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Please join us at grunt gallery for the following artist talks and panels. These events will be recorded and used for the creation of a website which will be launched in October 2013.
Am Johal works at SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement in the SFU Woodward’s Cultural Unit. He has previously worked in community economic development, civil society development, journalism and politics. He is currently serving on the Vancouver City Planning Commission, the Vancity Community Foundation and on the Steering Committee for SFU’s Centre for Dialogue. He is currently a part-time doctoral student in media philosophy (European Graduate School).
Sarah Shamash is a media artist born in Vancouver, Canada, where she currently lives and works. She studied film and media arts at the University of Saint Denis, Paris 8 in France completing a Master’s degree in Film and in Media Arts.
Since the 2000’s, she began exhibiting her work in art venues and film festivals while pursuing her creative production at artist residencies, including Vancouver, Toronto, Banff, Salvador (Brazil), Sao Paulo, and Amman, Jordan. Informed by cinema, her research and interdisciplinary process based practice engages socio and psycho geographies through the exploration of specific places, people and mapping strategies that convey personal and experiential knowledge through everyday life.
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. In the late 1960s, 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.
de Courcy’s work, which mostly involves photography and printmaking, has been presented both as interventions in public spaces and in public galleries including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography and the Museum of Modern Art, NYC. He has lectured at numerous reputable institutions including the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, York University, The University of Windsor, The University of British Columbia and the Emily Carr College of Art and Design.
de Courcy characterizes himself as a multi-disciplinary artist and community activist. He considers his work to be closely related to public art. in a recent project, Dead and Buried: The Remapping of the Cemetery at Woodlands, 2010-2012, de Courcy provides a process of redress for the three thousand persons who are at present buried in unmarked graves in the former British Columbia Provincial Asylum site.
In 2012, de Courcy with Fumiko Kiyooka co-founded and now serves on the board of the Roy Kenzie Kiyooka Foundation. Current and archived projects can be found on his website. http://www.michaeldecourcy.com/
Born in 1935, Glenn Lewis graduated from the Vancouver School of Art (now Emily Carr University of Art + Design) in 1958 with honors in painting, drawing, and ceramics. He later received a teaching certificate from University of British Columbia (1959) and studied ceramics under Bernard Leach in St. Ives (Cornwall, England) in the early 1960s. He has taught a number of different art disciplines at the University of British Columbia, media workshops at the National Film Board in Vancouver and Ceramics at Alfred University, N.Y. Lewis has worked in video, performance, film, ceramics, photography, sculpture, and writing. He was an active member of Intermedia and the art scene in Vancouver during the 1960s, producing work that blurred the boundaries between media and between viewer and artist.
As one of the co-founders of the Western Front, Lewis initiated and administered a number of programs relating to Video, Media and Performance Art. He has served on countless boards including the Intermedia, Vancouver Art Gallery and the Western Front. Solo exhibitions include the Douglas Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Presentation House, Trench Gallery and the Belkin Satellite. Lewis lives and works in Vancouver.
Grant Arnold is currently Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Prior to coming to Vancouver he held positions at the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon. Over the past twenty-five years he has organized more than forty exhibitions of historical, modern and contemporary art. Recent projects have included SPIRITLANDS: (t)HERE: Marian Penner Bancroft Selected Photo Works 1975-2000; Traffic: Conceptual Art in Canada 1965-1980 (with Catherine Crowston, Barbara Fischer, Michèle Theriault and Vincent Bonin, and Jayne Wark); Ken Lum; Reece Terris: Ought Apartment; Mark Lewis: Modern Time; Fred Herzog: Vancouver Photographs; Real Pictures: Photographs from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft; Rodney Graham: A Little Thought (with Jessica Bradley and Connie Butler); and Robert Smithson in Vancouver: A Fragment of A Greater Fragmentation.
He is currently working exhibitions of work by Myfanwy MacLeod, Gareth Moore and Jerry Pethick.
Vincent Andrisani is a PhD Candidate and a sessional instructor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. He has both written and lectured on the topics of sound, broadcast media, and the politics of audio documentation. Vincent has produced and collaborated on a range of academic and artistic projects, including the most recent iteration of The Vancouver Soundscape: a research and archival project that began at SFU in the 1970s. Currently, his work explores issues of urban space, global politics, and the practices of soundmaking and listening in the city of Havana, Cuba. The sounds of water pipes, peanut vendors, and ice cream carts form the basis of the study.
Randolph Jordan a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver where he is investigating sound aesthetics and practices of locally-based film and media through the World Soundscape Project’s forty year study of the city’s sonic environment. He draws on the intersections between film sound studies, eco-film criticism, acoustic ecology and critical geography to explore auditory connections between geography and media. He is currently preparing a book manuscript, entitled “Reflective Audioviewing: An Acoustic Ecology of the Cinema,” in which he establishes a methodology for hearing film sound through the field of acoustic ecology, revealing ecological issues in play across a diverse range of films while arguing for the value of re-thinking the work of acoustic ecology as a form of media practice.www.randolphjordan.com
*Randolph Jordan will be participating via skype.
