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.
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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.

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.