grunt gallery is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations (Vancouver, Canada) and is one of the region’s most established artist run centres. The gallery offers exhibitions, special projects and public programming with a focus on practices and perspectives that have, since the beginning, questioned established values in contemporary art production.

grunt was founded in 1984 by eight artists: Hillary Wood, Dawn Richards, Kempton Dexter, Glenn Alteen, spike mckinley, Danielle Peacock, Billy Gene Wallace and Garry Ross, who designed the grunt logo in use to this day. Since then the organization has worked within local, national and international artist communities to provide an inclusive and supportive environment for the development of innovative and provocative contemporary art. Very early on grunt began collaborating with other organizations to realize projects otherwise beyond a single organization’s capacity.

In the early 1990s grunt began working with Indigenous art communities to provide a venue for contemporary production. This relationship has done much to define the organization since that time. grunt has not only been a significant venue for Indigenous production in Canada and internationally, but has had continuous participation on the staff and board team throughout this history. We have also provided an ongoing opportunity for residencies for Indigenous curators, researchers, writers and artists. We have similarly been guided by ongoing relationships with BIPOC and queer/ LGBTQIA2S+ arts communities.

grunt has been invested in ideas of ‘decolonization’ and intersectionality long before these terms were widely in use. Our experience working with artists and communities of diverse perspectives is well-known across the country and we continue to build capacity within the organization to grow in the service of this core mandate of diversity and creative innovation. These priorities comprise the fabric of our organization – and we strive to remain self-reflexive and evolving in the expression of them. Currently the organization is engaged in a 5-year process evaluating the accessibility of our systems and programs from an anti-oppression framework. This involves all levels of the organization.

Our programming scope has grown significantly over the years from a facility that primarily supported exhibitions, publications and performance to one that produces a wider range of activities, including: multi-partner collaborative projects, online project sites and expansive digital resources, site-specific artist projects, artist residencies, public art projects, international artistic exchanges and a vital, growing archive. While our facility is modest – we operate from a 1400-square foot office and gallery space in East Vancouver – our reach is expansive.

Our recent and upcoming programming reveals a strong international component, with reciprocal opportunities for Canadian artists. We have in recent years considered how to improve the nature of exchange – beyond the presentation of isolated events or exhibitions abroad. As is more fitting to our mandate and way of working, we have been developing longer term relationships with colleagues internationally, and seek to provide reciprocity – that is, a culture of exchange that acknowledges the importance of opportunities created over time and via embedded networks, and those that disseminate resources both at home and abroad.

Check out the finalized design for our Past and Presence mural project for the Tsimilano Building, the NEC’s administrative building located on East 5th Avenue! Our lead artists Corey Bulpitt, Sharifah Marsden and Jerry Whitehead recently held a series of workshops with the Urban Native Youth Association’s Young Bears Lodge and other community members to collaborate on this design. See pix from those workshops here.

It’s been slow going but we’re patiently waiting for our permit and planning a paint party BBQ in July – all are welcome to attend!

For updates and invitations to mural events, email tarah@grunt.ca

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The Native Education College (NEC) and grunt gallery are partnering with three Vancouver-based First Nations artists: Corey Bulpitt, Sharifah Marsden and Jerry Whitehead to create a large scale mural that celebrates the NEC’s 30th Anniversary at their location in Mount Pleasant.

We’d like to invite the public to participate! Especially youth, families, and anyone interested in learning about contemporary Indigenous art practices, Indigenous-led education, the history of Mount Pleasant, and working together to plan and paint a community mural.

The mural will be painted on the east wall of the Tsimilano Building, an administrative building located next door to the Longhouse on East 5th Avenue at Main Street, a busy urban area in East Vancouver.

Mural planning session #2
Saturday, January 23, 2016
12:00 PM – 2:00 PM
Native Education College Longhouse
285 East 5th Avenue
FREE EVENT

Light refreshments will be served. Attendance at meeting #1 is not a requirement. In fact, we hope new participants will come to each meeting.

This session will also include a tour of Coast Salish artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s art studio.

We will continue to meet on a monthly basis to plan the mural. Painting will take place in April 2016 followed by a big launch party!

ARTIST BIO’s:

Corey Bulpitt: aakeit Aaya or “Gifted Carver” Haida of the Naikun Raven clan was born in Prince Rupert BC in 1978. He is a great-great grandson of the famed Charles Edenshaw and Louis Collison. He is an avid painter, jeweler, wood and argillite carver who enjoys exploring different mediums such as spray paint, which he has used to create large-scale paintings involving urban youth in Vancouver. Through his study Corey creates functional pieces that can be used in the traditional context of song and dance.

Sharifah Marsden: Sharifah is an Anishnaabe artist from Mississauga’s of Scugog Island First Nation. Sharifah draws from her Anishnaabe roots and her knowledge of Woodlands art to create works that include everything from acrylic paintings, murals to beadwork and engraving. She graduated from the Native Education College, Northwest Coast Jeweller Arts program under established Haida/Kwakwaka’wakw artist, Dan Wallace. She has been focusing on her own career as an artist, creating jewellery and designing murals for a number of Vancouver’s non-profit organizations.

