Jeremy and Sus Borsos – The Blue Cabin Exhibition

ARTISTS: Jeremy and Sus Borsos

CURATOR: Glenn Alteen

OPENING RECEPTION: June 14, 7 – 9 PM

EXHIBITION DATES: June 15 to July 28, 2018

THE BLUE CABIN SPEAKER SERIES:

Wednesday, June 20 at 7:00 p.m.
Artist talk with Jeremy Borsos
Artist Jeremy Borsos will give a talk describing the restoration of the small 1920’s building known as the Blue Cabin. The talk will focus on possible translations of the cabin’s history.

Thursday, June 28 at 7:00 p.m.
Daniel Francis | Squat City: A Brief History of Squatting Around Burrard Inlet
Author and historian Daniel Francis will speak about the history of squatter villages on the region’s foreshore.

Saturday, July 7 at 2:00 p.m.
Carole Itter in conversation with Krista Lomax
Artist Carole Itter will present an informal talk about her artwork and writings during her 35 year-long residency at the Blue Cabin. She will be joined by artist and editor Krista Lomax.

Thursday, July 12 at 7:00 p.m.
Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, The Foreshore
Artist Jen Weih and curator and artist Vanessa Kwan will speak about The Foreshore, a project produced by Other Sights, in collaboration with Access Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery.

Thursday, July 19 at 7:00 p.m.
The Blue Cabin Project
Blue Cabin founding partners Glenn Alteen, Esther Rausenberg, and Barbara Cole will discuss the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency project.

*To keep up to date with The Blue Cabin, please sign up for a separate newsletter online here.

When Jeremy Borsos and his wife, Sus, took on the remediation of the Blue Cabin, we at grunt never expected what would eventually come out of it! Using historical materials, they took the structure apart, methodically cleaned every inch, and replaced the rotted out bits. They insulated the walls and fixed the floor. Essentially, they treated it as an archaeological site, collecting its history in scraps of newspapers and mouse nests and, in an archival process, painstakingly saved what remained. The humble structure revealed itself slowly over the six-month period of the restoration and culminated – when they took up the floor – in the discovery of almost 40 posters that had been put there in 1927 to prevent the floor from squeaking.

In this exhibition, the Borsos’ present a body of work that documents this journey, while providing us a history of the cabin before Al Neil and Carole Itter’s tenancy, and offering us new insights into the earlier inhabitants— squatters, and marine workers on the foreshore.

Jeremy Borsos attended Emily Carr School of Art and the Art Students League in New York. His practice is multidisciplinary and includes writing, photography, installation, painting, and video. He has exhibited nationally and internationally. Together with his partner, Sus, the Borsos have developed a meta-historical use of salvaged architecture, constructing multiple dwellings and ancillary structures.

Sus Borsos was born in Denmark and studied statistics and computer sciences at Copenhagen University before managing Scandinavian Stage Design, where she oversaw the creation of stages for major events in Europe. After relocating to Canada in 1992, she worked with her husband, Jeremy Borsos, on constructing their Mayne Island home created from salvaged architectural fragments. Sus has also worked in digital film editing and design, and image output for reproduction.

Together, Sus and Jeremy have constructed a number of buildings using period architectural salvage. They have most recently completed a full remediation of the Blue Cabin, the studio component of a soon to be launched floating artist residency in Vancouver, Canada. Among Jeremy and Sus’s current creative projects is the redesigning and rebuilding of a studio and living space in Athens, Greece. They live and work on Mayne Island, British Columbia, and in Athens, Greece.

The Blue Cabin project is led by grunt gallery, along with Other Sights for Artists Projects, and Creative Cultural Collaborations (C3). This program has been supported by the Hamber Foundation.

Download the PDF of the catalogue and essay by Scott Watson

Jeremy Borsos on the Blue Cabin remediation, October 3, 2017 at 7 pm at the Seymour Art Gallery.

(more…)

The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency brings forward a desire and need for alternate modes of living and working, and expands our understanding of what constitutes public space.

