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grunt Board // David Khang: Wrong Places

David Khang is a board member at grunt gallery. Check out his upcoming exhibition in Toronto, Ontario.


Wrong Place / Mauvais Endroit / Lugar Incorrecto /틀린 장소

UPCOMING exhibition @ A Space Gallery
401 Richmond St., Suite 110, Toronto Ontario, M5V 3A8, (416)979-9633, Tuesday to Friday, 11-5, Saturday 12-5.

Exhibition: May 16 – June 14, 2014
Opening reception: Friday May 16, 6 – 8pm
; Performance: 7pm

Exhibition essay by Dina Al-Kassim

Wrong Place / Mauvais Endroit / Lugar Incorrecto /틀린 장소 is an ongoing series of site-specific public works that are performative.
By researching geopolitical histories, seemingly disparate political events are ‘remixed’ – cross-culturally and linguistically. Performed in various international sites – Nicosia (Cyprus), Santiago (Chile), Valdivia (Chile), Mexico City (Mexico), Edmonton and Montréal – each iteration centres on an iconic public speech, which is translated, then enunciated in multiple languages.

The result, at once dissonant and consonant, is intended to question our historic amnesia, and to trigger a re-imagining of their historical interconnectedness and continuing relevance to contemporary culture and geopolitics. At A Space Gallery, the work becomes a multimedia installation based on the original performances: painted military fatigue, flag-like photographs, a bicycle-powered mini-tank, and videodocumentation of the original site-specific performances.

David Khang’s Website.

David Khang, Latitude 53, Visualeyez 2008
Tank_Tryptich
WrongPlacesWrong Place / Mauvais Endroit / Lugar Incorrecto / 틀린 장소 2014

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Canada Council: SANTA FE RESIDENCY FOR CANADIAN FIRST NATIONS/INUIT/MÉTIS ARTISTS & CURATORS

RESIDENCY FOR CANADIAN FIRST NATIONS/INUIT/MÉTIS ARTISTS AND CURATORS

Deadline extended for the Santa Fe Art Institute International Residencies Program New Deadline:
Friday, May 23, 2014

The Canada Council for the Arts Santa Fe Art Institute Residency is open to receive applications.

The International Residencies program supports professionals in the visual arts which include visual and fine craft artists, as well as independent critics and curators in furthering their artistic practice in an international context.

Santa Fe Art Institute, New Mexico (www.sfai.org) Santa Fe Art Institute (SFAI) is a nearly 17,000-square-foot complex located on the College of Santa Fe campus.
SFAI’s facility includes gallery/exhibition spaces, 5,100 square feet of studio space with skylights, housing for residents, a library, courtyards, laundry facilities, a full kitchen, and dining and living room areas.

Santa Fe is an historic hub of Aboriginal visual arts activities including the School of Advanced Research, which houses the Indian Arts Research Center as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. It is also home to the Museum of Contemporary American Native Art, as well as the famous market place, the Indian Art Market.

This residency component is dedicated to Canadian Aboriginal artists and curators of First Nations, Métis and Inuit origins.
Two residencies are awarded to an Aboriginal visual artist and /or curator for a period of three months each:

• October 2014 to December 2014
• June 2015 to August 2015

The total grant amount of $15,000 applies to the resident’s expenses. Residency and accommodation fees, for single occupancy, are supported by the Canada Council for the Arts (Visual Arts Section and Aboriginal Arts Office) and Santa Fe Art Institute.

Your program of work should be limited to two pages maximum and include: your practice (previous and current work), the program of work you intend to undertake at the residency and the potential impact of the residency to your artistic practice. You must also include a résumé (three pages maximum).

For visual and fine craft artists, you must include visual support material: 15 digital images or one video (maximum 10 minutes long), or a combination of 10 images and one video (maximum five minutes long).

For independent critics and curators only submit three excerpts of your published texts, articles or catalogues (maximum of 10 pages for each excerpt). You may also submit visual support materials documenting your previous work and the work of the artists who will be the focus of your research.