Jerry Whitehead: Jerry is of Cree heritage from the James Smith First Nation in Saskatchewan. Art has been his lifelong passion. Today Jerry resides in Vancouver and he continues to paint within his community and abroad. He received a Bachelor of Arts Degree – Indian Art (S.I.F.C) from the University of Regina in 1983. He then went on to complete a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1987. You may view Jerry’s artistic projects at jerrywhitehead.com and see the various projects he has been involved with.

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Session #1 – December 9, 2015

Approximately 15 people gathered to meet the artists, Corey, Sharifah, and Jerry.  Russell Wallace from the NEC spoke, as did Tarah Hogue, Aboriginal Curatorial Resident from grunt gallery.  Each of the artists gave a presentation which included photos and stories of past murals they’ve worked on.  Then we all walked outside together to look at the blank wall we would soon be painting.  It’s really large!  At the end, everyone took a blank piece of paper and sketched out their ideas for the mural design.

Session #2  – January 23, 2016

New and returning participants convened to continue planning the NEC’s 30th anniversary mural.  We started the session with a visit to Coast Salish artist Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun’s studio.  Wow!!!  Lawrence impressed upon us the importance of meaning and symbolism in artwork.  It really made us think about what we wanted to say with our mural.  Afterwards, we went back to the NEC where Corey Bulpitt gave us a lesson in the use of the “ovoid” shape in Coast Salish art.  Then we broke out the colouring pencils and tried to create our own ovoid inspired designs.  We also got a sneak preview into what might be the first draft of our actual mural design, but it’s still in process.

Join the NEC Mural Project’s Facebook group to get involved and receive updates on this evolving project.

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For more information contact Tarah Hogue, Aboriginal Curatorial Resident at grunt gallery:
tarah@grunt.ca
778-235-6928

Online Messaging Conversation occurred on September 2015 –

grunt gallery has had the pleasure of meeting and working with a great number of fantastic volunteers who have contributed their time to various projects at our space – and who have subsequently become important members of grunt gallery’s community.

We’re happy to share a conversation between two of grunt gallery’s archive volunteers, Diana Zapata and Jessica Mach, about DISGRUNTLED: Other Art, grunt’s first eBook that commemorates the 30th anniversary.

Diana calls Bogotá, Medellín, Mexico City, Vancouver and Toronto home. She has a BA in Art History from The University of British Columbia and was an Archival Intern at grunt. She currently lives in Toronto, where she makes lattes for the city’s coffee fiends. She is also the Gallery Administrator and Outreach Coordinator at Sur Gallery.

Jessica was an ATA archival and curatorial intern. She received her MA from the Dept. of Art History and Communication Studies at McGill University, and now resides in Toronto.

Online Messaging Conversation occurred on September 2015 –

Jessica: So maybe we can begin by discussing why we decided on this particular combination of texts.

Diana: Ok well from my end, something about the deeply personal nature of the texts spoke to me. It wasn’t until after we each went over our shortlist that we found the overlapping themes. And these topics have been on my mind recently. The topics of family and diaspora and identity, that is. Something about the amount of time I’ve spent living on my own away from family has led me to wanting to reflect on that a lot.

J: Yeah these texts were incredibly personal but each one spoke to broader structural dynamics as well. And as was the case with you, there were definitely parts that personally resonated with me — like when Larissa Lai rehearses the line “We didn’t come here so you could be like this (i.e. queer),” she is accurate in her contention that it is one that “so many of us have heard” before (“us” being, of course, the progeny of first-generation immigrants). I’ve heard it, maybe you’ve heard it, and it wasn’t necessarily always being directed at us.

I think what most interested me about this particular combination of texts is also encapsulated by that line. Lai, Susan Stewart, and Peter Morin are all trying to negotiate their conflicting and often irreconcilable fidelities to various traditions, familial structures, sexual practices, etc.

D: Yes, there is a tension there that they are trying to work through between their familial duties, staying true to themselves and working within a world that excludes them. And the artists that Lai writes about, as well as Lai herself, Stewart and Morin seem to be, in one way or another, outsiders. Or trying to live outside what bell hooks called the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

J: Oh the WSCP definitely sucks in a big ass way: even once you’ve given a name to it and recognized the incredible extent to which it structures even the most banal parts of your life, that doesn’t necessarily fortify you against its reach. It was sad, though definitely not surprising, to read for instance in Susan’s essay that Suzo Hickey, an artist whose work explicitly takes as its subject of critique patriarchal standards of motherhood, nevertheless feels like a failure for not being able to meet those standards: “she doesn’t feel like she is doing anything right.”

