this links between personal, cultural, and military identity."

September 6, 2012 to October 6, 2012
Exhibition
Villeneuve makes poetic machines by assembling familiar materials that he barely transforms. His works move, emit light and produce sounds in ways that challenge one’s assumption about it’s imaginary function.

September 6, 2012 to September 22, 2012
Exhibition
Co-presented with CSA Space, Amelogenesis Imperfecta (How Deep is the Skin of Teeth) and Beautoxification, two related bodies of work that will merge David Khang's dual vocations - in art and dentistry. A project that combines disciplines from art and dental science to produce microscopic laser-drawings onto epithelial cells. This work is based on research conducted at SymbioticA Centre for Biological Arts at the University of Western Australia. Khang experimented with growing enamel producing cells into shapes referred to as "enamel sculptures". While the project did not reach its original objective to grow enamel, the cells produced during this experiment were cultivated onto glass slides providing an area in which the cells could be drawn on with a precise cutting laser.

December 13, 2012 to January 6, 2013
Exhibition
Working with The City of Vancouver's Transit Shelter Advertising Program, grunt facilitated the production and distribution of posters by Mark Mizgala. Artist Mark Mizgala presents posters of pop bottles and other containers coated in slip, creating a look of ancient clay vessels in this off-site exhibition entitled, Remains. Mizgala investigates contemporary food and beverage packaging, represented as mock archaeological findings. The artwork appears in a form that is intrinsic to advertising: posters printed on commercial-grade paper and displayed in bus shelters across the City of Vancouver. Having worked as an art director for most of his professional career, advertising is familiar territory for Mizgala. He is fascinated by the corporate machine, its by-products, and the manner in which they are presented in popular culture. Mizgala immortalizes on film that which is already immortal: garbage, enjoying a particularly long life in our landfills, rivers, and ocean floors. The poster series is a testament to long-term environmental impact – a sharp contrast to the ephemera of advertising and mass media.

June 21, 2013 to July 27, 2013
Exhibition
"The Big Foldy Painting of Death is a kind of west coast Canadian visual journey through its creator's mind in large scale. It's not an illustration of death or an entirely allegorical painting, but more a meditation on environment and social structures of Western Canada" Noah Becker

May 29, 2012 to June 23, 2012
Exhibition
An on going installation honouring the complexities and mysteries of Qiqayt history, Canadian colonialism, and the artist’s own personal journey. Emilio Portal was born 1982 in New Westminster, British Columbia, the traditional territory of the Qiqayt nation.

March 16, 2012 to March 31, 2012
Exhibition
H2O Cycle is a series of three videos shot in and around English Bay in Vancouver, BC. These videos were presented in grunt’s Media Lab as a loop for the duration of the exhibition.This can be understood in contrast to another group of his videos, RGB Cycle, where colour rather than water form the basis of his working methodology. Roux’s process can be characterized by a constant back and forth between complexity and simplicity, experiment and analysis. Gradually, his work finds its place between what he has in mind and what he encounters while wandering through the landscape. This exhibition was produced in conjunction with CSA Gallery.

May 28, 2011 to June 25, 2011
Exhibition
Skullduggery is a painting installation rooted in palio-archaeology and physical anthropology. The works consist of an installation of many small paintings of skulls taken from the human fossil record painted on wadded pages of art magazines. The skulls trace the range of human evolution, and the magazine pages, a record of art practices. Together they express the fragility of ourselves as a species and the punctuality of art movements. The installation presents a periodic story of our species painted on periodicals.

July 9, 2011 to August 6, 2011
Exhibition, Performance
“Taking Care of Business” is a performance/installation that lasts the run of the exhibition. The performance involves the artist creating a multi-wall, floor-to-ceiling mural of an office space out of post-it-notes. The artist, Immony Men, will spend each day of the exhibition working 9-5 printing out a 360° view of an office one post it note at a time until the main walls of grunt gallery are filled.

January 6, 2012 to February 11, 2012
Screening
Grunt gallery is pleased to present Christoph Runné’s 16mm film installation entitled “Baum”. “Baum” uses multiple 16mm film projections to create a sparse and virtual forest that is traversed by a solitary figure that appears both rooted and moving throughout the frames. The cyclical and repetitive movement of the abstract wanderer suggests a passage of time, and a path through the subconscious as the drifter searches for his or her place. An attempt to give form to intangible abstractions, such as “longing” or “isolation,” is evident in the discontinuous flickering of the trees caused by the single-frame footage shot of a motion picture camera—a staccato movement suggestive of Morse-code communication or the arrhythmic pressing of typewriter keys. Through this work, Runné explores the visual symbolism of the tree. While the human condition often seems caught in cycles of hopelessness, homelessness, poverty, and “uprooted-ness”, caused by socio-economic strife, wars, and refugeeism, despite great wealth, education, and promise which should be able to allay suffering— Trees, in contrast, stand vigil; firmly rooted— steadfast reminders of survival, regeneration, and hope within natures’ grander cycles. Man’s reflection on his place in nature is timeless, and the poetic metaphors which trees inspire are as relevant in a contemporary context as they were in antiquity.