For more information contact Program Officers:
Jennifer Cherniack
1 800-263-5588 ext. 4122
jennifer.cherniack@canadacouncil.ca
Jim Logan
1 800-263-5588 ext. 5266
jim.logan@canadacouncil.ca

You can submit your project by email until Friday, May 23, 2014 at jennifer.cherniack@canadacouncil.ca

Please indicate in your email what residency period you are applying for: October 2014 to December 2014 OR June 2015 to August 2015.
For more information, please go to:
http://canadacouncil.ca/en/visual-arts/find-grants-and-prizes/grants/international-residencies

VIEW PDF – Santa Fe Extension

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Q & A with Tarah Hogue

Get to know our curatorial resident Tarah Hogue! Tarah started her position with grunt gallery in April and she’s already started to take on a number of different projects and plans that will unfold over the next year. Learn more about her, what Tarah has done in the past and what kinds of projects she’s working on at grunt in the near future.

How long have you lived in Vancouver? What brought you to the city?

I’ve lived in Vancouver since late 2008 – I moved to the city after graduating from Queen’s University because my two best friends were living here and attending Emily Carr. I applied to the Curatorial Studies program at UBC but ended up working for a year and opening the Gam Gallery before I got accepted.

You founded Gam Gallery in 2009. What was your vision for creating this space? How has it changed or shifted?

Photo from Gam Gallery’s instagram

I started the gallery with three of my close friends from back home in Alberta – two artists, a musician and myself. We had talked about the idea of starting a creative multi-purpose space for some time but the opportunity came when we happened upon the space in the ACME Studios building where we are still located (110 E. Hastings). It was available for rent and so we kind of just jumped into it. Initially we did anything and everything to pay the rent: we threw parties, hosted experimental theatre, put on artisan markets, curated exhibitions, had band nights, film screenings, model drawing, games nights – you name it. The idea was and always has been to create a social environment for emerging artists to make, share and (sometimes) sell their work, but our operations have definitely become more streamlined. We currently have about ten artists that work in the studio space (meaning we have fewer crazy parties) and we focus on our exhibitions and the boutique a lot more, which features local designers, jewelry, ceramics, art prints and more. We still do games nights and have music at the gallery from time to time, but focus more on programming that complements our exhibitions. There are just two of us that run the space now – myself and my partner, Julia Kreutz, so we have to be more selective and efficient with our time (we both have three jobs!).

What past exhibition that you curated are you most proud of?

Working on the Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools exhibition at the Belkin Art Gallery as a co-curator was an amazing experience. I had worked at the gallery while doing my MA and Scott Watson (the gallery’s Director) asked me to stay on for the project. The curatorial team, the artists, and the programming all had a profound impact on me, both professionally and personally.

Lisa Jackson, Savage (video), 2009. Production-still photo: Kris Krüg.

What drew you to grunt gallery?

My interest in performance art and the production of indigenous artists brought me to grunt as soon as I moved to Vancouver. The programming here is really important in presenting contemporary art that deals with social issues and there is also a level of community engagement that is really impressive; these are values that I want to build my curatorial practice around.

Who inspires you as a curator or artist?

The more I encounter the work of fellow indigenous artists and curators the more I am impressed and overwhelmed by the scope of talent and intellect that is out there – in other words, it’s a long list. Personally, I find Richard Hill’s curatorial work and writing to be really ground breaking. I had the pleasure of hearing David Garneau speak at the Witnesses symposium in September and think his work is crazy and amazing. My favourite artist has always been Rebecca Belmore, her strength and the silence in her work have been a great source of inspiration for me. People like Tania Willard, Dana Claxton, Charlotte Townsend-Gault, and Peter Morin… I could just go on!

What are some projects you’re planning on working on with grunt gallery?

I will be working on some of the planning around the gallery’s 30th anniversary activities, which I am very excited about. I will also be curating a show from Dazibao in Montreal called Épopée, which is a series of videos produced by Rodrigue Jean who was doing a documentary on male sex workers in Montreal. He later developed a program to allow the workers to produce their own videos and we will be screening these in conjunction with the Queer Arts Festival in July. I will also be doing my own research on the topic of indigenous feminism for a potential exhibition, for which the grunt’s archives will be a fruitful resource!