D: It’s designed to make everybody feel like they are not good enough for it — of course — everybody except those who were actually born fitting its narrow parameters of what it is to be normal or right. And it kills me how families, the people who are supposed to love you and support you, can fail so spectacularly at this because they are more concerned with upholding these damaging values than they are with raising strong, kind individuals who can think for themselves. And it’s not like we are obsessed with the WSCP, but it’s everywhere! And people will go out of their way to deny deny deny rather than just stop and think of how they may be complicit.

And like in Hickey’s case, the lack of support for certain lifestyles is so damaging to all of us. Just because we didn’t all choose to be engineers or IT specialists doesn’t mean we don’t deserve to be there for our families and provide them with the best life we can.

J: The proposition that alternative familial structures can facilitate well-being for their members just as well as — or possibly even better than — say, the nuclear family, can seem like such a “well, duh” thing. But it also often isn’t. These three essays are so instructive for thinking through the lived complexities (and often pain) of navigating alternative avenues in a WSCP, because they all direct attention to the negative affects that can circulate around such an enterprise, and the extent to which these affects can burden or even outright prevent its realization.

Again, I found Lai’s rehearsal of the line “We didn’t come here so you could be like this” fascinating, not least because I’ve also been the object of its address. It is an accusation of betrayal, and the accusation isn’t actually completely inappropriate or inaccurate.

D: As much as parents want their children to live their best lives, I can see how it can be difficult for them to understand their child’s choices, especially if they spent so much of their adult lives sacrificing parts of themselves to raise them. But when you’re a child, it’s painful to stick out because of who your parents are (if you only have one parent, if you have two moms or if you are being raised by a struggling artist) and all you might want to do is be normal. So it feels like a lose-lose situation. Families are still families, no matter how unconventional and they are all composed of separate humans experiencing life in a parallel, not identical way. And these humans might all be broken in their own ways throughout their lives.

“We didn’t come here so you could be like this,” in the eyes of the person speaking it, might be meant to be interpreted as “we didn’t want you to suffer how we’ve suffered” but it’s hard to take it like that when you know you can’t be any other way and still be happy. So that delicate balance fascinates me, which is why I am interested in finding out about how other people experience it and live through it.

J: Yeah, and I think the Peter Morin essay provides an illuminating (and incredibly lovely) counterpoint to the Lai and Stewart essays, which meditate on the frustrations, pain, and awkwardness of disentangling oneself from various traditions — traditions structured, in both cases, by localized iterations of patriarchy. Here is an individual whose relation to Family is defined by longing — for real people who are either rarely proximate or no longer around, and for a facility with a heritage that may not have been so well-documented and thus easily recovered.

D: The part that I related to the most in that essay was the part where he talks about how his family took turns housing his grandmother. I remember my mom telling me that this or that uncle or aunt were taking them to their house for a certain period of time before it was somebody else’s turn. They would pool money to pay for medicine and other expenses, and since it would have been too expensive to hire a nurse to take care of them this was the solution. They spent their time living with each of their children and with their grandchildren. I missed out on a lot of that because my family lived in a different country, so we would only visit during the summers.

It was also refreshing to be reminded that not all aspects of family can be damaging, and that there are traditions which are useful and important to pass on. I also enjoyed the parts that talk specifically about the photo and its frame. When you belong to a community or family that has spent so long moving around, certain objects will hold so much power over your memory. I particularly loved this: “So, I too am responsible for stories” because I don’t think he sees it as a burden, but an honour. To have a history and to pass it on to the next generation.

J: There are definitely traditions that are useful and important to pass on! This is perhaps particularly the case for Morin, who is Tahltan — to preserve and sustain specific traditions is to refuse and to fortify against an historically institutionalized project of colonial erasure.

D: Yassss.

It seems like we have all taken up the job of attempting to dismantle the damage done by hundreds of years of destruction, in our own ways. I’m thankful to grunt for informing so much of my thinking in this respect. Working with the archives was an amazing educational experience, especially when it came to contemporary First Nations art and Performance art. So it wasn’t just the people I met along the way.

J: Yes! Although I met you, Olga, Kendra, Venge, and Dan at grunt, and you’re all still my besties.

D: 5ever.

Download the 30th Anniversary eBook here.

Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015 wraps…more to come soon.

A big thank you to Vancouver Foundation, VIVO, the Western Front, all the artists and presenters, volunteers, and everyone else who helped make Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015 a big success, and a special shout out to everyone who came out for an event or two or six this week. We are very pleased by and proud of the diverse audience that places value in our archives. Stay tuned to this page for more news from the grunt Archives including what we are planning for VIAW 2016 ;~)

Still from the launch of the Western Front’s newly digitized Literary Collection.

Installation of Stacey Ho’s audio piece: A few ways to learn a couple things at VIVO.

Double Book Launch featuring Henri Robideau’s Eraser Street and Ethnographic Terminalia’s Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art e-zine for Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015

6pm Wednesday November 25th at grunt gallery

grunt is pleased to release Henri Robideau’s newest book Eraser Street: Hubris, Humility, and Humanity in the Making of a City, the catalogue for his exhibition of the same name earlier this year, featuring an essay written by Clint Burnham. Books will be for sale and the artist will be in attendance.

