Produce, Consume transforms grunt gallery’s media lab into a multifaceted playground of website artworks and displays. Visit grunt gallery for this special weeklong exhibition that invites the public to access and explore new tools for sharing, seeing, and becoming.

Matt Troy, grunt’s Media Lab artist-in-residence, has invited artists and teams around the globe to participate and facilitate interactive art websites. The exhibition includes the premiere of three commissioned artworks by Vancouver-based artists Patrick Daggitt, Dan Leonard, and Sammy Chien. Five international artworks will be screened by Kim Asendorf (Germany), Michael Borris (France), Joseph Yølk Chiocchi (United States of America), Chris Collins (United States of America) and James Hicks (United Kingdom).

These nine art sites include a tool to create something: a file, jpeg, mp3, gif, or text. Each file explores a component of human sensory interaction: sound and audio; touch and feeling; seeing and being seen; commerce and language. User engagement with these tools creates a file that is catalogued and immortalized forever online.

The role of the traditional ‘artist’ is subverted as the artists act as faciltators, programmers or playground supervisors within this online landscape. The audience is encouraged to explore these digitally created tools, producing new works by interaction and participation.

Join us at grunt gallery on Friday March 28 (7-10pm) for the opening reception of Produce, Consume. This exhibition runs until Saturday April 5th.

grunt gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council’s Project Grants to Media Arts Organizations, Groups and Collectives for making this exhibition possible. grunt gallery would also like to thank their operating funders: Audain Foundation, City of Vancouver, and the British Columbia Arts Council.

Join grunt gallery on February 20th for the opening reception of one man’s junk by Toronto-based artist, Laura Moore.

New technology drives the manufacturing of new electronic products. But during this pursuit of the new and improved, what happens with the obsolete?

Laura Moore hand-carves blocks of limestone into outdated electronic devices. Contradicting the indispensability that most discarded electronics face, these tributes monument how once-valuable objects become undesired commodities.

Moore began one man’s junk during an artist in residence program at the Thames Art Gallery. The artist states an ongoing interest in creating tensions between the permanent versus disposable and the interactive versus the inert. The limestone sculptures includes a computer monitor, printer and hard-drive tower measured to a 1:1 scale; stacked onto a wooden pallet.

“Stone, the material of my work, moves me in principal because it is familiar and I find its resistance stimulating. It is the monuments and sculptures that tell our history, it shapes our continents while intriguingly remaining mutable.” – Laura Moore, Artist Statement

(http://www.lauramoore.ca)

one man’s junk questions what happens when an object shifts from a prized possession to a nonentity, and asks you to find value amongst junk, waste and the discarded.

grunt gallery is pleased to announce that this will be Moore’s first exhibition in Vancouver, British Columbia. The artist will be in attendance for the opening reception.

Artist Bio:

Laura Moore has an MFA from York University, a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and a Diploma of Art from Fanshawe College.

Currently, Laura’s 2010 series Kernel Memory is installed at the St. Catharines City Hall Sculpture Garden; this work is on exhibit until September 2016. In June 2014, components of Laura’s new series one man’s junk will be installed as part of the Contemporary Art Forum, Kitchener and Area Biennial (CAFKA) and in the group exhibition Material World at the Indianapolis Art Center in Indiana, USA.
In the past, Laura has exhibited her work at; Station Gallery (Whitby ON), Ontario Science Centre, Oeno Sculpture Garden (Bloomfield ON), Thames Art Gallery (Chatham ON), Siena Art Institute (Siena Italy), Shoshana Wayne Gallery (Santa Monica CA USA), Leaside Sculpture Trail (Uxbridge ON), Peak Gallery (Toronto ON), Stride Gallery (Calgary AB), Cambridge Galleries, Glenhyrst Gallery of Brant (Brantford ON) and Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax NS).

Exhibition Essay:

one man’s junk: Digital Monument by Luke Siemens

Interview:

Abandoned Machines by Genevieve Michaels

Thank you to the following funders:

Thank you to grunt’s operating funders:

The Audain Foundation
The City of Vancouver
British Columbia Arts Council
Canada Council for the Arts

Beirut artist, Rabih Mroué, returns to Vancouver with a video installation exhibition entitled, Nothing To Lose.