What exhibition have you seen in Vancouver that went above and beyond what you expected of it? Or what you thought it could be?

The largest exhibition that comes to mind is the Marian Penner Bancroft exhibition at the VAG in 2012. I was just floored by her work and the level of personal narrative that she uses. I can imagine that she would have faced criticism for this at some point in her career and it stands in contrast to the academic/intellectual tradition of art making in Vancouver that is dominated by a few key male artists. I think her work is really important for this reason, though it is powerful in its own right as well.

Outside of the art scene, where can people find you?

I sing and play percussion (tambourine, etc.) in a country-rock band, Those Boys Cassidy. We are just finishing up a three-song EP, which is our second release. I also plan to spend as many weekends as possible camping and fishing this summer. I just caught my first trout on the Easter long weekend and want to get back out there for more.

Anything else?

I am very fortunate to be working with grunt and I look forward to rolling up my sleeves and getting into it – and hope to meet you all in the coming months.


Tarah Hogue Bio:

Tarah Hogue is a writer and curator of Dutch/Métis ancestry. She holds a Bachelor of Art History from Queen’s University and a Master of Art History in Critical Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia. Hogue has curated a number of exhibitions in Vancouver, including No Windows at the Satellite Gallery in 2011 and her practicum exhibition, Facing the Animal, at the Or Gallery in 2012. She has recently co-curated two exhibitions about Indian Residential Schools in Canada: Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and NET-ETH: Going out of the Darkness with Malaspina Printmakers. In 2009 she co-founded The Gam Gallery, an exhibition space and artist studio located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.

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Welcome Tarah Hogue + Meet Renee Mok

grunt welcomes Tarah Hogue

grunt is excited to welcome Tarah Hogue as our curatorial resident! Tarah is no stranger to the Vancouver Art Scene; she recently worked with the Belkin to co-curate the Witnesses exhibition and she’s also the co-founder of Gam Gallery. Read her bio below, and be sure to say ‘hi’ the next time you see her at grunt gallery.

Tarah Hogue is a writer and curator of Dutch/Métis ancestry. She holds a Bachelor of Art History from Queen’s University and a Master of Art History in Critical Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia. Hogue has curated a number of exhibitions in Vancouver, including No Windows at the Satellite Gallery in 2011 and her practicum exhibition, Facing the Animal, at the Or Gallery in 2012. She has recently co-curated two exhibitions about Indian Residential Schools in Canada: Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and NET-ETH: Going out of the Darkness with Malaspina Printmakers. In 2009 she co-founded The Gam Gallery, an exhibition space and artist studio located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.
 

grunt gallery and Tarah Hogue would like to thank BC Art Council’s Early Career Development Program.

Meet Renee Mok

grunt gallery would like to introduce our intern, Renee Mok! Renee is a 4th year English Literature major at UBC. grunt found Renee through the Arts Co-op Program; she’s currently working on an eBook with grunt’s co-founding member, Hillary Wood, and our archives assistant, Audrey MacDonald. The eBook is for grunt gallery’s 30th anniversary celebration and you can expect it to be launched this Fall.

She has experience in marketing and communications and has worked as a Communications Intern for the Canadian Mental Health Association and the Centre for Teaching Learning and Technology at UBC. Renee enjoys writing and design and aspires to find a job in communications after she graduates.

grunt gallery has been extremely fortunate to find such a resourceful, hard-working intern that was capable of teaching herself how to create an eBook from scratch (amazing!). grunt gallery would like to warmly congratulate Renee as she is graduating from her degree program this May.

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Play, Fall, Rest, Dance

playrestfalldance info new cover

About the Project

Artist Valerie Salez invites children to art-making sessions to re-imagine their environment. Every child is encouraged to use fabrics, paint and repurposed materials from Salez’ previous projects. The children respond to the imaginative spaces they create through movement, dance, sound and play. The artist thoughtfully guides the children to explore their creative processes.

Looking For Youth

We’re partnering with KickStart Disability Arts and Culture to find youth with disabilities to participate in this exciting incarnation of Play, Fall, Rest, Dance. We are looking for four to six children between the ages 6–12 years old. The artist will work one on one with the child (with attendant or parent in attendance if needed).

