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.

The Big Foldy Painting of Death is an expansive artwork created on a large scroll of canvas that will span the circumference of the gallery space. A project initiated in 2011, Ian Forbes’ painting is a narrative of apocalyptic doom and ecstatic rebirth. Characters appear throughout the painting occasionally musing, via comic speech bubbles and scrawled text, on the process and practice of contemporary visual art or purposely shifting ideas and concepts into absurdity. This pragmatic approach wrestles with critical art practices through the inclusion of high and low art forms: a variety of techniques are employed to depict futuristic structures and psychedelic creatures emerging from planes of colours, abstraction and texture.

“I endeavour to make objects that reveal the magic space created by the imagination and push the limits of my abilities. My most recent work is a conversation between the tradition of painting and contemporary artistic practice: a bizarre confluence of technique, critique and personal expression generated by my ongoing investigations of narrative image creation… inspired by the Foldy Books of Death (FBoD).”

– Ian Forbes, Artist Statement.

The exhibition will run from June 21 – July 27, 2013. The artist will be in attendance at the opening reception on June 21 and an essay on this exhibition will be available.

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Bio:

Ian Forbes graduated from the University of Alberta with an MFA in Painting. Born in Ontario and raised in Alberta, he currently resides in Vancouver, BC. Forbes teaches at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in the Continuing Studies program and at the Roundhouse Community Arts Centre. His work has been shown in Canada and Europe. www.ianforbes.ca

PDF Download – Ian Forbes PRESS RELEASE

Essay:

The Big Foldy Painting of Death ESSAY by Noah Becker

Video:

On July 5^th, 2013, artist Lisa Simpson transforms grunt gallery during a full-day performance involving sewing, music and sound, and social interaction. The project, Agente Costura, questions clothing consumption habits, bringing forth a discussion around the sustainability of the fashion industry.

Unwanted apparel is reconstructed into new garments and fashions through a sewing practice that Simpson refers to as “Upcycling”. Attendees are invited to search their wardrobes for clothing to bring to this event; the artist then reimagines these items through an interactive process. Viewers are also encouraged to bring a song that they wish to hear while this textile transformation takes place. The sound influences the alterations as the artist sews to the beat of the music.

“By using clothing, something that we can all relate to, I hope to begin a discussion on the importance of the individual in contemporary society, and the importance of our ability to improvise as a tool for change,” Simpson says. “How a simple act of cutting fabric in half can shock and make you uncomfortable. A seamstress must always measure and be precise: follow a pattern, previously approved. Or not. What if I follow my instinct instead of a rule? I have studied the practice long enough to rebel. I know how people are intrigued by my ability to let go of these guidelines and just do it freehand. Are you really going to turn this into something else without drawing it out, without measuring and calculating? Just simply use these scissors instinctively and then see what happens.”

During the evening, Simpson brings musicians together with a rhythm provided by The Singer, the artist’s sewing machine. The public is invited to dress up, with various costume accessories and garments that transform them from viewers into performers, creating an intervention that merges the act of live music and live sewing.

July 5^th itinerary:
2pm – 7:30pm: Visit grunt gallery with an article of clothing and a song of your choice. The artist will be constructing a fabric apparatus to hang textile creations and will be upcycling articles of clothing.
8pm – 10pm: Stop by grunt gallery to hear the musical performance.

Artist Bio:
Lisa Simpson is a sewing agent. She lives in Curitiba, Brazil and is currently enrolled in the Low Residency Masters Program at Emily Carr University. She has been playing the Singer, a sewing machine, since 2003. Her research focuses on her exhibitions in progress, where she emphasizes the creative process, the performativity of the act of sewing, and audience participation as the source of inspiration. http://www.musicalsewing.blogspot.ca/

Special thanks to VanDocument for creation of this video that documents a portion of Lisa Simpson’s performance:

Agente Costura’s Lisa Simpson at grunt gallery from VANDOCUMENT on Vimeo.

grunt gallery presents a retrospective and collaborative project based on Background / Vancouver, a photo-mapping expedition of Vancouver by Michael de Courcy with Taki Bluesinger, Gerry Gilbert, and Glenn Lewis on October, 30 1972. The project consists of the four artists walking three separate paths documenting their experiences in photographs. The project resurged in 2012 when Michael de Courcy launched the website Background / Vancouver project, exposing this unique perspective of Vancouver’s 1972 identity to new audiences online. grunt will be exhibiting the original photo mural conceived and produced by Michael de Courcy as part of an ongoing photographic documentary project of Vancouver’s artists collective, Intermedia society.