This exhibition questions what we know and what we have read, the tumultuous relationship between fact, fiction and construed narratives. Mroué’s practice explores the media’s ability to reinterpret and misinterpret, and the subjective impact this has on the public.

His performances are both conceptually and politically bold, using the backdrop of Lebanon to construct works that speak to everyone. When inquired about past projects Mroué states, “My works deal with issues that have been swept under the table in the current political climate of Lebanon.” His practice emerges from a generation of artists in Beirut that came of age during the civil war (1977-1990); works often address the aftermath, using photography and video to deconstruct and reconstruct its devastating consequences.

Presented with grunt gallery and PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. Join us for the opening reception of Nothing to Lose on Friday, January 10^th (7pm–10pm). The exhibition is at grunt gallery from Jan 10 – Feb 8, 2014.

grunt gallery is also pleased to announce that there will be a workshop by Rabih Mroué on Art & Politics on Saturday, January 11th from 12noon-4pm at grunt gallery. This workshop is intended for performance artists, theatre actors and those involved with the performing arts. Admission to this workshop is $20 (student rate TBA), please email glenn(at)grunt.ca to sign up. This workshop has limited space available so be sure to sign up soon!

PuSh events with Rabih Mroué:

Rabih Mroué is no stranger to the city of Vancouver. Mroué provided an artist talk at PuSh Festival in 2012 and returns as a 2014 PuSh artist-in-residence. PuSh Festival is hosting a breakfast series event with Mroué on January 17 (http://pushfestival.ca/2014/shows/rabih-mroue/) and will be presenting “The Pixelated Revolution” at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts from January 15 –18 (http://pushfestival.ca/2014/shows/pixelated-revolution). Be sure to buy tickets to these events before they sell out!

http://pushfestival.ca

Press Clippings:

Tate Modern: On Three Posters 2004

Georgia Straight: Rabih Mroué’s Nothing to Lose digs into war-making and picture-taking

The Vancouver Sun: PuSh Festival preview: Rabih Mroué

The Commentary: Pod cast interview with Rabih Mroué

The Vancouver Sun: Rabih Mroué: finding the humanity in a suicide bomber

The La Source: Multidisciplinary artist captures the political and the personal

grunt gallery: Interview article by Gizem Sözen & Eylül İşce

Publications:

Image(s), mon amour Fabrications: Rabih Mroué

Artist Bio:

Rabih Mroué was born in Beirut and lives between Beirut and Berlin. He is an actor, director, playwright, visual artist, and contributing editor in the Lebanese quarterly Kalamon and TDR (New York).

He is also a co-founder and board member of the Beirut Art Center (BAC). He is a fellow at The International Research Center: “Interweaving Performance Cultures”/Freie Universität- Berlin, 2013/2014.

In addition to his main work in theatre, Mroué’s recent exhibitions include: CA2M, Madrid 2013, Museé de la Dance (2013), dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel (2012), Templhof, Berlin – Hebbel theater, the world UnFair exhibition (2012), Lunds konsthall, Lund (12 March – 8 May 2011); Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), London (23 March – 14 May 2011) and Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (22 May – 31 July 2011); and Tranzitdisplay, Prague (10 June – 14 August 2011), BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht (21 May – 1 August 2010), Performa 09, New York (2009); 11th International Istanbul Biennale (2009); Tarjama/Translation, Queens Museum of Art, New York (2009); Soft Manipulation – Who is afraid of the new now?, Casino Luxembourg, Luxembourg (2009); Sharjah Biennale (2009); Medium Religion, ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe (2008); and Les Inquiets. 5 artistes sous la pression de la guerre, Centre national d’art et de culture Georges Pompidou, Paris (2008). In 2010, he was awarded an Artist Grant for Theater/Performance Arts from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts 2010, New York and the Spalding Gray Award 2011 and Prince Clause Award, 2011.

grunt gallery is pleased to announce a new installation of photographs by artist, Jayce Salloum, entitled location/dis-location(s): contingent promises.

location/dis-location(s): contingent promises continues Salloum’s visualization of the nature of the ‘natural’ and constructed environments. An extensive assembly of photographs, taken at various places the artist has visited over recent years, is composed through various signifiers and aesthetics. The images depict locations considered public and private, claimed and unsigned spaces, forms of the common, socio/ideological stage fronts, and domestic settings.