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.
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.
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.
“Daughter,
Sausage Factory by artists Weronika Stepien and Stephen Wichuk
Essay written by Alla Gadassik: Sausage Factory publication
análekta by Merle Addison
Essay written by Dana Claxton: analekta publication – FOR WEB
Catastrophe, Memory, Reconciliation by Osvaldo Ramirez Ostillo.
Exhibition essay by Alexis Hranchuk.
Eraser Street by Henri Robideau
Exhibition essay written by Clint Burnham.
Ahmad Tabrizi exhibition and curatorial essay by Lorna Brown and Makiko Hara.
View exhibition info.
Julia Feyrer texts by Vanessa Kwan
Part 1 – History creeps: the grunt kitchen and Julia Feyrer
Part 2 – Recordings
Part 3 – Notes
View exhibition info.
Hyung-Min Yoon exhibition essay by Lorna Brown
View exhibition info.
Laura Moore exhibition essay by Luke Siemens
View exhibition info.
Jayce Salloum exhibition essay by Keith Wallace
View exhibition info.
Ian Forbes exhibition essay by Noah Becker
View exhibition info.
Laura Lamb exhibition essay by Anakana Schofield
View exhibition info.
Cal Lane exhibition essay by Robin Peck
View exhibition info.
Adrian Stimson exhibition essay by Elizabeth Matheson
View exhibition info.
David Khang exhibition essay by Koan Jeff Baysa M.D.
View exhibition info.
Ali Ahadi exhibition essay by Ahmad Tabrizi
View exhibition info.
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
http://akimbo.ca/akimblog/?id=664
The group show includes work by Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Mike Andrew McLean, Haruko Okano, Ruth Scheuing, and UWHAH (Until We Have a Helicopter). Adante (a walking pace) features a work by Cheryl L’Hirondelle that was originally commissioned by grunt gallery.
“Integral and common to the artworks in this group exhibition is the seemingly ordinary activity of walking. The title, Andante, draws from this tempo marking to mean – “at a walking pace” – a moderately slow pace that enables us to be attentive to our surroundings, literally and imaginatively. The works comprising Andante (a walking pace) are conceived as a conceptual practice, a process from which emerge diverse narratives reflecting artists’ responses to the various urban and rural landscapes they move in and consider.
The history of walking is an intriguing one with the capacity for narratives that hold cultural, political, social and spiritual meanings. From aboriginal rituals, religious and political pilgrimages, to intrepid explorers, artists, writers, and folk simply moving from one place to another, walking has inspired, challenged and been the subject of artistic investigation.
The artists presented in this exhibition explore the theme of walking to examine our surroundings, literally and imaginatively, in a range of media including photography, woven textiles, audio-visual media, sculpture, and installation.”
Visit the website for more information.
Monday, December 10, 2012
Written by Erin Flegg
Vancouver has a reputation (at least among those of us not born here) for playing hard to get. A diverse range of political and artistic communities has long thrived here, but they aren’t always easy to find.
A new series of online exhibits called Activating the Archive, from the grunt gallery, aims to draw out the vibrant histories of often marginalized groups and reacquaint Vancouver with its often radical past.
Interdisciplinary artist and scholar Christine Stoddard curated one of the exhibits, titled (queer)intersections.
The exhibit, made up of essays, video and photos, focuses on queer identity politics expressed through performance art in the 1990s.
“The ’90s for me was really when that notion of queer started to emerge as a political and identity category,” she says. “It’s taking the lesbian/gay movement and way of thinking about your sexuality and identity, and kind of opening it up to a less rigid category.”
Stoddard came to Vancouver toward the end of the 1990s, moving here with her first girlfriend to do a master’s of fine arts at Simon Fraser University. She got a job at the lesbian bar Charlie’s (“Oh god, I was a terrible server!”) and started to meet women who were also interested in exploring queer feminisms and with whom she would perform.
“That was the first time I really felt like I belonged here. It sounds sort of cheesy, but it’s true, I did.”
The grunt’s Halfbred cabaret series, featuring Oliv (above), marked an important moment in Vancouver’s queer art history, says Christine Stoddard.(grunt archives)At the time, she says, she didn’t consider herself a very radical queer. She grew up in the relatively small city of Halifax and says she was just looking for some kind of reflection of herself.
When she came out to her parents as bisexual, they had a hard time understanding, she says. They probably would have had an easier time had she used the word gay or lesbian, she reflects.
“It does confuse people when you don’t fit into a nice delineated box.”
CLICK HERE to read the entire article at Xtra West…
“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.
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
Holding-Our-Breath-The-Work-of-Adrian-Stimson
Please join us for a fabulous event to celebrate the festive season, before winter really sets in, with an early offering of glamour, spectacle and party! grunt gallery is pleased to be bringing from New York City, the infamous burlesque performance artist, Chicava Honeychild, renown for her seductive work with Brown Girls Burlesque, and, from Los Angeles Stacy Dawson Stearns aimed to rouse our somatic senses and intrigue new experience of dance, movement and theatrics. There will also be a rare appearance by Vancouver’s own Brown Brother Posse as well as Vancouver’s virile rock band AB/CD.