Despite Vancouver’s international reputation for producing exceptional artists, inflated real estate prices make it challenging for arts organizations to offer visiting artists spaces for research, experimentation, innovation, and exchange. Artist residencies exist worldwide, and the experiences of those who have been lucky enough to take part are often described as life-changing and transformational. Recognizing this need for such a generative space, the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency presents an opportunity that is unique to this region while global in its reach.

Representing the last vestiges of a cultural tradition of artists and others living in squatter shacks along the foreshores of this region’s waterways, Al Neil and Carole Itter’s Blue Cabin was one of many structures that dotted the shores of Burrard Inlet. In 2014, the land adjacent to the cabin, McKenzie Barge and Marine Ways Co. Ltd., was sold to Polygon Homes for redevelopment, initiating the remediation of the foreshore and the small cove the Blue Cabin was nestled within. To avoid demolition, the cabin was moved five kilometres west to a secure storage lot, then later to Maplewood Farm in North Vancouver where it underwent a full remediation, completed in February 2018. The project committee is currently moving forward with the construction of an engineered platform and the design and build of an energy efficient tiny house.

Since 2015, grunt gallery, Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, and Creative Cultural Collaborations have been committed to ensuring the cabin’s legacy continues, and that its use as a floating artist residency will benefit both artists and broader public alike.

The following documents were produced in consultation with a number of stakeholders in the community to aid in planning and solicit support for the Blue Cabin’s future.

The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency (BCFAR) Feasibility Study by Su Ditta, Wild Ideas Arts Consulting
Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency: Preliminary Feasibility Report by Barbara Cole, Cole Projects
A Plan for the Conservation and Re-use of the Blue Cabin by Harold Kalman with Andrew Todd Conservators Ltd.

Blue Cabin Partner Organization Profiles

Blue Cabin media and general inquiries: bluecabin@grunt.ca

The Blue Cabin project is grateful for the support of Museums 150 Program, Province of British Columbia through Creative Economy Strategy, British Columbia Arts Council, District of North Vancouver, City of Vancouver, The Hamber Foundation, Heritage BC, Maplewood Farm, Polygon Homes, Canexus Corp., Supreme Structural Transport, PM-Volunteers, Harold Kalman, Andrew Todd, Wayne Poole, Bush Bohlman & Partners, The Citizens Committee of Port Metro, and all of our donors, sponsors, and volunteers. The volunteer team that continues to work to find a new home for the Blue Cabin consists of Glenn Alteen, Program Director of grunt gallery, Barbara Cole, Director of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, and Esther Rausenberg, Co-artistic Director of Creative Cultural Collaborations.

Join our Blue Cabin Newsletter list here. 

Please consider donating to the Blue Cabin project. Your support is important in achieving our mission.

Photo courtesy of Michael Jackson, PM Volunteers

Representing the last vestiges of a cultural tradition of artists and others living in squatters’ shacks along the foreshores of this region’s waterways, Al Neil and Carole Itter’s Blue Cabin was one of many structures that dotted the shores of Indian Arm.

Recently, the land adjacent to the cabin, MacKenzie Barge and Shipbuilding, was sold to Polygon Homes for redevelopment. Under their agreement with Port Metro, Polygon must remediate the foreshore, including the small cove the Blue Cabin was nestled within. To avoid demolition, the cabin was moved 5 kilometres west to a secure storage lot for repair and remediation.

Along with Other Sights for Artists’ Projects and Creative Cultural Collaborations, grunt gallery has a vision to save the cabin and continue its use as an artist residency on the waterways of the Lower Mainland. The following documents were produced in consultation with a number of stakeholders in the community to aid in planning and solicit support for the Blue Cabin’s future.

Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency: Preliminary Feasibility Report by Barbara Cole, Cole Projects

A Plan for the Conservation and Re-use of the Blue Cabin by Harold Kalman with Andrew Todd Conservators Ltd.

