grunt gallery is pleased to present Brandon Vickerd’s Chopper. Based out of Toronto, Brandon Vickerd is an artist whose work ranges from site-specific interventions and public performances to object-based sculpture.

Chopper is an exhibition of several sculptural objects that reference 1960s motorcycle exoskeletons abstracted beyond their utilitarian purpose. Materials include mechanical parts, fibreglass, foam, car paint and steel. The sleekness of these sculptures suggests minimalist futuristic forms; their shapes appear aerodynamic, evoking ideas of movement, speed and power. At further inspection, they also appear as unknown relics, distinguished from immediate recognition of their mimicked motorcycle reference.

“Providing a feeling of propulsion, the sculptures in this series seem to be haunted by a lapsed future. In the gleaming hardness of custom paint and polished steel is the faint reflection of the failed project of the futurists and utopian dreamers.”
– Brandon Vickerd, Artist Statement.

Chopper resides in an uncertain limbo, generated from past notions while simultaneously whispering towards an unknown future.

Join us on Thursday February 26 from 7pm – 10pm for the opening reception of Chopper. The exhibition runs from February 26 to March 28, 2015.

grunt gallery presents Crossed, an exhibition by artist Ahmad Tabrizi and curated by Makiko Hara. This multi-media exhibition creates a sense of portraiture compiled of Farsi script, piles of dressmaking pins, and glimpses of the artist himself – both visually and through audio.

Exhibition Location: Satellite Gallery (560 Seymour, 2nd Floor, Vancouver, BC)

Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 is an exhibition, website and publication that takes a close look at a self-identified collective of socially and artistically motivated men and women who came of age on Vancouver’s Main Street—once the dividing line between a predominantly Anglo middle-class west side and a multicultural working-class east side. The exhibition at Satellite Gallery contributes to the larger project of bringing to light an under-recognized chapter of Vancouver art history.

The Mainstreeters—Kenneth Fletcher, Deborah Fong, Carol Hackett, Marlene MacGregor, Annastacia McDonald, Charles Rea, Jeanette Reinhardt and Paul Wong—were an “art gang” who took advantage of the times, a new medium (video), and each other. Emerging from the end-stage hippie era, the gang drew from glam, punk and a thriving gay scene to become an important node in the local art scene. Their activities connect the influential interdisciplinary salon of Roy Kiyooka in the early 1960s with the collective-oriented social practices that emerged worldwide in the early years of the 21st century.

Like the current “digital natives” generation, the Mainstreeters were the first generation to grow up with video cameras. The resulting documents bring into focus a decade of their lives, including forays into sex, love, drugs and art.

Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 is curated by Allison Collins and Michael Turner and is a coproduction of grunt gallery and Presentation House Gallery. The exhibition is presented by Satellite Gallery. Mainstreeters launched with the December 2nd release of a video documentary chronicling the lives of the group. On January 8th the exhibition opens at Satellite Gallery along with the launch of the website, featuring selected images, videos and texts. Throughout the exhibition, Mainstreeter videos will be presented in storefronts along Main Street, and the project will be complemented by a publication featuring photographs and documents to be released in summer 2015.

Website: http://takingadvantage.ca/

Video: Watch the Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 documentary featuring footage from the Mainstreeters’ archives and new interviews with a number of the Mainstreeter artists. vimeo.com/gruntgallery/takingadvantage

Video Direction, Editing and Production: Krista Lomax

Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage 1972-1982 | Full Video from grunt gallery on Vimeo.

Press Clippings:

Remembering Mainstreeters | Georgia Straight

Main Street ‘art gang’ remembered | The Westender

The Mainstreeters straddled Vancouver’s great divide, quietly | The Vancouver Sun

Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 explores important chapter in Vancouver’s art history | BeatRoute

Part 1: “Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage 1972-1982” curated by Allison Collins and Michael Turner | Vancouver Art Review

Exhibition Event Details:

Opening Reception: A free courtesy bus will take visitors from the opening reception of Mainstreeters: Taking Advantage, 1972-1982 at Satellite Gallery to the opening reception of Tom Burrows at the Belkin Art Gallery (UBC) on Thursday, January 8. The bus will depart Satellite Gallery for the Belkin at 8:30 pm and return downtown at 9:45 pm. | Visit Satellite Gallery’s website.