“Viewing Henri’s work is like taking a walk through Vancouver with an old master pointing out the sights of the city. Many are sites of resistance that show the struggle for affordable housing that has been increasingly lost over the last 40 years. The hand-written commentaries tell it all as they lay out with no holds barred the movement from the 1970s hippies to the present day hipsters steadfastly fighting to protect their communities from the onslaught of redevelopment”

Glenn Alteen, Curator’s Introduction

Henri has been photographing exhibitions at grunt for years and the archive is rich with his documentation work. Through his lens he has told the story of the grunt’s exhibition history along with so many other stories of Vancouver.

Henri Robideau is a photographer and cultural narrator. His life in photography spans nearly five decades – the medium providing both his profession and his means of artistic expression. He is best known for The Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey, a two-decade record of eccentric Canadian landmarks; Flapjacks & Photographs, the biography of early British Columbia photographer Mattie Gunterman; and 500 Fun Years, the story of colonialism. Panoramic image collages, holographic text and narrative sequences are the hallmarks of his work, which has been exhibited and collected nationally and internationally. Since 1979, he has taught photography in half a dozen Canadian universities and is currently a sessional instructor at Emily Carr University. For the past twenty years his large format photographic skills have been in demand by Canada’s leading artists, whom he has assisted in the production of their work. He is currently exploring digital colour technology, alternative means of perpetual photographic presentation and writing anecdotal stories about the ironic tragedy of human existence.

grunt is also excited to launch the e-zine version of Ethnographic Terminalia’s Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art. Produced in print following the workshop of the same name at VIVO Media Arts during ISEA 2015, Terminus documents the presentations and collaborative process of attendants responding to electronic art works and theoretical frameworks that disrupt material, figurative, discursive, cultural, and political manifestations of the archive.

The workshop featured a presentation by Britt Galpen and Yasmin Nurming-Por in collaboration with grunt gallery’s Tarah Hogue on the concurrent exhibition Arctic Noise by artist Geronimo Inutiq, whose work tapped into the Isuma Archive as a means of responding to Glenn Gould’s celebrated composition “The Idea of North”.

Also presenting was Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda speaking on her video piece Remdiating Mama Pina’s Cookbook which is screening in grunt’s Media Lab all week. Also in conjunction with Vancouver Independent Archvies Week, Gabriela will appear on the Artists in the Archive panel on Thursday November 26th, 7pm at the Western Front.

Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith from Ethnographic Terminalia will be in attendance, along with Tarah Hogue.

Ethnographic Terminalia is a curatorial collective grounded in a commitment to pushing the boundaries of anthropological scholarship and contemporary art through interdisciplinary exhibitions. Since 2009 we have been curating group exhibitions in major North American cities (Philadelphia, New Orleans, Montréal, San Francisco, New York, and Chicago). These projects demonstrate how contemporary artists, anthropologists, and institutions are engaging with ethnographic methodologies and art. The majority of the exhibitions have been mounted as ‘para-sites’ or ‘off-site installations’ to the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association. They have facilitated and championed works that explore new media, new locations, and new methods in anthropology and cultural studies. The collective has worked with more than 110 artists and anthropologists to date, generating ongoing creative collaboration between anthropological researchers and practicing artists. Our exhibitions and the works in them have been widely reviewed and publicized in both discipline-specific journals and the popular press.

Volunteer Spotlight: Mallory Gemmel

One of the great things about working in the grunt archive is meeting the sharp and curious folks who come to research and volunteer their time with our collection. Mallory Gemmel is a 4th year Photography/Curatorial Studies student at Emily Carr who has been completing an internship in the archives this fall. She has been digitizing slides, prints, and text material and uploading it to our online archives database The Activation Map. Mallory wrote this reflective piece after coming across an exhibition that really spoke to her, Anna Banana’s Bananapost: 20 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana (1990):

postbanana at grunt: 20-45 Years of Fooling around with A. Banana

Mallory Gemmel        

With a rich history and an organic and intuitive attitude, grunt has existed and remained as a space devoted to the arts community in Vancouver – expanding its arms to artists, curators, historians, archivists, students and many more. To an individual with keen interest of stepping into the community, the grunt’s life is unique, and it is rewarding to experience firsthand the three-decade continuum of contribution to Vancouver’s art identity.

Volunteering over the past weeks, I have had the opportunity to search and discover the vibrancy of the grunt’s archive, as a part of their Activating the Archive initiative. The project aims to digitize material from the archive and upload this content to their online database The Activation Map, increasing the access to information on past exhibitions and events to the public.

Sifting through documents, photographs, slides and publications I have been exposed to the work and collaborations of countless artists.

An artist whose work I have been digitizing and uploading since the coming to grunt is Anna Banana. Born in Victoria in 1940, Anna Long is a conceptual mail and performance artist under the alter ego of Anna Banana – a woman fascinated by bananas. Her work pokes fun at cultural phenomena, incorporating both performance and mail art (stamps, postcards, trading cards) that blurs the line between performer/audience and performance/ real life.