Blue Cabin Partner Information and Bios

Blue Cabin Project Support Letters

CURRENT PROJECTS:

Spark: Fireside Artist Talk Series
January 2016 – Present
A series of informal artist talks hosted by the Native Education College (NEC) in partnership with grunt gallery.  These informal talks feature Indigenous artists whose work spans media from the two-dimensional to live performance and beyond.  Their works fuse traditional cultural knowledge with contemporary art forms, pose urgent political questions, and push the boundaries of how we think about art, history and culture more broadly.  Join us over the lunch hour to be inspired by these artists in the NEC’s longhouse!

Mount Pleasant Urban Screen
grunt gallery is very excited to be programming content for a new non- commercial urban screen in Mount Pleasant! The urban screen is being constructed on the second floor of the RIZE building on the western side of Kingsway Avenue facing the street. Métis filmmaker, Amanda Strong, is our first artist to produce original work for the screen and there will be a series of community digital storytelling workshops for people to contribute to the launch in the fall of 2018.

The Blue Cabin
In 2015, two celebrated Canadian artists, the late Al Neil and his partner, Carole Itter, were evicted from their studio home, a small cabin that had been sitting in a secluded cove on the Tsleil-Waututh territory foreshore near Cates Park since 1932. The Blue Cabin project is repurposing this cabin as a one-of-a-kind floating artist residency that is unique to this region yet global in its reach. The residency will have the capacity to relocate around the Lower Mainland’s waterways and will offer artists of a variety of disciplines the potential to create works that reference the region and its many histories.

Recollective: Vancouver Independent Archives Week
Multiple events take place from November 1-13, 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. Recollective is presented in partnership with Western Front, 221A, VIVO Media Arts, The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Artspeak, and Rungh Magazine. This series is the first part of a robust two-year program that will include presentations from international contexts to take place throughout 2019. All presentation documentation and accompanying critical responses by writers, artists, activists, and others will be published on archivesweek.ca as a research resource for wider and remote audiences.

Book Wordless – The Performance Work of Rebecca Belmore
A major project is an extensive retrospective exhibition and print publication, examining the performance work of Canadian artist Rebecca Belmore, that brings together documentation of Belmore’s 30-year career, as well as generating a series of new work based in her past performance. This project feeds into grunt’s long-term interest in performance art, archives and support of Rebecca Belmore’s work.

PAST PROJECTS:

2018

Pink Noise Pop Up
March – April 2018
A series of events that expands the relationship between the arts communities in Vancouver and Seoul, Pink Noise Pop Up seeks to highlight the ways that art interacts with the often complex social and economic conditions of the city. Based in the work of Canadian arts collective Instant Coffee, this exhibition includes installations, artist editions, performances and other collaborations that will take place in South Korea.

The Making of An Archive
Summer 2017 – Spring 2018
Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn’s project, The Making of an Archive, seeks to collect images of everyday life photographed by Canadian immigrants, in a direct, collective and exploratory approach.

2017

Journey to Kaho’olawe
May 25 – 30, 2017
Journey to Kaho’olawe is an artist publication by Hans Winkler and T’uy’t-tanat Cease Wyss. The 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. In conjunction with the launch of the publication grunt gallery and the artists present a week long series of events celebrating Kaho’olawe and the Kanaka presence in BC.

Spring Fever: Vancouver Independent Archives 2017
March 18 – April 8, 2017
This spring season, Vancouver Independent Archives will offer a series of free public talks, screenings and community workshops that foreground local art and art history by drawing on the archives of Vancouver’s independent arts community. Building on the success of Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015, Spring Fever invites new partner artists, scholars, and organizations to share their approach toward and practice within the archive.

Intertextual
What’s At Stake? Intertextual Indigenous Knowledges is an afternoon of talks, panels and a spoken word performance which examines knowledge, power, authority, and sovereignty in the construction of artistic practices. The event follows from Intertextual: Art in Dialogue, a roving reading group that was held at participating galleries over the last year.