During the exhibition, Main Street Tapes will be show in storefronts along Main Street, including:
Eugene Choo, 3683 Main Street
Smoking Lily, 3634 Main Street
Lifetime Collective, 4386 Main Street

Performance of Kenneth Fletcher’s Camp Potlatch
Directed by Paul Wong
Thursday January 22 at 8pm
At Satellite Gallery.

Exhibition Tour and Conversation with Allison Collins and Michael Turner
Saturday, January 31 at 2pm
At Satellite Gallery.

Main Street Walking Tour with Paul Wong and Annastacia McDonald
Saturday, February 21 at 2pm
Meeting point: Helen’s Grill, 4102 Main Street

Drag Ball
Saturday, March 7
Location: Fox Cabaret, 2321 Main Street

grunt gallery kicks off our 30th anniversary programming with a residency and exhibition with Vancouver-based artist Julia Feyrer entitled, Kitchen. Taking the form of an evolving installation in the main gallery space, Feyrer’s work engages with materials and documentation from the grunt archives in the production of a new, site-specific environment.

Feyrer’s starting point is the kitchen—a space that has played a central role in the gallery’s social and creative life since its beginnings in 1984. A meeting space that entertained activities, conversations, and ideas fuelled by coffee, tea, beer, and wine, it has been a venue of literal and figurative “brewing”, where creative relationships have percolated over the years. The idea of the kitchen has long been a source of inspiration for the gallery, and the physical site has evolved into the present-day media lab and an exhibition space for innovative media works.

“Process-based and meticulously—if playfully—constructed, Feyrer’s work is both densely material and intellectually airy; that is, her work challenges the viewer to engage both a tactile experience in this present moment, while simultaneously considering the transformative potential of perception, over time and through space. Feyrer’s use of materials acts as a conduit for seeing and, importantly, for experiencing an archival document.” – Vanessa Kwan, curatorial statement.

More than an exploration of archival material, her work will also engage the heart of the kitchen environment: the social. Feyrer, in collaboration with the gallery, will produce a series of events that activate the installation. Window paintings for this kitchen exhibition is provided by Vancouver-based artist and animator Tasha Brotherton. These events will be announced on an ongoing basis, and will include the closing event in mid-December.

The gallery will also be producing a series of texts over the course of the exhibition and residency. These texts, written by curator Vanessa Kwan, will be made available at the gallery and online.

Text:

Part 1 – History creeps: the grunt kitchen and Julia Feyrer
Part 2 – Recordings
Part 3 – Notes

Fridge Logic: events at the Kitchen

Half an hour after the show is over, a random viewer is staring into her refrigerator, vaguely bemused by the fact that her six-pack of beer has somehow become a two-pack of beer. Rather than work out how this might have happened, it occurs to her to wonder how in the hell the kitchen took 30 years to turn into a sculpture.

Revisit some old narratives and sketch out a possible present one, with grunt gallery, Julia Feyrer and friends.
1985 – 2015

Thursday, December 4th: Drawing 7pm
Ballets for Miniature Aerial Drones: A Research Workshop
(with Donato Mancini)

Tuesday, December 9th: Reading 7pm
(with Vivienne Bessette)

Friday, December 12th: Recording 7pm
(with Pietro Sammarco)

Friday, December 19th: Solstice Party
(bar by Magic Mystery Bartenders)

Artist Bio:

Julia Feyrer (b. 1982, Victoria, BC) is a filmmaker and artist who lives and works in Vancouver. She graduated in 2010 with a Meisterschülerin from the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany. She has recently exhibited Escape Scenes at the Western Front in Vancouver. Other recent exhibitions include (in collaboration with Tamara Henderson), Bottles Under the Influence, at Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff (2013), Alternatives and Opportunities, Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2012), Irregular Time Signatures, Johan Berggren Gallery, Malmö (2011) and The Poodle Dog Ornamental Bar, Artspeak, Vancouver (2010). Her work has been included in the following group exhibitions The Intellection of Lady Spider House, Art Gallery of Alberta (2013), Phantasmagoria, Presentation House (2012), Children’s Films, Contemporary Art Gallery, Bielefelder Kunstverein, & International Project Space (2011  2013). Julia is also the co-editor of the audiozine Spoox (www.spooxaudiozine.org) and author of a series of artist books from Perro Verlag press.