The viewer’s subjectivity aids how one might identify themes and locate the familiar, creating relationships between images and groupings. However, locations of photos vary without division. Deeper inspection might reveal dissidence; recognition and dislocation wavers throughout this panoramic installation. How a space might be defined by its subjectivity, varying an in-between state of existence, is interwoven throughout this exhibition.

Nature is looked at as distinct and metaphorical of human culture, not in order to assign human form or human attributes to nature, but rather to show how nature informs the human(e). This exhibition considers the complexity of how the reading of spaces might overlap, separate, and collapse into one another, inferring an oblique mapping of histories.

These photographs are from Salloum’s ongoing body of work, untitled: photographs, that attempts to critically engage in the representation of public and private space. location/dis-location(s) approaches coming to terms with what it means to be making photographs here (and elsewhere) and the exploration of the possibilities of visualizing the nature of natural, urban, semi-urban, and sub-urban environments (and the totality of the constructs signified in those terms).

A corresponding exhibition of earlier works in this continuum, location/dis-location(s): reprise, preceded this installation at CSA Space in Sept & October of this year.

Join us at grunt gallery on October 25^th for the opening reception of the exhibition. A published essay written by Keith Wallace on Jayce Salloum’s practice will be available at the gallery. The exhibition continues to November 30^th.

Jayce Salloum dedicates this exhibition to 52 Week of Gulf Labor. Gulf Labor is a coalition of international artists, writers, curators, and others, working to ensure that migrant worker rights are protected during the construction and maintenance of museums on Saadiyat Island in Abu Dhabi, UAE. For more information, please visit: www.gulflabor.org

Exhibition Documentation:

This exhibition is a part of Capture Photography Festival. 

Press Clippings:

Canadian Art: 7 Artists and 1 Curator Win $25K Governor General’s Awards

grunt gallery is excited to announce the exhibition for MAMOOK IPSOOT (Chinook Translation: To Hide or Make Hidden).

This past summer, grunt gallery invited Dutch artist, Desiree Palmen, to visit Vancouver and work with 7 local Aboriginal youth on a collaborative project called Mamook Ipsoot. This project is the Vancouver incarnation of Palmen’s art practice in which she helps youth camouflage themselves into a chosen setting within their urban landscape and photo-document the results. The project took place at grunt gallery this past July; the outcome was 7 unique camouflage images that were created by the youth with the help of the artist.

This project evolved out of Palmen’s performance arts practice of interventions in everyday scenarios. In 1999 Palmen used camouflage suits to intervene and respond to public surveillance cameras that monitored citizens without permission. She later expanded this idea into youth-driven projects in which she helps youth to explore how they connect with their surroundings and affirm their presence in familiar and favorite locations in their home city.

“In Istanbul, this project was called “Saklambaç,” which is Turkish for the children’s game Hide & Seek. Often this project takes place in areas where the youth’s connection to the land is extremely important, whether that be historically, culturally or politically,” says Palmen. “It was great to see the relationships the youth developed among one another during the workshop, each in his or her own individual way, working with huge confidence to blend in with their favorite chosen spot.”

These camouflage images have been produced as bus shelter posters and can be seen in various off-site locations around Vancouver, BC, from October to November.

Bus transit poster locations:

King Edward 20m west of Granville NS
MacDonald 23m North of W. 4th ES
Arbutus 28m North of Valley ES
E. Broadway 32m East of Glen NS
E. Hastings 20m West of Dunlevy NS
Nanaimo 20m North of Charles ES
Renfrew 20m North of E. Broadway ES
SW Marine 20m West of Laurel NS
Victoria 24m South of Kingsway WS
W. 16th 33m East of Highbury SS

Visit grunt gallery from October 16^th–19^th to see the exhibition of the large-scale posters hanging in our gallery. The opening reception will be held on Friday, October 18^th, from 6pm–9pm. Artist Desiree Palmen, Project Coordinator Jolene Andrews, and project youth participants will be in attendance at this event.
Add the Facebook Event.

Purchase a set of the Mamook Ipsoot Art Cards here! Limited edition.

Press Clippings:

Vancouver Sun – Mamook Ipsoot: What’s hiding in the landscape?