2016

Shako Club
A series of workshops in the Tonari Gumi kitchen and studio space around concepts of wellness, care and food where culinary “sculptures” were constructed, incorporating aspects of stories, ideas and wellness philosophies. By artist Cindy Mochizuki and members from Tonari Gumi.

Past and Presence: NEC Mural Project
The Native Education College and grunt gallery are partnering with Vancouver-based First Nations artists Corey Bulpitt, Sharifah Marsden and Jerry Whitehead to create a mural celebrating NEC’s 30 years in Mount Pleasant.

Cutting Copper: Indigenous Resurgent Practice
A collaborative project between grunt gallery and the Belkin Art Gallery, aiming to bring together a cross-disciplinary group of artists, curators, writers, educators, scholars, students, and activists to explore the embodied theory of Indigenous resurgence and cultural representation – both from the perspectives of their own disciplines and one another’s.

2015

Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art
This workshop was a part of the 2015 International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA).  Organized by the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective in collaboration with Tarah Hogue and Glenn Alteen.

FutureLoss
Space, on Main Street and in Vancouver, is currency, and artist Zoe Kreye’s practice reaches through the overarching narratives of real estate, gentrification and speculation to consider the poetics of an individual’s connection to place.

2014

MAINSTREETERS: Taking Advantage, 1972–1982
The history of a gang of Vancouver artists who lived and worked together in drama, excess, friendship and grief.

30th Anniversary
Thirty years is a long time.  A retrospective of all that is (and was) grunt gallery.

Play, Fall, Rest, Dance
The artist works with children with disabilities to emphasize the state of making and being, the pursuit of uninhibited creative exploration that is void of rules, structures and concepts of ‘right or wrong’ and ‘perfection vs. mistakes’. Children are enabled with artistic autonomy and the artist thoughtfully guides them to explore their creative processes.  By artist Valerie Salez.

gruntCraft
A youth engagement pilot program developed to bridge the creative work being done by youth in the popular online video game Minecraft and artistic inquiry at grunt gallery.

2013

ThisPlace Vancouver
Rethinking ideas about Vancouver’s identity and history, this project attempted to compile a collaborative archive in order to expand the collective awareness of the city’s narratives.

2009

Vancouver Art in the Sixties: Ruins in Process
A digital archive of artwork, ephemera, and film.

2008

Nikamon Ohci Askiy (songs because of the land)
In December 2008, artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle made daily journeys throughout Vancouver and “sung” the landscape she encountered.

Beat Nation
Hip Hop as Indigenous culture.

The Medicine Project
Aboriginal notions of medicine and how they influence the lives of First Nations people and artists today.

2006

First Vision
Two worlds – curated by Tania Willard.

2005 – 2009

Brunt Magazine
Showcasing the artists exhibited at grunt gallery, brunt magazine is a complement to the exhibitions and a closer look at the artists, their processes, and the ideas that inspire their work.

Please enjoy this deep, but short chat between Director/Curator Glenn Aleen (GA) and Curator Vanessa Kwan (VK) presented in short form.

For our first blog, we thought it was crucial to set up the site lines for both the beginning of grunt and where it currently stands today. These views are differently expressed through two generations of curatorial practice here at our artist-run centre and are the focus of this back and forth email conversation between our two curators. 

VK: I think this is a nice opportunity to talk about the curatorial priorities/ thoughts about grunt, and how it has evolved and continues to evolve. Maybe that’s a good place to start.

First question: Every time I introduce to a tour group or someone who has never visited the gallery before, I always start with the historical details: the gallery was founded in 1984, and the impetus at that time was to be a place for artists who were not, for whatever reason, being shown or recognized in Vancouver. This led to an emphasis on many practices and subjectivities being represented here – many from traditionally marginalized communities; artists of colour, queer artists, Indigenous artists and performance artists all found a place to show their work and build community. Does this work with your own thoughts/recollections of those foundational years?

VK: And as a follow-up question – how do you see this mandate having evolved?