Vancouver-based artist Hyung-Min Yoon presents a series of images that draws from an obscure collection of marginal religious illustrations by Albrecht Dürer. Originally used to surround religious texts, Hyung-Min Yoon reimagines their placement and purpose by framing them around contemporary political jokes of various cultures in their original languages.

This challenging combination strikes a balance between different historical and contemporary modes of ideology; the popular and the religious; and the individual and the state.

The Book of Jests is both the exhibition title and the name of the book that Hyung-Min Yoon has produced to house 25 contemporary jokes. Visit grunt gallery to view a selection of prints from the book, a newly created video that documents the book from cover to cover in our Media Lab, and to see the hand-sewn The Book of Jests protected by vitrine.

The opening reception for this exhibition will take place on Thursday September 11th, 7pm –10pm. The opening is associated with SWARM, an annual festival of artist-run centres. The exhibition runs from Sept 11– Oct 11, 2014.

Be sure to attend the artist talk on Saturday, September 27th, 12:30pm –1:30pm at grunt gallery, an event that’s a part of BC Culture Days.

The Book of Jests from Hyung-Min Yoon on Vimeo.

Artist Bio:

Born in Seoul, Hyung-Min Yoon studied at the Korean National University of Arts, Seoul (BFA) and Chelsea College of Art & Design, London (MFA). Her works seek to develop the idea of ‘aesthetic translation’ to uncover meaning in the ambiguities and contradictions that lie undetected in an era of globalization. Yoon’s current interest is in the role that printing technologies have had in the dissemination of ideas through time. Her works have been exhibited internationally in Korea, UK, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. She is currently artist in residence at Gyeongi Creation Centre, Korea.
http://www.yoonhyungmin.com

Essay:

The Book of Jests | Essay by Lorna Brown

Press Clippings:

 Artist reframes old master for modern age

| The Source
http://thelasource.com/en/2014/08/25/artist-reframes-old-master-for-modern-age/

Yoon adds that in her work, she tries to match Dürer’s illustrations to the jokes she compiles. Although the religious drawings and political jokes may seem incompatible, Yoon says that the drawings in this piece are portrayed humorously and compliment her work.

“Dürer is an amazing artist who’s really playful with his drawing so it looks quite light and not that serious. It occurred to me that it’s would be a perfect match,” says Yoon.

Hyung Min Yoon: From Page to Screen

| Canadian Art
http://canadianart.ca/reviews/2014/09/16/hyung-min-yoon/

With that in mind, what does it mean to produce or consume a CD, a DVD or a glue-and-paper book when the music, pictures and literature they contain are now more commonly produced and consumed through one’s phone? Is it both a political and an aesthetic act to continue with these apparently obsolete forms, as it was in the 1980s when the digitization and increased corporatization of the music industry resulted in multi-track tape decks showing up at thrift stores, where they were purchased and put to use by musicians associated with the North American “lo-fi” indie movement? Are we now at a similar place with the hard-copy book?

CLOSING RECEPTION CANCELLED.

Our closing reception is cancelled because Artist Rodrique Jean is unable to make it to this event. You are welcome to attend the Queer Arts Festival screening on Tues Aug 5 at the Roundhouse. The exhibition at grunt gallery will run until this Saturday.

Off-site screening: Aug 5, 2014, 7:30 PM, Roundhouse Performance Centre
Creative Contributors: Tarah Hogue, curator; Rachel Iwaasa, Queer Arts Festival; Dazibao (Montreal, QC).

The installation L’État des lieux (The State of the Moment) and film screening of L’État du monde (The State of the World) is co-presented by grunt gallery, Queer Arts Festival and Dazibao.

Initiated by filmmaker Rodrigue Jean, Épopée is a collection of short films written and made in collaboration with male drug addicts and sex trade workers in Montreal. Set in the district known to residents as “the box,” an area bounded by the streets St. Denis, De Lorimier, Viger and Sherbrooke, the project was initiated following the shooting of the film Men for Sale (2008), when participants expressed the desire to create fictional works in addition to the documentary.

The project started with writing workshops that transformed into a website (epopee.me) with short films written and acted out by the participants. Made up of stories – 9 Fictions and 13 Trajets – written and filmed in collaboration with male sex workers, Épopée uses cinema (writing, shooting, editing and screening) as a gesture and an instrument of freedom and community. These films are not portraits, whether real or fictional, of their protagonists; instead they combine to paint a highly emotional and political portrait of our first world, its structure and the segregation on which it is based.

