Are you or your family an immigrant to Canada? Are you interested in being a part of a growing archive of community history? Do you have family photos you would like to digitize? Please consider taking part in The Making of an Archive, a project initiated by artist Jacqueline Hoàng Nguyễn and presented by grunt gallery (Vancouver) and Gendai Gallery (Toronto).

What
We are inviting contribution of photographs (slides or prints) of your family’s experience of immigration in Canada. We are most interested in personal collections – those images that taken within families and communities by friends/relatives with personal connections to the subjects.

How
The archives at grunt gallery are equipped with digitization and storage capabilities, and we are inviting members of the public (you!) to bring photographs (prints, 35mm, Polaroids, slides or negatives) We give you a digital copy of the images and store a copy in The Making of an Archive collection. The originals are returned to you.

What will happen to my images? 
Jacqueline is keeping a repository of this growing archive, and grunt will be maintaining a back up of any images collected via our onsite sessions. The images may at some point be featured online or in print – but only with your written permission.

Some questions that might help: 
What images, for you, show how your family + community supported one another? 
(This is a very open question – many collections include bbqs, social gatherings, birthday parties, special dinners and so on; all this is relevant!)

Do you have images that show your family engaging publicly with events/ organizing/ volunteering? 
(We have gathered some amazing images of people at community meetings, cultural festivals, marches and protests – this is the kind of thing that is really lacking in official archives.)

Are there images outside the scope of the archives?
Studio photography in its stale fashion (think of Sears portrait photography!) is not so much relevant to us. We are interested in life with its struggles, joys, friendships, strangeness and hope.

How many images can I bring? 
We will digitize collections from 1 – 100 images (that’s 1 – 2 photo books, generally).

What time commitment is required?
Up to 2 hours, depending on the size of your collection. We collect the images beforehand, digitize them, and then invite you to sit with our volunteers for a short interview while we review the material – where you describe to us what is happening in the images. We record and keep this oral account of the images as part of the archive.

Where can I learn more? 
Online:
Via grunt’s website: https://grunt.ca/the-making-of-an-archive/
Via the Making of an Archive Website: https://www.themakingofanarchive.com/ (currently under construction)

Image courtesy Tatsuo Kage

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Photo: Henri Robideau, 2019

The Blue Cabin floated into Vancouver’s False Creek in summer 2019. In the fall of 2019, the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency launched Skeins: Weaving on the Foreshore, the inaugural program of artist residencies, open houses, talks and workshops. Situated in the unceded lands and waters of the xwməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency offers a vantage point from which to consider the city differently. International in scope but deeply rooted in the histories and narratives of this place, the Blue Cabin offers a unique opportunity to learn, explore and engage with the foreshore.

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.

The Blue Cabin sat between the low and high tide lines at Cates Park in North Vancouver since 1932 and has resisted ownership for nearly 100 years. It was home to maritime labourers and families – and since the late ‘60s was a place of creative respite and subsistence for Vancouver artists Al Neil and Carole Itter. 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.

Skeins: Weaving on the Foreshore is a celebration of Coast Salish weaving practices that have developed in these territories since time immemorial. As such, it is anchored by the participation of weavers from the three local nations: Debra Sparrow from Musqueam, Janice George and Buddy Joseph of Squamish, and Angela George from Squamish/ Tsleil-Waututh. Skeins also includes a residency with Australian Indigenous artist and activist Vicki Couzens (Gunditjmara) produced in partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts. Rooted in the local, and spanning the international, these artists bring a long history of cultural, ceremonial and community involvement, organizing and reclaiming, aesthetics and activism.

Since 2015, Creative Cultural Collaborations, grunt gallery and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, and 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.

Learn more at thebluecabin.ca

For general inquiries please contact info@thebluecabin.ca 

Skeins: Weaving on the Foreshore has been assisted by Vancouver Foundation, the City of Vancouver Public Art Boost program and the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body.

The Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency is grateful for the visionary support of Vancouver Foundation, the City of Vancouver, Heritage Canada’s Cultural Spaces Program, British Columbia Arts Council, BC Museums Association Canada 150 Program, BC Collaborative Spaces Program, District of North Vancouver, Wayne Saunders, Fred McMaster and Larry Carrier of Vancouver Pile Driving Ltd., Carole Itter, Marko Simcic of Simcic + Ulrich Architects, Australia Council for the Arts, Canadian Metropolitan Properties Corporation, Maplewood Farm, Polygon Homes, Canexus Corporation, Jane Irwin and Ross Hill, PM-Volunteers, Harold Kalman, Andrew Todd Conservators Ltd, Ian McMurdo, Wayne Poole, Lisa Muri, Clint Low of Bush Bohlman & Partners, Carlo Elholm of Advisian Engineers, Jeremy and Sus Borsos, Germaine Koh Studio Ltd., The Audain Foundation, Lehigh Hanson, Harris Steel, Inform Interiors, Native Shoes, Brent Comber Originals, K. Joseph Spears and Monica Ahlroos of Horseshoe Bay Marine Group, European Touch Hardwoods, Rick Erickson and Donna Partridge, Heritage BC, San Cedar, Robinson Lighting and Bath, Fasteel, Standard Building Supplies, ShapeMeasure, Fine Art Framing, Vancouver Renewable Energy Cooperative, Ames Tile & Stone, Australian High Commission, The Hamber Foundation, Port of Vancouver North Shore Waterfront Liaison Committee and our other generous supporters and donors.

The volunteer team that continues to work to develop the Blue Cabin Floating Artist Residency 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.

Youth Art Exhibition, April 25-28 2017
Closing Reception: April 28, 2017, 6 pm-8:30 pm
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Spring Fever: Vancouver Independent Archives 2017

DATES: March 18 – April 8, 2017

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What’s At Stake? Intertextual Indigenous Knowledges

Saturday, February 4, 2017
12:00 PM – 5:00 PM
World Art Centre, SFU, 149 West Hastings, Vancouver

What’s At Stake? Intertextual Indigenous Knowledges is an afternoon of talks, panels and a spoken word performance that examines knowledge, power, authority, and sovereignty in the construction of artistic practices.

Following on Intertextual: Art in Dialogue, a roving reading group that was held at participating galleries over the last year, this program is meant to function less like a syllabus and more like a web of ideas. Taking the critical historiography of Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A Changing History of Ideas (UBC Press, 2013) as a point of provocation, this event belongs to an intertextual discussion of artistic practice and the role of art institutions (from artist-run centres to public gallery models) in Vancouver.

Intertextual aims to examine/critique and create/support a community based in text, recognizing the process of selection and concomitant erasure that occurs in any process of representation.

Beginning with a welcome by Musqueam artist and knowledge keeper Debra Sparrow and concluding with a spoken word performance by Nuu-chah-nulth/Kwakwaka’wakw poet Valeen Jules, the afternoon features talks by notable cultural figures involved in Indigenous art: art historian Charlotte Townsend-Gault, Nuu-chah-nulth historian, poet and artist Ron Hamilton (Ḳi-ḳe-in), Kwakwaka’wakw artist, activist and scholar Marianne Nicolson, and Cree curator and scholar Richard Hill, Canada Research Chair at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. In addition, a lively discussion between Vancouver Indigenous scholars, curators and artists – Lindsay Lachance, Jordan Wilson, Jeneen Frei Njootli and Jennifer Kramer – promises to be a highlight.       

This series has been produced with the participation of SFU Galleries, Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art, Contemporary Art Gallery, grunt gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Museum of Anthropology, Presentation House Gallery, UBC Press, Vancouver Art Gallery, and Western Front.

VIDEO DOCUMENTATION

Part 1:

Part 2:

Solstice Party: VACATION FROM 2016

Wednesday, December 21, 2016
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Join us for an informal discussion with grunt program director Glenn Alteen along with archivist Dan Pon and curator Vanessa Kwan. We’ll give you a brief tour of the current exhibition (Tomorrow, Tomorrow. by artist Mark Hall-Patch), talk a little about our archive, our curatorial process, and introduce some of the upcoming projects for the 2016/17 season.

Date: October 1, 2016

Time: 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm

Location: grunt gallery, 350 East 2 Avenue, Vancouver BC

FREE EVENT.  Open to the public.

Check out this event and more on the Culture Days website.

Art Talking Women is a series of intimate conversations with a variety of hosts where female-identified artists discuss their creative process as well as their relationship with community and technology. Art Talking Women celebrates and showcases practicing Canadian women artists to the world through evolving podcast technology, internet-based social networks, and digital distribution.

This project was initiated by Margaret Dragu, the winner of the 2012 Governor General’s Award, and developed into a three part collaboration between Cinevolution Media Arts Society, Dragu’s DWI (Dragu Worker International) Production and VIVO Media Arts Centre.

Click here to watch episode #6 featuring Robin Brass and episode #9 featuring Victoria Singh which were both filmed here at grunt gallery!