On October 30, 2012, Vancouver artists, Emilio Rojas, Guadalupe Martinez, and Igor Santizo, revisited this conceptual project.  40 years to the day, these three artists came together to forge a new, fourth path that intersects with the original paths which

revisits ideas about Vancouver’s identity and history. The retrospective project is entitled, ThisPlace / Vancouver.

The group explores the aspect of the social; through conversations, meetings and experiences with people met during the expedition on October 30, 2012. The artists document their experiences using video, sound, and still-based images. A new dialogue emerges that reflects on how choices about documentation, narratives and mapping, from the past to the present, inform a contemporary perspective of Vancouver. The artists question how one tells a story of identity and an ever-changing urban landscape that is inclusive to varied experiences based in history, people, and artists from the past and to the present. Several multi-media and performance-based projects by Emilio Rojas, Guadalupe Martinez, and Igor Santizo will be concurrently exhibited at grunt.

The opening reception will take place on May 10, 2013 (7-10pm) and will run until June 8, 2013.

Subsequent artist talks and panels will take place in May, following the opening exhibition, to help inform an ongoing discourse (Check grunt.ca for more details). Discussions held at these meeting will contribute to the web-based component of this project will be launched on October 30, 2013.

Click here for more details.

Tuesday May 14

Social Cartography: Am Johal and Sarah Shamash (7pm)

Saturday May 18

Background / Vancouver artists’ talk: Michael de Courcy, Glenn Lewis and Grant Arnold (2pm)

Thursday May 23

Sound walk (5pm) // Mapping and Sound Panel:  Vincent Andrisani and Randolph Jordan (7pm)

Saturday May 25th

ThisPlace / Vancouver artists’ talk: Emilio Rojas, Igor Santizo, Guadalupe Martinez (2pm) // Potluck Dinner (5pm)

PDF Download – Background_ThisPlace PRESS RELEASE

Artists:

Michael de Courcy –
http://www.michaeldecourcy.com/background-vancouver/project.htm

Artist, educator, curator. Michael de Courcy was born in Montréal in 1944. He studied at the École des Beaux Arts in Montréal and the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design). In the late 1960s, during his formative years as an artist, de Courcy was a core member of the Vancouver artists collective known as the Intermedia Society. While there, he produced an extensive Intermedia photo documentary project which he has since developed into a web installation entitled The Intermedia Catalogue (2009). […read more]

Glenn Lewis –
Artist, educator. Born in 1935, Glenn Lewis graduated from the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) (1958) with honors in painting, drawing, and ceramics. Subsequently, he received a teaching certificate from University of British Columbia (1959) and he studied ceramics under Bernard Leach in St. Ives (Cornwall, England) (1961-1964). Lewis has worked in video, performance, film, ceramics, photography, sculpture, and writing. He was an active member of the avant-garde art scene in Vancouver during the 1960s, producing work that blurred the boundaries between media and between viewer and artist. […read more]

Emilio Rojas –
http://www.performancero.com/

Emilio Rojas was born in Mexico City, (ca.1980s) ,he is an interdisciplinary artist, working primarily in performance, interventions, video, installation, and sculpture. His works explore the relation between the artist and his audience, interacting and exchanging roles, while involving the communities that surround the spaces he engages with. Rojas requires the participation of the viewer, in order to set in motion the metaphors that unveil the intricacy of his art. The intrinsic relation with the body has been both his subject matter and medium. Exploring the mental and physical limits of his being, Emilio re-evaluates language, gender, activism, traditions, identity, ritual, displacement, migration and sexuality. Emilio Rojas is currently living in Vancouver, Canada, where he is exploring collaboration, alternative exhibition spaces, with a focus in social practice and public interventions.