In February of 1990 grunt held an exhibition of Banana’s work, entitled Bananapost: 20 Years of Fooling Around with A. Banana. The whimsical show consisted of an accumulation of Banana’s visual work: stamps, drawings, paintings and collage. Alongside this material she conducted sound performances and introduced video documentation of her 1975 and 1980 Banana Olympics. The show also included documentation of her many publications: The Banana Rag, VILE Magazine and International Art Post to name a few. At the time, her presence as a mail artist was internationally recognized. She was interested in using the stamp as an art form and created a limited edition stamp sheet and book for the retrospective at grunt.

grunt’s archive is proof of the vitality of art within Vancouver, both in the past and today. Calling up reference to new work, the archive holds documentation of artists who are thriving and very much engaged within the community. Anna Banana is currently exhibiting another retrospective at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in collaboration with Open Space entitled, appropriately enough, 45 Years of Fooling around with A. Banana.

This living and growing connection that grunt and it’s archive has to the present life of the artistic community was something I was unaware of when I began working in the space. Searching through numerous shows, names, and work, Anna Banana is only one example of a name I came across both in the archive as well as daily discussion with the individuals at the gallery. It is exciting and encouraging seeing that past efforts of community and artistic engagement continue to fortify the contemporary art scene, knowing archival materials will continue to hold purpose and importance within the understanding and production of art.

I am excited and eager to continue to explore the contents of the grunt’s archive – the entirety of its holdings, and its overall distinction as a well-respected center for art within Vancouver.

If you are interested in researching in the grunt archives or would like to find out more about volunteering, please get in touch dan@grunt.ca

 Dr. Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda at Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015

grunt gallery is pleased to present Gabriela Aceves Sepúlveda, Assistant Professor at SFU’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology at Vancouver Independent Archives Week.

Dr. Sepúlveda will be presenting as part of the Artists in the Archive panel, hosted by the Western Front on Thursday November 26th at 7pm.

Archives at artist-run centres are a unique resource for artists and the community at large. Indispensable as sites for engagement with histories, they also offer space for creativity and new productions. “Artists in the Archive” will feature presentations by artists who are actively working with archives. Discussions will be aimed at linking the actions and strategies of artist-run centres, who have made significant strides to maintain their archive, with the ongoing work of artists who rely on the preservation of these vulnerable materials.

grunt will be exhibiting her piece Remediating Mama Pina’s Cookbook in our Media Lab from Saturday November 21st through Saturday November 28th. Drop by anytime we are open (Tues-Sat 12pm-5pm) to have a look.

In addition, grunt will be hosting a double book launch on Wednesday November 25th at 6pm for Henri Robideau’s Eraser Street and Ethnographic Terminalia’s e-zine Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art, the output from their workshop at VIVO in August during ISEA 2015. Dr. Sepúlveda was a presenter at the workshop and her work is featured in the e-zine.

Vancouver Independent Archives Week 2015 publication 

The Western Front, VIVO Media Arts, and grunt gallery have collaborated on a special publication for Archives Week. Pick up your copy at any of the Archives Week events listed within and enjoy the intangible version in the meantime.

grunt gallery and the Native Education College present Dr. Kristin L. Dowell at Vancouver Independent Archives Week Monday November 23rd.

Dr. Kristin L. Dowell will share her presentation Artist-Run Archives/Indigenous Art Histories at the Native Education College, Monday November 23rd, 12PM.

Over the last two years I have embarked on research in the grunt gallery’s archive to explore the vital role of this artist-run centre in supporting the creation and exhibition of contemporary First Nations art. Social memory, cultural protocols, radical voices, and a range of First Nations contemporary art practices emerge, composing vibrant Indigenous art histories that serve as alternatives to dominant narratives about Vancouver’s art world. In this talk I will share several examples uncovered in my research that reveal the invaluable resource of the grunt gallery’s archives for understanding the impact of contemporary First Nations art within this artist-run centre and the contributions this rich archive makes to a deeper knowledge of Canadian art practice.

grunt is excited to have Dr. Dowell back in Vancouver and to partner with the Native Education College for this event. More Archives Week events and details to come soon.

Dr. Kristin Dowell is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at Florida State University whose research explores the intersections of media technology, artistic practice and activism for Indigenous rights and social justice.  A Fulbright Scholar, she received her PhD in cultural anthropology with a certificate in Culture and Media from New York University in 2006.  For the last fourteen years she has engaged in collaborative community based research with Aboriginal filmmakers, artists and activists in Vancouver, Canada. She is the author ofSovereign Screens: Aboriginal Media on the Canadian West Coast (2013) an ethnography of Aboriginal visual sovereignty through on-screen film aesthetics and off-screen production practices. Her articles have appeared in the journals American Anthropologist, Anthropologica, and Transformations and in edited volumes, including Native Art of the Northwest Coast: A History of Changing Ideas, winner of the 2015 Canada Prize in the Humanities.  She is currently working on a research project that explores the social history and contemporary practice of Aboriginal experimental film and media art in Canada.

 grunt gallery, Western Front and VIVO Media Arts Centre are excited to host an inaugural Independent Archives Week from November 22–28, 2015.