Read an article on the project from “The Source”.

grunt gallery presents Don’t Go Hungry, a multimedia exhibition with work by artists Bracken Hanuse Corlett and Csetkwe Fortier.

The artists turn our attention toward the stcuwin (salmon) as a traditional food source via process and connection. The decline of cultural harvest due to disease, climate change and overfishing has left both animal and human in a struggle to survive; the exhibition investigates this topic with new works in painting, drawing, sculpture and digital media.

Csetkwe Fortier elaborates on her painting practice and focus on preservation of traditional foods, “The jars of stcuwin (salmon) represent the preservation and processing of cultural nutrition… It is through the use of image, colour, and technique that I express my sadness, frustration and hope in respect to the threat to our health. The content of the jars symbolize the entrapment and dependence that the corporations and government are trying to enforce on the people, by making deals where the land is poisoned.”

Bracken Hanuse Corlett further relates his definition of hunger; “I have been hungry to learn the old ways in a new day. I am hungry for many things that used to be our birth rite: language, songs, forms, ceremony, hunting, fishing, gathering… Through use of new media and old my work is an attempt to calm the hunger pains and bring attention to our story.”

The artists acknowledge an active and ongoing mentorship with artist, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, throughout the creation of this exhibition. Bracken describes the relationship as multifaceted. “He has given us invaluable tips and tricks that have helped our technical process in painting and we have had good talks about concept, form, Indian politics and life, art world dealings, and the history of Indigenous art on the coast and in the Interior [of British Columbia]. Yuxweluptun is in many ways a trickster, comedian, historian and just a fun dude to sit and talk with. He has a very big presence and yet is still a very humble man.” Yuxweluptun is curating the work featured in the exhibition.

Join grunt gallery for the opening reception on Thursday September 5th from 7pm–10pm. The exhibition will run from September 5th – October 12th, 2013. Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Csetkwe Fortier and artist mentor, Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, will be in attendance.

Exhibition Documentation:

Don’t Go Hungry review by Gizem Sozen

Note: Dynamo Lines also coincides with SWARM 2013, read here for more info on this annual artist-run centre festival. 

grunt gallery and New Forms Festival present Dynamo Lines, a video, sound and live performance by Josephin Böttger and Sergej Tolksdorf, and Trapez with the support of the Surrey Urban Screen.

Media and installation artist Josephin Böttger presents a new work entitled Dynamo Lines, which looks at the fragmentation of cityscapes caused by social constructs, urban development, traffic, lights and movement. Three looped video projections depict time-lapsed motion and light from various vantage points of city grids and traffic. The artwork explores the relationship of densely populated areas versus individual movements within fragmented spaces.

Working with musician Sergej Tolksdorf, Böttger’s video installation includes footage of actors emerging as a work team, observing busy highway arteries. But their movements are edited so they appear sporadic, contrapunctual to the rythm and flow of light from the streets. These scenes transition into drawn sequences removing the detail of urban density and simplifying the images into minimalist, white outlines.

The live performance uses an archive of sounds that sync with the projections, along with compositions made for particular scenes. The installation and live performance will take place at grunt gallery’s Media Lab on Thursday September 12, 2013.

Josephin Böttger will also be presenting Trapez at New Forms Festival. The video documents the construction work that occurs at a building site; time and reality is distorted by time lapses and drawn elements that blend into the footage. The video examines construction and demolition, both key components of urban development. The soundtrack echoes sounds of construction; the work acts between dance and architecture, the human body shaping the built environment.

The projection appears outdoors on various public spaces and building walls like temporary graffiti. This project will take place at New Forms Festival, at the Centre for Digital Media, on Sept 14, 2013.

Join grunt gallery on Thursday September 12th between 7 and 10pm for the Dynamo Lines installation and performance. The installation will be viewable in the Media Lab until September 15th, 2013. www.grunt.ca

Attend New Forms Festival to view Trapez, which will be taking place at the festival site. http://2013.newformsfestival.com/

Trapez will also be viewable at the Surrey Urban Screen from Sept 6–15, 2013. Surrey Urban Screen is an outreach venue of the Surrey Art Gallery and located on the west wall of the Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre. http://www.surrey.ca/culture-recreation/7315.aspx

Dynamo Lines Media Release

Read a short interview with Josephin Bottger on CiTR’s website.