Email Meagan Kus meagan@grunt.ca at grunt gallery if you have any questions or would like to register your child for this project, this is a free project and there is no associated cost to register. You can also reach grunt gallery by phone at 604-875-9516.

Where & When

The project will take place at grunt gallery. We’re located at 116-350 East 2nd street, Vancouver BC. We’re a few blocks from Main Street and a short walk away from the Main Street Skytrain station.

Sessions will happen one to two times per week, the artist will schedule sessions with the children based on their availability. The sessions will be 2-3 hours in length. Transportation support can be provided on request.

DOWNLOAD “Play, Fall, Rest, Dance” Information Booklet.

DOWNLOAD Poster.


About the Artist

Valerie Salez brings Play, Fall, Rest, Dance to Vancouver following a successful residency with Open Space (Victoria, BC) last year. At Open Space she worked one on one with over 20 children, guiding children to produce countless installations and performances.

Her experience with working with children and the arts includes:

>> Arts Reach (instructor: special large scale art projects in underfunded public schools- Vancouver Island)
>> Selkirk Montessori (artist in residence: work on art projects with kids with special needs and disabilities- Victoria, BC)
>> Victoria West Community center (artist in residence: working on art projects with small children- Victoria, BC)
>> Robert Service School, Dawson City, Yukon (artist in residence as special guest art teacher: two years working with at-risk and special needs First Nations children and youth)
>> Artist in the schools Victoria, BC and Yukon (special art projects in public schools in Victoria and all over the Yukon territory)
>> Canada Winter Games- National Artist Program – Whitehorse, Yukon (mentored youth in producing art works for large scale exhibition)
>> This Town is Small – Charlottetown, PEI (mentored youth artists to make work for outdoor art festival)

Learn more about Valerie and her art practice on her website.


grunt gallery

grunt.ca

grunt is an artist-run centre founded in 1984 in Vancouver, BC. We have a long history of supporting creative, challenging, and innovative projects and exhibitions. grunt hosts youth-based projects on an annual basis. In 2013, we worked with artist Desiree Palmen and 7 Aboriginal youth on the project MAMOOK IPSOOT (To Hide or Make Hidden). Learn all about it here: grunt.ca/projects/mamook-ipsoot. We are incredibly excited to host Salez and her incredible project Play, Fall, Rest, Dance.

Kickstart Disability Arts and Culture

kickstart-arts.ca

KickStart Disability Arts & Culture (formerly the Society for Disability Arts and Culture) was incorporated in November 1998 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Kickstart’s mission is to produce and present works by artists with disabilities and to promote artistic excellence among artists with disabilities working in a variety of disciplines.


Read more about Play, Fall, Rest, Dance on Open Space’s website:

“When a child arrives inside Salez’s studio, shouts of delight mingle with the occasional flute melody echo throughout the building, further enticing an audience to observe the young artist at work. Instead of a planned activity, Salez allows the children the freedom to select their own medium and materials. The child is left with limitless possibilities, encouraged to use their boundless imagination.”

http://www.openspace.ca/ReganShrummValerieSalezEssay

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Double Book Launch

Stop by grunt gallery to refresh your spring reading!

Thursday April 24 (6-8pm) at grunt gallery
dbl-book launch-01

Find yourself a copy of the ‘Mamook Ipsoot (To Hide or Make Hidden)’ book and Art Cards. The book describes how the youth project approached art-making through a conceptual lens and explores the relationship between indigenous youth and Vancouver’s landscape. It includes a foreword by Glenn Alteen and an essay by community arts coordinator, Jolene Andrews.
https://grunt.ca/projects/mamook-ipsoot/

Stop by to feast your eyes on the ‘Don’t Go Hungry – Be Hungry’ booklet. This publication features a new essay by Tania Willard and includes beautiful photos from the Don’t Go Hungry exhibition by Bracken Hanuse Corlett and Csetkwe Fortier.

We’ll be offering lots of great deals on past publications, check out our online store to see what we have available:
http://gruntgallery.bigcartel.com/

 


grunt YouTube:

Watch Bracken Hanuse Corlett and Csetkwe Fortier talk about, “Don’t Go Hungry”.