This week will contain interactive programming to engage the Vancouver community and raise awareness with artist-run centre archives. Tours, performances, public talks, screenings, publications and hands-on youth & family archive workshops will be a part of the activities planned.

Vancouver artists have a long and recognized history as cultural innovators, activists and archivists – their work, preserved in the distinct collections of the participating centres has captured moments in Vancouver’s cultural evolution, while at the same time often becoming a catalyst for societal change. Archival collections, at ARCs, provide a unique “grassroots” window into the alternative and social histories that shaped our city (urban Aboriginal, visible minority, LGBTQ, feminist, social justice, environmental, “counter-cultural”) – as seen through the lens of our artists as observers and commentors. Our project emphasizes these relationships between contemporary culture and social movements (and how they spur social change), draw attention to shared experiences/struggles across communities that are diverse in age, ethnic background, sexual orientation, and gender.

The distinct curatorial focus of each participating centre makes each of these collections unique – it is these differences that will be celebrated through programming that increases public access to these archives. Our current digital age has made us all into our personal “archivists” and “curators” – selecting and preserving photos, video and text that inspire and motivate us. Archives week will connect residents to a greater collective community/art heritage.

More info to come.

DIG Revisited | Posted September 28, 2015
Written by Dan Pon

The idea for Vancouver Independent Archives Week began in December 2014, with a Saturday afternoon of presentations and discussions called DIG, showcasing recent projects around grunt’s and other artists’ archives and inviting participants to tour the grunt archives and enjoy refreshments in grunt’s kitchen. Despite some nasty weather, folks trickled in and by mid afternoon we had a full house in the gallery’s neighbouring amenity space.

Starting things off with a short performance, Igor Santizo and Emilio Rojas gave a talk on their May 2013 project ThisPlace Vancouver, a piece that they, along with fellow artist Guadalupe Martinez, conceived of as a response to Background / Vancouver, a 1972 photo mapping expedition of the city done by Michael de Courcy, Taki Bluesinger, Gerry Gilbert, and Glenn Lewis. ThisPlace culminated in an exhibition at grunt and a companion website that includes a link to the original Background / Vancouver site.

In advance of the massive Mainstreeters exhibition at the Satellite Gallery that would open a month later, project co-curator Allison Collins gave DIG attendees a sneak preview of digitized material from artist Paul Wong and his peers’ personal archives that told the story of a group of friends coming of age in East Van in the 70s, the origins of the Main Street art/bohemian scene, and Wong’s rise to art stardom. Allison’s insights and anecdotes on her and Michael Turner’s research and curatorial process made for an engaging behind the scenes look at the work that went into this rich retrospective. You can check out the Mainstreeters project site and video documentary here.

Finally, artist Julia Feyrer spoke on her ongoing residency project Kitchen. Curated by Vanessa Kwan as part of grunt’s 30th Anniversary programming, Kitchen reimagined the grunt kitchen prior to its renovation into our Media Lab space. Once the center of social life at grunt, the kitchen was reconstructed in the gallery space from archival photos, stories and ephemera, and reactivated with a series of workshops, curatorial texts by Vanessa, and, of course, Julia’s own spin on grunt’s annual solstice party that included the now infamous falling man stunt. More info on Kitchen here.

DIG was a great event, but we knew we had to do it bigger and better in 2015, so this November we are partnering with our longtime contemporaries VIVO Media Arts and the Western Front to bring you a full week’s worth of archive programming. We look forward to seeing you there.

Dan Pon
grunt archives

Sept 23, 2015: WestEnder Article | grunt gallery Throws Open the Archives

Dan Toulgoet photo

“Because the nature of our collections is so different, we’re all doing it very differently. It’s an interesting conversation going on between these three spaces,” explains grunt co-founder and program director Glenn Alteen. “Their emphasis is on saving, because so much of their stuff is from the ‘70s and has become very brittle, whereas our stuff is more from the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, so we’re not on that same salvage paradigm.”

Funded by a Field of Interest grant from The Vancouver Foundation, all three centres will present programming throughout the week of Nov. 22-28 with the goal of engaging the public and raising awareness around the operation and challenges that come with these types of non-traditional art archives.

“The archives become more and more important as time goes on,” says Alteen. “It’s really kind of the crux of what we do, because it allows us to make connections over decades.”

Read the entire article here.

July 24, 2015 | Funding Announcement for Archives Week

Central Vestiges by Tom Knott, May 1988

Artist Sayeh Sarfarez translates political movements and uprising occurring in Iran into a drawing series in which childlike, almost naive forms and innocent aesthetics are juxtaposed with threatening motifs.