Guadalupe Martinez –
http://www.guadalupemartinez.com/

Guadalupe Martinez is an Argentine-born artist based in Vancouver. She obtained her BFA at the Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte and is currently pursuing an MFA at University of British Columbia. Her research combines three-dimensionality, performance, and site-specificity by creating works that mnemonically activate found materials; reanimating their meaning into new structures of signification and resistance.  Martinez has attended residencies at Hammock Residency (BC), The Banff Centre for the Arts (AB), The STAG (BC), Elsewhere Collective (NC), and The Vermont Studio Center (VT). Her work has been shown in Argentina, Mexico, US and Canada. She is currently working as a Teacher Assistant at the University of British Columbia and is a member of the LIVE Biennale’s Board of Directors.

Igor Santizo –
http://about.me/igor.santizo

Igor Santizo is a creative free agent living and working in Vancouver. He teaches & facilitates: creative process, foundational principles, cultural literacy and more … while encouraging students with their creative potential, emerging selves and budding art practices. By way of his artwork, he has sought a complimentary dialogue between: metaphysical principles & material forms. Currently, he is exploring through drawings: variations of an abstract motif, allusion to cthonic force.

Article:

http://megaphonemagazine.com/articles/681/vancouver-now-and-then-forty-years-apart-artists-trace-each-other-s-steps

Developed with the participation of British Columbia Film & Media and the British Columbia Arts Council.

A special thanks to Modo The Car Co-op for supporting the transportation component of ThisPlace / Vancouver.

Exhibition: Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery
Artist: Laura Lamb
Opening: April 5, 2013 (7pm -10pm)
Exhibition Dates: April 5, 2013 – May 4, 2013

Grunt gallery is pleased to exhibit Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery by Vancouver-based artist, Laura Lamb. The exhibition features several installations that reveal the curious fictional world of Lamb’s Performing Objects.

The artist describes Lamb’s Performing Objects as “An umbrella project including videos, installation, drawings and texts, in which all parts work together as a collage. Each fragment informs the others to evoke a fictive world of wandering performers, some human, some almost human, who through song, story and circus ravel and unravel 20th century cultural mythologies.

The concept of Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery grew from a set of song lyrics I wrote for the character Lotte Obratsov. Lotte first appeared in a set of small mixed media figures, which were in turn based on a set of drawings.”

Russian lacquerware, rusty metal household objects and clockwork mechanisms perform in Bits and Tatters, the first installment of a video trilogy. Accompanying this video is a song that Lamb wrote and produced with composer and singer, Beverly Dobrinsky.

“My work investigates the gaps and disjunctions between the frailty and clumsiness of performing objects (for example puppets, toys or masks) and their power as producers of complex and compelling narrative,” says Lamb. “It’s in these gaps where the comedic and transcendent power of objects is able to emerge.”

The opening reception for Strange Songs of Trust and Treachery will be held at grunt gallery on Friday April 5, 2013 from 7-10 pm. The exhibition will run from April 5 – May 4, 2013.

———————————————————-
Bio:
Laura Lamb was born in Kenora, Ontario, in 1955 and grew up on Lake Lulu where the family owned Lamb’s Camp, a small tourist business. She was a “red diaper baby,” meaning that her parents were communists. Kenora is not far from Winnipeg and Laura dropped out of high school in that city in 1971.

She dropped back into school in the 1980s, earning a BA at SFU Centre for the Arts, where she studied with Jeff Wall, Greg Snider and Kaja Silverman, and an MFA at the University of Victoria, studying with Fred Douglas, Roland Brenner and Mowry Baden.

Before creating the umbrella project and fictive world of Lamb’s Performing Objects, Laura created bodies of work in video and photography, which have been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally.