Learn all about the “Mamook Ipsoot (To Hide or Make Hidden)” project:

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Two Walls [ATA article]

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Ken Gerberick, Crushed Wall (1992)

Laura Moore’s exhibition, one man’s junk, showing at grunt until March 22nd, looks at the product of consumer waste and discarded objects. In this exhibition, Moore uses limestone as a canvas to document discarded electronic objects, such as old computer monitors, that most tend to overlook. Looking through grunt’s archives, you will find that this theme of artists critiquing consumer waste features prominently in the history of the Vancouver art scene. The themes of consumption and discarded objects are particularly evident in the 1992 grunt exhibit Two Walls by Vancouver assemblage artists Ken Gerberick and Marcia Pitch. The artists’ respective pieces, Crushed Wall and Off the Wall, which filled two walls in the grunt space with found objects, expressed an overwhelming feeling that society was mired in over-consumption, consumerism and waste.

Gerberick’s industrial themed objects versus Pitch’s toy themed works created a striking juxtaposition of discarded objects, affording viewers no escape from their complicity in the issue at hand. The assemblage art aesthetic featured prominently in the grunt archives during the late 1980s and ‘90s, but this aesthetic seems to have dropped out in the mid-‘90s. Gerberick and Pitch both identify rising rent prices as one of the contributing factors to this decline, making it more difficult for artists and galleries to exhibit this type of show, and note that assemblage pieces generally are not of interest to commercial galleries.

When asked about how he responds to people questioning the validity of assemblage art, Gerberick replied that he expects it:

“I mean, it’s funny too, because anybody that figures out which end of a paintbrush to use can slop paint on canvas. Some people do it really well; an awful lot of them don’t. Assemblage art is the same way. I mean, bad assemblage makes me just want to go back to doing silverpoint illustration, which I used to do. A lot of people figure ‘ah, you find something and you glue it down and there you go.’ It’s like abstract art, and I love abstract art, and bad abstract art just sucks.”

Gerberick, coming from a punk tradition, feels that if his work does not challenge or discomfort people then it’s probably not incisive enough. He sees a connection between assemblage art, Dada (Kurt Schwitters being his hero) and punk/noise music. The central concern, of course, in these forms of media is the control over materials. It allows the artist to disassemble and reassemble things in ways the original creators did not intend.

Marcia Pitch

Marcia Pitch, Off The Wall (1992)

Pitch discussed a common interest in using sound in her practice, but expressed that “it’s not sound in an electronic kind of way and the stuff that I like is sort of low brow or low tech. I like technical but the low; you know, the transistors and the wires and the grooves and nuts and the bolts and that kind of stuff.” She draws inspiration from children’s toys, particularly the older, less mass-produced toys that allow for a total transformation of the object— “you know, the plastic and all that stuff that people really hate, I love to work with.” Pitch noted that the materials found in these older, more generic toys tend to have a warmer, more human and less technical quality to them. As an artist who gathers the majority of her materials from secondhand stores, she has noticed that the increase in demand for ‘vintage’ objects is leaving her with fewer materials to work with, but what she finds most salient is what people are discarding:

“I guess the stuff that people throw away is new – like, you know, toasters. Anything that’s broken is never fixed, because it’s more expensive to fix than to replace. But I haven’t been able to use that stuff, because there’s no human element to it for me.”

There is a unifying theme seen ion the work of Gerberick, Pitch and Moore, mainly their concern with making viewers aware of their own complicity in consumerism, consumption and waste production. The changes in the “junk” we consume and dispose of has made it more difficult for assemblage artists to remove or distort the industrial/technological stamp of the image. Moore faces a similar dilemma, and by creating these objects in limestone she is able to bring a more human element into these ubiquitous plastic machines.

Marcia Pitch’s Between Madness and Delight will be showing at the Reach Gallery Museum on September 25th, 2014.


About Audrey MacDonald:

Audrey moved moved to Vancouver after graduating from the University of Alberta with a degree in Physical Anthropology and Linguistics. She’s enrolled in the Art History Diploma program at UBC and began volunteering at grunt and the Vancouver Art Gallery shortly afterward to become more familiar with the Vancouver arts community. She is currently a docent at the VAG and continue to work on the labour of love that is the grunt archives.