GA: I understand the introduction we give but these days it often gets read solely through the lens of identity politics which doesn’t really tell the whole story. Not to say that identity politics wasn’t there at the time, it was, but it also included other marginal practices that get left by the wayside in the retelling sometimes. The art scene was a lot more siloed then in all kinds of ways and galleries and artist centres fit inside of these silos in ways that don’t happen so much now or at least not like that. And that marginality back then wasn’t just Indigenous, queer, feminist, or POC artists’ communities but included outsider artists, graffiti artists, comic artists, performance artists, etc.  Also, contemporary artists doing serious work in ceramics or printmaking or textile work. grunt was really about breaking down the silos or working across them in many ways. I guess intersectional really–though that word wasn’t used at the time. Because of this plurality, people had a hard time categorizing what we were doing because it didn’t fit any of the reductive lenses they were looking at us through. They thought of us as all over the place, scattered and maybe a bit unfocused. In hindsight, I think that was really the point, but it took a while before some people got it.

The nature of the community that got created was really based in diversity. You knew going to grunt that you would have conversations with people who weren’t like you and see art that wasn’t like yours. The people who felt the most comfortable were the ones who didn’t feel that comfortable anywhere else. It was a community of loners in many ways. I remember Aiyyana Maracle saying after she made her transition that without grunt it would have been a much harder experience. It was the one place she felt normal and nobody was judging her.

How did the mandate evolve? I think mostly in response to the art world itself. It changed and we changed in response. In the 1990s few galleries would show Indigenous contemporary art. There were places to show if you were doing traditional work but it was much harder for contemporary work. Especially if you were an emerging artist. So, many would apply at grunt because they had so few other choices and we had to respond. You would show one and six more would apply. This is no longer the situation. Indigenous emerging artists are everywhere now – as they should be. As you know the last part of our curatorial process is asking if we didn’t show a certain artist or body of work would it get shown in Vancouver? That question we have been asking since the beginning but the nature of what work fits that category is always changing. But it wasn’t just oppositional though. I think grunt’s success is that the larger art world recognizes how important that mandate has been to a healthier art community.

In your court!

VK: I like this clarification of how things took shape in the early years. I think my tendency is to put a lens on what grunt did back then so it aligns with a particular cultural or political context, but you’re right – it was about a true (and uncategorizable) diversity of forms and personalities coming together. Paul Wong once said to me that he thought grunt was the “gangly nerd” of the Vancouver arts community, and that phrase has stuck with me ever since – maybe because the idea of a nerd is that there’s a weirdness there that resists a clear picture of what the future holds: the archetype (can you say a nerd is archetypal??) of the nerd is that they grow up to be something you probably didn’t expect, and possibly underestimated.

Now we say in our “About” blurb that grunt focusses on practices “that challenge and problematize existing hierarchies of cultural value” which is another way of saying we try to remain responsive to what’s happening culturally. I really appreciate this aspect of how grunt works. I think it’s typical in the art world to look at what has currency and try to get ahead of that curve (it is a speculative market economy after all) and I would say grunt has another kind of investment philosophy. You and I have talked a bit about non-proprietary approaches to cultural capital, and also about what it might mean to disseminate rather than accrue resources. This is ranging dangerously close to navel-gazing, but I wonder what you think about capital and how it has been disseminated over the years through the gallery and what it does. I say this knowing that grunt has also engaged wholeheartedly in financial capital expansion (we own the space we’re in, we have worked and continue to work with for-profit developers to gain stability, etc), and it’s important to be clear that a flexible approach to cultural capital comes from the privileges of having a sustainable place to be and operate.

And then, with all this in mind, how do you see the new things on the horizon playing into these ideas? The Blue Cabin, the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen are all big new projects for grunt, and represent unknown directions for the gallery. How do you think these new projects will expand or evolve our mandate? Will they?