Figures within these pictures are abstracted into flat-coloured shapes; crowded scenes appear simplistic and innocent in nature until a violent narrative appears. The basis of Sarfaraz’ drawings and compositions are rooted in Persian miniature paintings which she expresses in a contemporary format with modern references.

Initially ambiguous, the shapes within the series indicate situations regarding power, control and weapons of war. These depicted instances become a social composition that deals with repression, violent struggles and censorship. Between the childlike quality and the brutality of current events, the images challenge us to fight against our docile loss of critical perspective.

Join us for the opening reception of Génération Sacrifiée on Thursday October 22 (7 – 10pm) at grunt gallery. The artist will be in attendance at the opening. This exhibition occurs from Oct 22 – Nov 28, 2015.

Read a brief interview with the artist here.

Bio:

Sayeh Sarfaraz was born in Shiraz, Iran and later attended l’École Supérieure Des Arts Décoratifs de Strasbourg France. She is currently based in Montreal, Quebec.

Vancouver-based artist Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo explores issues around collective memory, historical trauma, and cultural identity in relation to the violence that occurred against civilians during the 12-year Civil War in El Salvador.

A series of mixed media drawings depict surreal and vibrant scenes filled with creatures in uniform; fragmented bodies tense with sinew and muscle; and carefully drawn figures with faces partially obscured or obliterated. Iconography sourced from North American vernacular culture, Pre-Columbian mythology, and Salvadoran popular folklore is amalgamated to explore the role of non-linear storytelling expressed in mythic form.

grunt gallery’s Media Lab shows a stop-motion animation that recalls individual identities of lost civilians juxtaposed against Super 8mm film footage of a road leading to the village of EL Mozote, where a massacre of nearly 1000 civilians took place in 1981 by the Salvadoran state army during the armed conflict.

This exhibition also includes a site-specific work of a colourful sawdust carpet, on the floor of the gallery. This work is based out of a Latin American traditional custom of creating large tapestry-like designs on the ground in public spaces during religious festivities.

Castillo’s work refers to a cultural past and contemporary present, fusing a hybridized aesthetic to engage issues about migration, historical trauma, identity, and memory. His narratives express a multifaceted, interlocking and non-linear approach. Consequently, the body of work revises and casts new personal interpretations on memory-building as a form of resistance, political commentary and healing.

Join us for the opening reception on Thursday September 10 (7–10pm); this reception coincides with SWARM, an annual artist-run centre festival in Vancouver, BC.  An essay written by Alexis Hranchuk will be available at the opening. The exhibition runs from September 11–October 10, 2015.

 Essay by Alexis Hranchuk | Download
Essay by Laura Bucci | Laura Bucci Essay

Artist Bio:

Born in El Salvador, Castillo immigrated to Canada in 1989 at the age of 11. He attended the Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto 1998-2001) and received an MFA from Concordia University (2004-2007). A previous resident of Montreal, Castillo relocated to Vancouver in 2013.

grunt gallery has had the pleasure of meeting and working with a great number of fantastic volunteers who have contributed their time to various projects at our space – and who have subsequently become important members of grunt gallery’s community.

We’re happy to share a conversation between two of grunt gallery’s archive volunteers, Olga Alexandru and Venge Dixon, about DISGRUNTLED: Other Art, grunt’s first eBook that commemorates the 30^th anniversary.

Venge has worked with grunt gallery for many years – volunteering, editing and establishing the very tiny base of what was to become grunt’s extensive, wonderfully well-staffed project, Activating the Archives (ATA). Venge Dixon is a visual artist, musician and occasional composer. These days she is working on the first book of a long planned comic book series.

Olga first started as an archival intern for the ATA project and went on to become the database manager. She co-created educational study guides for high school students using material from the archives. She has also sat on the curatorial committee. She is a poet & zine-maker who now resides in Bristol, UK.

Online Messaging Conversation occurred on July 15, 2015 –
Venge:  Would you like to begin with Polly Bak, or would you like to begin with a less dense text (and by that I mean wordy, not excessive)?

Olga:  We can start with Polly Bak. It’s the first essay I read and I was so glad that I did because it definitely helped frame the conversation in my head.

Venge:  Sounds good. How did it help you frame the conversation? I seem to be still without one—[a] frame, that is.

Olga:  Well, for me everything related to grunt has to do with identity: the identity of who I was as a woman starting my art career, the cultural identity of the artists shown at grunt, and the implications of how we create identity or how it’s created for us. And reading Polly’s essay seemed to confirm a lot of those themes.

Venge:  I admit to finding this piece both hectoring and yet full of content with which I do or have identified within myself. She asks questions and provides answers.

Venge:  One of my favourite things about grunt is that it provides many, many questions in its exhibitions but does not define an absolute answer, if any answer at all.

Olga:  Yes! I agree completely. It presents ideas and makes you think of the implications of certain things but it stops short of telling you what you should think or do as a result. And that, I think, is the making of a great institution. I think it’s a place where things never feel clichéd or like some lesson is being taught.