This past September, Audrey started an Internship at the SFU Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology where she is working as the Curator of Archaeology, Research and Collections Care Management. She is interested in public programming and creating inclusivity within the arts.

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Abandoned Machines [artist interview]

We put computers out on the curb like junk. It’s one of those concepts that teeters on the edge of futurism; what would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, today verges on the mundane.

Technology begins to expire as soon as it is produced. When you buy a computer, speaker system, video player, or hard drive, the depreciation is immediate – the forward march of innovation means that their worth immediately begins to decay. These cast-off pieces of technology, once the very symbols of invention and ingenuity, become strange ghosts, forlorn testaments to the exponentially increasing rate of progress.

Sculptor Laura Moore’s current installation at grunt artist-run centre, one man’s junk, takes these forgotten castaways and turns them into something permanent, immemorial, timeless. Moore says that her choice of limestone for this series, as well as her interest in stone as a medium in general, has to do with its status as history-keeper for the human race. “Before cameras and electronics,” the artist says, “people told their stories in stone and sculpture…It’s a material that I think is really important historically.” As a member of an artists’ studio in Italy, Moore was inspired by the ancient sculptures and monuments there, in that country that has such a familiar relationship with the preserving of stories in stone. Although at first, she says, she was interested in carving electronics for chiefly aesthetic and geometrical reasons, she quickly became interested in the juxtaposition of a material old as the Earth itself and a subject matter that is from its start meant to break down.

As soon as Moore started experimenting with carving stone, she knew she had found her medium. She describes it as “the first thing that came really naturally.” The idea for this specific exhibit began when Moore was wandering on foot around her native Toronto. As she crossed a pedestrian overpass, she noticed an old computer monitor that had been flung to the ground below. “For me, that moment kind of marked something,” she says. Struck by inspiration, she spent the next few months biking around the city, looking for other examples of abandoned machines. When she found a suitable piece, she would photograph it, then transport the object back to her studio, where, she says, she still has dozens stockpiled. In this way, the sculptures that make up this exhibit could be described as portraits: likenesses of actual discarded objects, rather than generic outdated models.

Laura Moore_DSC1639 Laura Moore_DSC1643

one man’s junk represents a logical progression in Moore’s own body of work. In her initial phase of carving electronics, she was interested in the intricate, city-like shapes of circuit boards; her earlier works have included a huge limestone computer mouse and similarly scaled-up computer keys. Both were installed in outdoor settings, to catch casual passers-by off guard. Moore’s fascination with technology took a slightly different bent in Kernel Memory, an installation currently on the lawn of the Saint Catherine’s, Ontario City Hall. After becoming “very obsessed with USB memory sticks,” Moore became fascinated with the idea of where they would naturally occur in nature. “They connect to everything,” she says. “They would be…your fingernails, the stems of fruit.” She combined them with another aesthetic fascination, acorns and pinecones, to create a series of 9 nature/tech hybrids proportionally upscaled from inches to feet.

“We put computers out on the curb like junk. It’s one of those concepts that teeters on the edge of futurism; what would have been unthinkable twenty years ago, today verges on the mundane.”

Where the Sidewalk Ends, a 2007 installation that shares with one man’s junk a slightly humorous title, provides a prime example of the deceptive relationship in the artist’s work between labour and simplicity. Upon first seeing the exhibition, one could hardly imagine anything more minimal – a series of curbs, just like the ones that hold cars in place on the street, line the edges of a “white cube” gallery space. A similar simplicity informs the first impression of one man’s junk – the pieces are stacked, grouped all together on a wooden pallet. What Moore accomplishes with these installations is that artist’s trick of “making it look easy” – that is, the smooth, almost computerized looking surfaces belie the many hours of physical labour that went into revealing them from unrelenting chunks of stone. In the case of the curbs, not only did Moore carve them by hand, rather than casting them as one might guess, but she specifically re-sized them to four feet from eight, in order to hold two people, instead of two cars.