GA: Paul is right we were the gangly nerd on the scene and in some ways we still are. We certainly weren’t hip or happening or trying to be. The real reason we called it grunt was because it wasn’t cool or clever. It was basic, base and a little repugnant. And despite the fact there was incredible diversity among us in hindsight it wasn’t very politically correct back then; people didn’t watch their tongues and got called out on it all the time. That said in hindsight, also those were gentler times before social media and there was a sense of humour about it that there isn’t now (and I’m not suggesting there should be now!). But in that flux, a lot of things could happen and did. So instead of a highly negotiated space, it was more like a barely negotiated space and lots of alliances, friendships, and collaborations emerged, some still continuing. And the clashes weren’t hostile – they were enjoyed for the most part. They took us places no one else was headed. When you throw personalities into the mix things happened. And there were some big personalities all who left their marks. And they formed and informed what we were doing.

I appreciate what you’re saying about our cultural capital approach. It is non-proprietary but that’s only part of it. Our ability to take cultural capital from one place and move it into a different arena is essential to grunt’s history and something it still uniquely does. We have been very successful in taking our credibility in one area and using it to open up opportunities in a completely unrelated area where frankly we should have no credibility at all. This plays out in all kinds of ways. One of the reasons we were able to purchase our space 20 years ago was we had done the Mount Pleasant Community Fence the year before and worked pretty much with the entire community, so we had incredible word-of-mouth in the community at that moment. That paid out directly with the development company we eventually worked within a marketing deal that enabled us to purchase the space. They were looking for the community credibility we had, but it was definitely a big part of that project. The year before it probably wouldn’t have worked. Recognizing that opportunity was a big part of it though.

Those shifts have been essential to our growth. I notice we change modes every 6 or 7 years. In 1999 we started LIVE and left it in 2005, We spent the next six years producing websites and then in 2011 started into grunt archives. Now in 2018, we are taking on Residencies and the Urban Screen. Again though, we are using our credibility in certain areas to move into other areas. It always means we are moving into areas where we have no expertise and we need to learn new skills and best practices. In many ways, the work we have done in the last few years around institutional structures and how we look at them has made us more resilient and able to take on these challenges, but it’s still a tall order. But we were ready to expand. We paid off our mortgage so had very cheap facility costs so The Blue Cabin didn’t look so onerous. It’s an exciting project that mixes cultural production and heritage in ways we haven’t seen before and I think it will open up space for artists and create a unique public monument. The Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen was really more opportunistic. We were offered an urban screen to program media art and in many ways to take it at face value would have been problematic. By turning the curatorial focus for the screen on the community we have an opportunity to take this to places urban screens have never really gone before.

What ties our work together, though, is working out of a sense of a larger community, and that word “community” has evolved in meaning over the past 35 years. Along with collaboration, these two really have been present through all the stages. Also what has evolved, I think, is grunt understands its role in the ecology now more then we did at the beginning, how we fit in and what we need to do. Will these projects live up to their potential or our vision for them? I hope so, but they are both important to do even if we fall flat on our faces. What they become will be interesting to watch and develop. I think looking for successes and failures is not as interesting as watching the paths they will take us on. The work is the reward. I’m not sure they expand our mandate as much as evolve it. They will definitely give artists opportunities they never had before. That’s always good. ⃢

Please come back for the next blog to be released soon at grunt.ca

Glenn Alteen, Director of grunt gallery, in conversation with Vittorio Urbani, Nuova Icona Director. The talk will take place at the Italian Cultural Centre on Tuesday, October 17 at 7 pm. (more…)

March of the Monarch Public Performance
August 30, 2018
Artist: David Khang

The Blue Cabin Exhibition | Jeremy & Sus Borsos
June 15 – July 28, 2018

Motion Within Motion | Azadeh Emadi
May 2 – May 12, 2018

Requiem for Mirrors and Tigers | Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa
February 22 – April 21, 2018

Ghost Spring | Derya Akay, Dilara Akay
January 5 – February 17, 2018

2167, An Indigenous VR Project | Danis Goulet, Kent Monkman, Scott Benesiinaabandan and  Postcommodity
December 19 – 21, 2017