Laura lives and works in Vancouver. http://lauralamb.ca/

Essay:

Notes from an encounter with Lamb’s Performing Objects Impresario, Blackie Schwarzkopf, at an undisclosed café near Fraser Street in January of 2013 on a Tuesday. by Anakana Schofield

Radio Interview:

http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye/2013/04/strange-songs-trust-and-treachery

grunt gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition of Gutter Snipes I by Canadian artist Cal Lane. Gutter Snipes I is an aluminum coated steel sewer pipe that is carved away into an ornate collage of figures and organic designs. This positive relief sculpture reveals a collision between the damned and the divine.

The definition of “guttersnipe” refers to a street urchin in the slums of a city or a person of the lowest cast in society. Within the patterns of Cal Lane’s Gutter Snipes I, cityscapes emerge amongst clouds of curls and vines; angels cradle fanged animals while small creatures nip at the heels of silhouetted figures. Those that appear to be falling within the cutout sculpture could be ascending within the reflection of softened shadows.

“I like to work as a visual devil’s advocate, using contradiction as a vehicle for finding my way to an empathetic image, an image of opposition that creates a balance – as well as a clash – by comparing and contrasting ideas and materials.” – Cal Lane, artist statement.

Gutter Snipes I juxtapose industrial materials and tools often used in blue-collar, masculine environments, with designs commonly used in textiles, such as lace, veils or tapestry, referencing feminine practice and use. This compare and contrast relationship is evident with Cal Lane’s sculpture which creates a multi-dimensional environment that spans from the expansive steel-cut object to the furthest reaches of the sculpture-lit shadows.

Currently based out of New York, Cal Lane grew up in Saanichton, British Columbia. This is her first exhibition in Western Canada. Gutter Snipes I will run at grunt gallery from Feb 15, 2013 – March 23, 2013.

Bio:

Cal Lane was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, grew up in Saanichton, British Columbia. She received her diploma in Painting from Victoria College of Art, Victoria, British Columbia in 1994. She went on to earn a second B.F.A. in Sculpture from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2000 and completed her M.F.A in Sculpture from State University of New York in 2004. Lane lives and works in Putnam Valley, NY. www.callane.com

Articles:

http://akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=664

“Holding Our Breath” by Adrian Stimson, is a large-scale installation based on the artist’s first hand experiences and observations at a military base in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The work is informed by conversations Stimson had with soldiers, some of which were First Nations, and his impression with daily life occurring at the military base situated in the vast Middle Eastern landscape.

“…This exhibition brings together drawings, photographs, video and sculptural installations that explore the ambiguities of war by linking personal history with wider cultural and political issues. Although this work reflects on the complex situation in Afghanistan, Stimson deflects the focus away from the truncated newsreel moments to daily life affirming moments.” – excerpt from, “Holding Our Breath: The Work of Adrian Stimson” by Elizabeth Matheson.

The work includes the Stimson’s own personal perspective of serving in the military as well as his family’s history serving in the Canadian military as soldiers and historically as Blackfoot warriors. These experiences, in addition to Stimson’s time spent in Kandahar, allows the artist to approach these topics from a perspective that questions the essence of conflict and how this links between personal, cultural, and military identity.

The artist will be in attendance at the opening reception on Friday, January 4th, 2013. This exhibition will run until Saturday, February 9th, 2013.

Born in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in southern Alberta. His work includes installation, painting, performance, video, and photography. Performances at Burning Man on the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, have created “Buffalo Boy” as well as the “Shaman Exterminator” who seeks to explore the myths, falsehoods and realities of Shamanic being. He lives and works in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

http://adrianstimson.com

Articles:

AMSSA Article: Artist get the experience of a lifetime in Kandahar

Satellite Gallery Blog: Adrian Stimson Has Us Holding Our Breath

White Hot Magazine: February 2013, Adrian Stimson at Grunt Gallery

Read the Essay:

Holding-Our-Breath-The-Work-of-Adrian-Stimson