A special fundraiser not to be missed!! Cocktails, prizes, swag, and much fun will be had!
Tickets sliding scale: $10 – $100
Click here to purchase tickets online! Or you can buy them at the door of the event:
*Tax receipts will be issued for paid tickets $20 and up.
ABOUT THE PERFORMERS:
Chicava HoneyChild is a burlesque dancer, actor and producer. She is the Creative Producer of New York City’s Brown Girls Burlesque and teacher at BGB’s Broad Squad. She received her MFA in Interdisciplinary Art from Goddard College where her research focused on performance art, women of color in burlesque heritage, and sacred sexuality and spirituality. She is currently working on a documentary on the legacy of Women of Color in burlesque. http://browngirlsburlesque.com/.
Photo credit: Yule A Go-Go: www.yuleagogo.com
Stacy is a performing artist, trainer, and educator. Her professional performance career began in NYC in 1991 with the internationally renowned company, Big Dance Theater. Based in New York for 15 years and Los Angeles for the past decade, she has shared her choreographic, directorial, and solo performance with regional and national audiences. Stacy has been a part of art collectives Blacklips Performance Cult, Advanced Beginner Group, Big Dance Theater, and Show Box LA. Stacy’s bodywork and performance training embodies the concepts that shaped her as a performer: discipline, generosity, and respect for the path of the individual. In addition to her private teaching practice, she has taught in higher education performing arts programs since 1996: at Marymount Manhattan College, New York University, and currently as adjunct faculty at California Institute of the Arts. Awards include a Bessie (New York Dance and Performance Award) in 2000, and a 2012 CHIME grant. She holds an MFA from Goddard College (Interdisciplinary Art) and a BFA from NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing. http://www.impulseintoaction.com/stacy_performance.html
Chicava (left) Photo Credit: Yule A Go-Go: www.yuleagogo.com; Stacy Dawson Stearns (right) Photo Credit: Deirdre McGaw
Brown Brother Posse (a.k.a. BBP) are a boy band from Vancouver, Canada. BBP took the world by storm in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s and to-date have sold 80 million records worldwide. Celebrated for their musical genius, they also gained worldwide notoriety for their scandalous dalliances with numerous celebrities as well as their provocative antics on stage. The group disbanded in 2002 under mysterious circumstances. There was much speculation by media pundits about the reasons for their break-up, but no one knows for sure what happened. Several attempts were made to get BBP back together in ensuing years, all of them unsuccessful. After secretly reuniting in 2012 and recording a new album together, the group have recently returned to Vancouver from their first global concert tour in almost a decade. This is their first performance on Coast Salish Territories since their return and they will be performing their latest number one hit from their new album BBP – Back on the Block.
With Eileen Kage on drums, Laiwan on guitar and Donna Lee on bass. A rock band performing flagrant mash-ups!
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Eileen Kage has been involved with Vancouver’s Taiko community since the early 1980’s, co-founding several groups including LOUD (1996), Uzume Taiko (1988) and Sawagi Taiko (1990). She continues to push the boundaries of taiko through various collaborations with other artists, and continues to study its roots and essence through her work with JODAIKO. She strives to challenge gender role stereotypes through the taiko and other projects including explorations into femme drag. At Spatial Poetics 2011, Eileen rocked-out on the drum kit with wank band collaborators Vanessa Kwan and Laiwan in laiwankwankage.
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Laiwan is an artist with a wide-ranging practice that follows her interest in cross-disciplinary projects. She is also a writer, educator, curator and activist. Born in Zimbabwe of Chinese parents, she founded the Or Gallery in Vancouver in 1983 and initiated the First Vancouver Lesbian Film Festival in 1988. Recipient of the 2008 Vancouver Queer Media Artist Award, she teaches at Goddard College in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Program. Her premiere performance of laiwankwankage for Spatial Poetics 2011 initiated her into the performative realm exploring somatic intelligence and absurd spectacle.
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Donna Lee has played in various bands and enjoys working with youth, playing soccer and watching her niece grow up.
Why is membership free?
At grunt we consider all economies, and we strive to make our programming accessible to anyone who wishes to participate. It’s much more important to us to have a large and lively membership than it is to generate revenue from membership fees.
Why is membership important?
A lively and active membership demonstrates grunt’s vitality as an artist-run centre to our funders, as well as to our present and future audiences. Building grunt’s membership ensures that the gallery continues to function as a dynamic, artistic, educational, and community resource that is respected and valued.
What is the role of a grunt gallery member?
A member’s main responsibility is to enhance the governance of an organization. Our members also help grunt maintain and grow a community of artists, and pursue new projects that are in our interests. So tell us about the artists and art projects you’d like to see more of!
What are the perks of membership?
– Voting rights at the Annual General Meeting
– 20% off all grunt merchandise and publications
– Newsletter with updates about our upcoming exhibitions, events, projects and activities
– Opportunities to get involved at grunt as a volunteer, board member, committee member, audience member, or even a staff member!