You won’t solve the problem with an air freshener | Dominique Pétrin
October 27 – December 9, 2017

Technical Problem | Aileen Bahmanipour
September 8 – October 14, 2017

UNGALAQ (When Stakes Come Loose) | Maureen Gruben
June 9 – July 29, 2017

Contingent Bodies | Brigitta Kocsis
March 3 – April 15, 2017

Three Cities: Prayer and Protest | Mere Phantoms (Maya Ersan and Jaimie Robson)
January 13 – February 18, 2017

#callresponse | Christi Belcourt and Isaac Murdoch, Maria Hupfield, IV Castellanos and Esther Neff, Ursula Johnson, Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Tania Willard, Marcia Crosby, Laakkuluk Williamson-Bathory, Tanya Tagaq
October 29 – December 10, 2016

Tomorrow, Tomorrow. | Mark Hall-Patch
September 8 – October 15, 2016

Four Faces of the Moon | Amanda Strong
July 22 – August 20, 2016

High Kicks into the Light Forever and Ever and Ever | Elizabeth Milton
May 27 – June 25, 2016

análekta | Merle Addison
April 7 – May 8, 2016

Sausage Factory | Weronika Stepien and Stephen Wichuk
Feb 25 – Apr 2, 2016

Remote Viewing | Noxious Sector
8 Jan – 13 Feb 2016

FutureLoss | Zoe Kreye
3 December – 19 December 2015

Génération Sacrifiée | Sayah Sarfaraz
22 October – 28 November 2015

Remediating Mama Pina’s Cookbook | Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda
23 November – 28 November 2015

Catastrophe, Memory, Reconciliation | Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo
10 September – 10 October 2015

ARCTICNOISE | Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo)
Guest curated by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen.
Produced in conjunction with ISEA.
5 August – 22 August 2015

Diptychs | Mark Igloliorte
4 June – 18 July 2015

Eraser Street | Henri Robideau
9 April – 16 May 2015

MAINSTREETERS: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 | Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Marlene MacGregor, Annastacia McDonald, Charles Rea, Jeanette Reinhardt and Paul Wong
Off-site exhibition @ The Satellite
Curated by Michael Turner and Allison Collins
8 January – 15 March 2015

Chopper | Brandon Vickerd
26 February – 28 March 2015

Crossed | Ahmad Tabrizi
15 January – 21 February 2015

Kitchen | Julia Feyrer
1 November – 19 December 2014

gruntCraft | Youth Project by Demian Petryshyn
Summer – Winter 2014

Double Book Launch & Poetry Reading | Janet Rogers & Chris Bose
9 October 2014

The Book of Jests | Hyung Min Yoon
11 September – 11 October 2014

Épopée: L’état des lieux | Groupe d’action en cinéma (Epic Group Action Film)
Co-presented with Dazibao and Queer Arts Festival
21 July – 9 August 2014

Play, Fall, Rest, Dance | Valerie Salez
2 June – 5 July 2014

10 Years of State of Emergency | ATSA (Pierre Allard and Annie Roy)
11 April – 17 May 2014

Produce, Consume | Matt Troy
28 March – 5 April 2014

one man’s junk | Laura Moore
20 February – 22 March 2014

Nothing To Lose | Rabih Mroué
Co-presented with PuSh Festival
10 January – 8 February 2014

location/dis-location(s): contingent promises | Jayce Salloum
25 October – 30 November 2013

Mamook Ipsoot | Desiree Palmen and youth
18 October 2013

Don’t Go Hungry | Bracken Hanuse Corlett & Csetkwe Fortier
Curated by Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun
5 September – 12 October 2013

Trapez & Dynamo Lines | Josephin Böttger
Co-presented with New Forms Festival
12 September – 15 September 2013

The Big Foldy Painting of Death | Ian Forbes
21 June – 27 July 2013

Agente Costura | Lisa Simpson
5 July 2013 (1 night performance)