Throughout Moore’s work can be seen a carefulness, a quietness; a sense of concern and appreciation for the minutiae of everyday life. By coming upon a scaled-up computer mouse or escape key in the street, one hopes that the viewer could as well come to appreciate the beauty of these tiny forms. By giving a pallet of discarded electronics your appreciation in a gallery setting, we are redirecting our attention to these forgotten objects – elevating and exonerating that which has done the brute work of transmitting our data and preserving our stories. That which, for all its technique and innovation, inevitably becomes nothing but one man’s junk.

07. one man's junk_ detail


About Genevieve Michaels:


Genevieve is studying art history and creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She has been volunteering at grunt since last October, writing and assisting with maintenance and digitization of the archives. She also writes about music and city life for local magazine Beatroute BC. Follow her on twitter: @LavenderIndigo0

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one man’s junk: Digital Monument [essay]

Written by Luke Siemens

In Laura Moore’s work, one man’s junk, the lifespan of consumer electronics is extended beyond the cycle of planned obsolescence into a geologic time frame. A pallet of old computers, meticulously carved out of stone, stands firm against the flow of technological advancement. A 1991 Apple PowerBook sits next to a computer monitor from the late 80s, next to the printer you threw out last week. These objects should be on the scrapheap, forgotten, but Moore has pulled their forms out of the trash and placed them back in our contemporary consciousness. This change in material and form shifts the objects beyond the confines of their original chassis into the realm of the icon. They become avatars of our technological infrastructure, that aid in the contemplation of what such an infrastructure asks of us. one man’s junk forms a point of contrast to the rapid production and consumption of the digital experience.

To have owned one of the computers depicted by Moore, hundreds of thousands of units had to be produced; economies of scale making production possible. Our memory and experience of the object is therefore contingent on reproduction. Changing the way an object is (re)produced, effects our relationship to the object. By moving production from the assembly line to the studio, Moore removes demands of time, multiplicity and functionality, isolating the computer’s existence to an individual object and an individual’s labour. The viewer cannot look at the objects as “junk” even though it calls to mind the existence of electronic waste. They are computers in name and shape only. Instead we see the work. We marvel at Moore’s careful replication. The time we spend idle in front of a screen, is matched by the amount of time Moore has spent on the screen.

Replication also serves as a function; to engage with the histories attached to the objects. Through Moore’s work, we are able to glimpse the labour of the original designers. Once we thought little of the cathode ray construction of the monitor, beyond the desk space it would take up. Carved in stone, the boxy form and ventilation slats can be appreciated as an aesthetic choice.

“Replication also serves as a function; to engage with the histories attached to the objects. Through Moore’s work, we are able to glimpse the labour of the original designers. Once we thought little of the cathode ray construction of the monitor, beyond the desk space it would take up. Carved in stone, the boxy form and ventilation slats can be appreciated as an aesthetic choice.”

Replication of the mass produced object pulls the viewer’s own history into the work. Through familiarity, we connect with the form and project our own experiences onto the artwork. Memories of the novelty of the computer’s purchase, the programs run on it, the speed at which it ran are called to mind. Through this projection we start to contemplate how we thought of technology then and how that differs now. Through this process the technology, is allowed to leave the pile of obsolescence and re-enter our memory as an abstraction, an aesthetic object.

As an aesthetic object one man’s junk functions in a space similar to the surreal reproduction found in the grass and stick airplanes made by cargo cults of the Pacific. When a cargo cult copies mechanical objects in organic form, they are engaging in a ritualistic act of cultural jujitsu. Images are taken from outside the tradition of the cargo cult members and used to form a competing ideology to the dominate cultural narrative.

In Moore’s veneration of the object, there is an assertion of power over the image of the computer. For the last thirty years, the computer has represented wealth and intelligence to the collective consciousness. It is an image worth controlling. After the Snowden leaks of last year, it is apparent how much effort goes into controlling the digital experience. However by recreating the technology with her hand, in her medium, it is Moore’s vision of the digital experience that we are ultimately engaging with. In it there is a healthy scepticism of the digital experience. These are old computer, they cannot be connected to the network, they cannot be spied upon, but they are meant to be observed.

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