L’État des lieux (The State of the Moment) will be installed as an alternating projection at grunt gallery over the course of July 21-Aug 9, 2014. Attend the closing reception at grunt gallery on August 6. Rodrigue Jean, Épopée Collective founder, and Serge-Olivier Rondeau, member of the Épopée Collective, will be present at this event. Special thank you to Conseil des arts et des lettres du Quebec (CALQ) for providing the artists with a travel grant.

Visit the Queer Arts Festival website to purchase tickets for the off-site screening of L’État du monde (The State of the World) happening at the Roundhouse Community centre on Aug 5.

About Épopée:

Épopée is a Montréal-based cinema action group, which carries out projects addressing present-day situations. The group disseminates its work through public talks and discussions, web distribution and art gallery installations. Since 2005, Épopée has focused on persons subjected to exclusion by the State and violence by its police. The group has created film projects in collaboration with sex workers and drug users, students and militants during and after the 2012 Québec Student Strike, and lately with Indigenous groups in the Brazilian Amazon.

The group’s works have recently been shown at Dazibao (Québec, CA, 2012), the Festival du nouveau cinéma (Montréal, CA, 2012), the Visions du réel film festival (Nyon, CH, 2013), Interference Archive (New York, US, 2013), and the Manif d’Art 7 (Quebec, CA, 2014). L’État du monde won a special mention in the Best Canadian Feature category at the Rencontres internationales du documentaire (Montréal, CA, 2013). Épopée has also brought its work to universities and collectives in Europe, the US, Canada and Québec.

www.epopee.me

Queer Arts Festival:

The Queer Arts Festival in Vancouver is an annual artist-run showcase of queer arts, culture and history. It celebrates the unique creative expressions of visual and performing artists who identify as part of the queer communities. QAF features a curated visual arts show, a community art show, and 3 dynamic weeks of cutting-edge performances and workshops from all artistic disciplines, including music, dance, theatre, literary and media arts.

http://queerartsfestival.com/

Visit grunt gallery over the month of June to witness Valerie Salez’ Play, Fall, Rest, Dance, an installation that continously changes based on the creative output by children with disabilities. grunt gallery is proud to partner with KickStart Disability Arts and Culture to bring Salez’ project to Vancouver following a successful residency that occurred at Open Space (Victoria, BC) last year.

Artist Valerie Salez creates an environment that encourages artistic freedom, exploration and installation-making over the course of several weeks. Children participate in art-making sessions that reimagine the space through the use of various materials, some of which are repurposed from Salez’ past projects, and through performance, movement, sound and play.

The artist works with children with disabilities to emphasize the state of making and being, the pursuit of uninhibitied 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.

Visitors are invited to stop by the gallery throughout the month of June to see how the installation is reimagined, rebuilt and reconsidered during the month. The gallery is open to the public throughout the month of June.

Due to the nature of this project, there will be a closing reception on Thursday June 26, 7-10pm. The project will run from June 2-July 5.

Read the blog:

https://grunt.ca/play-fall-rest-dance-blog/

Press Clippings:

The Source: The artistry of play: installation showcases children’s art http://thelasource.com/en/2014/06/09/the-artistry-of-play-installation-showcases-childrens-art/

Article:

Crafting an experience of Art-making: Valerie Salez’ Play, Fall, Rest, Dance written by Anastasia Scherders

Artist Bio:

Since 2003, Valerie Salez has been engaged in a multi-disciplinary art practice that includes performance, video, photography, sculptural installation, and collage. Her work has been both collaborative and solo. Often relying on provisional materials, it can be framed as arte povera and/or situationist in nature. For four years, Salez engaged in snow-shoveling performances/interventions at residencies across Canada. Video and photo documentation of these performances have been exhibited at university art galleries and artist-run centers in Canada, including the 2010 Vancouver Cultural Olympiad. Other collaborations include large outdoor sculptural installations with elements of performance. As well, Salez has produced a number of solo installations using collected objects and textiles that have been installed in various galleries across Canada. Interspersed throughout the aforementioned practices she produced large-scale collage works that have been purchased by private collectors and art banks. Valerie Salez grew up in the Yukon and currently dwells in Victoria, B.C.
http://www.wooloo.org/valeriesalez

grunt gallery gratefully acknowledges Arts-Based Community Development funding from the British Columbia Arts Council for making this project possible.