Background / ThisPlace | Michael de Courcy (w/ Glenn Lewis, Gerry Gilbert, Taki Bluesinger); Emilio Rojas, Guadalupe Martinez, and Igor Santizo.
10 May – 8 June 2013

Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery | Laura Lamb
5 April – 4 May 2013

Gutter Snipes I | Cal Lane
15 February – 23 March 2013

Holding Our Breath | Adrian Stimson
4 January – 9 February 2013

Remains | Mark Mizgala
13 December – 6 January 2013

The Sea Is A Stereo | Mounira Al Solh
11 October – 1 December 2012

Do The Wave | Jonathan Villeneuve
6 September – 6 October 2012

Amelogenesis Imperfecta (How Deep is the Skin of Teeth) | David Khang
6 September – 22 September 2012

BLIZZARD | Jamasie Pitseolak, Nicholas Galanin, Tanya Lukin-Linklater & Geronimo Inutiq
In the media lab Northern Haze: Living the Dream (2011) directed by Derek Aqqiaruq
5 July – 4 August 2012

Qiqayt, 1982 | Emilio Portal
29 May – 23 June 2012

Here There Nowhere, Flaccid Means Without End | Ali Ahadi
6 April  – 12 May 2012

Ghostkeeper | Ahasiw Maskegeon-Iskew, Archer Pechawis, Adrian Stimson, Cheryl L’hirondelle, Sheila Urbanoski & Elwood Jimmy
21 April – 28 April 2012

H20 Cycle | François Roux
16 March – 31 March 2012

Ominjimendaan/ to remember | Charlene Vickers
23 February – 31 March 2012

The Symbolic Meaning of Tree | Christoph Runné
6 January – 11 February 2012

Pin-Up | Colette Urban
28 October – 3 December 2011

Like A Great Black Fire | Rebecca Chaperon
8 September – 15 October 2011

Taking Care of Business | Immony Men
9 July – 6 August 6 2011

Skullduggery | Robert McNealy
28 May – 25 June 2011

The Pigeon’s Club | ATSA (Pierre Allard and Annie Roy)
20 May – 21 May 2011

Old Growth | Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas
21 April – 21 May 2011

grunt gallery’s volunteers are working to make all of our past exhibitions available in an online archival database called The Activation Map.  If you can’t find the information you are looking for, please feel free to email our Archives Manager, Dan Pon: dan@grunt.ca

STAFF

Program Director – Glenn Alteen
glenn@grunt.ca

Operations Director – Meagan Kus
meagan@grunt.ca

Curator – Vanessa Kwan
vanessakwan@grunt.ca

Archives Manager – Dan Pon
dan@grunt.ca

Communications Director – Leena Minifie
communications@grunt.ca

Development Director for Blue Cabin – Marlene Madison
marlene@grunt.ca

Screen Coordinator – Kate Barry
screencoordinator@grunt.ca

Project Coordinator for Recollective – Emma Metcalfe Hurst
emma@grunt.ca

CONTRACT STAFF

Mary Ann Anderson – Consultant/Grant Writing
Linda Gorrie – Business Manager
Sébastien Aubin – Graphic Designer
Hedy Wood – Gallery Assistant
Hillary Wood – Editing
Charlie Stableford – Installation
Archer Pechawis – Web and Digital Publications Designer
Merle Addison – Performance and Event Photography
Dennis Ha – Installation Photography

BOARD

Exhibition Catalogue for ARCTICNOISE by Geronimo Inutiq

ARCTICNOISE

Review of Disgruntled: Other Art, an e-book on grunt gallery’s 30^th anniversary

Read Dr. Kristin L. Dowell’s review here.
Disgruntled review by Kristin Dowell – with images

The Blue Cabin

Read the entire conservation plan for Al Neil and Carole Itter’s blue cabin here.
Conservation Report for the Blue Cabin – final, 2-16[1]

Exhibition Essays

Read the in-depth written explorations into many of grunt’s past exhibitions.

Interviews & Articles