Venge:  Yes. I do think that this is intentional. grunt is open to ideas – many, many ideas. Shows happen because a diverse group of people decide that they suit the space, often because the voice of that particular artist on that particular subject has not been heard. The decision isn’t necessarily that a voice must [be heard], only that it has not been and is therefore worth discussing.

Olga:  Exactly. I think they probably pick artists who kind of align with that way of thinking. Showing rather than telling. I feel like Polly does that in her essay. She talks so forthrightly about having White privilege. I like how she makes fun of herself and other “well-meaning” White people, especially by choosing the tongue-in-cheek title “A Good-Hearted White Girl’s Search for Identity.” The section she talks about guilt leading people to hate and fear the thing that makes us feel guilty was so on point. I had to stop for a long time and think about that. It was so simple but it’s so true.

Venge:  I had difficulty with some of that “tongue-in-cheekness” – perhaps it is there to lessen the blow, [but] to me it seemed more defensive than matter-of-fact. That does not lessen its impact. The damage done by white shame is real and pervasive. Many of us, including my younger self, sometimes this older one, would rather swallow fire ants than acknowledge that this guilt has/does haunt us and therefore the society in which we live.

Venge:  I used to say “but I am only first-and-a-half generation Canadian” or “I didn’t grow up here” or some other “Not My Fault” silliness. This was fueled by fear and a sense that the rage native people might feel towards Whites was somehow mine to shoulder.

Venge:  When she speaks about listening being the way to understanding, about her responsibility towards other Whites – in terms of educating them – I am both drawn to the ideas and yet feel, at the same time, that ‘something’ is missing and too much decided.

Olga:  Going back to the first thing you said, I only read some parts of the essay as tongue-in-cheek, I think because her tone was difficult to categorize. But what you say makes a lot of sense. At times it does seem quite defensive. But I think that’s probably the point. Because she includes herself as one of the problematic people. Her line “I am one with the murderers and the slaughtered” was very striking. I agree with you though: it’s only part of the solution. I think the narrative around issues of race now is to let POC speak for themselves and not to interrupt with our opinions, which I think it one of the ways forward. I think this segueways nicely into Kamala Todd’s essay about Jeff Thomas’s “A Study of Indian-ness.” His exhibition is a way of reclaiming the representation of Aboriginal people by self-made images. It’s a way to create a more realistic narrative than the fantasy of the empty land and dying Indian that the dominant culture has created.

Venge:  Agreed! Not attempting to speak for others does seem to be one of the ways forward. Kamala Todd’s essay speaks of a visible/visibility, presenting a truth about colonial separation within its dominant culture (of which I am a privileged member), between its version of history and the reality that stands before it, clear and no longer silent.

Venge:  I think that Jeff Thomas’s work provides us with a clear place from which to watch, listen and not insert our White/ colonial/thieving sense of things into the frame.

Olga:  Yeah. I remember while working on ATA I came across the photo of his exhibition that showed all the cheesy romance novels with the really chiseled Native Warrior characters on the cover and I thought “Man! I wish I had seen that exhibition”. Here’s the photo.

Olga:  It was just such a jarring thing because you can see it from an outsider’s point of view. It looks super cheesy and stereotypical. And then you realize, well so are things like the Edward Curtis photos Kamala references, yet somehow one has become way more acceptable as reality.

Venge:  Wow, these are great; thanks for the link, Olga! And yes, that moment it takes to realize that you have seen the “joke” in high school history books, public art galleries, train stations, court houses presented with great serious… and, oh, crap! Did I understand those ‘jokes’? Probably not. Do I understand Thomas’s? Probably not.

That’s “seriousness.”

Olga:  Yeah, like it’s kind of crazy that kids are still being taught some bullshit colonial reworking of history. There’s an amazing part of Polly Bak’s essay that talks about 1492 and how the land was in fact not empty: “By 1492 this land had been transformed by many, many generations of settlers and builders, mounds, temples, towns, cities, dams, farming, hunting, logging, fishing; the land was lived on, fought over, buried in. There were parents and children. Places had names. Full, the land was full.” When you see that it’s so hard to listen to any justification for why history is still taught through colonial lenses.

Venge:  It has become increasingly deliberate, the Colonial ‘lie as history’. Does anyone still believe it? Is there a reason to? Yes. We are living on land that does not belong to us, creating an overlay of impossible steel and glass structures, hoping that by our excess our thievery will go unnoticed.

Olga:  Yeah, I’m not really sure how the lies are still believed to be true. I think it’s really similar to what’s happening in the US with the treatment of Black people, especially young, Black men. The country has been in denial for a long time as to the treatment towards Black people. And now only through self-made movements like #BlackLivesMatter is the truth being exposed. And it is making everyone super uncomfortable. Because they’d rather not know. Because then they have to do something about it or be complacent. And if they’re complacent and still allowing systemic injustices to occur then they don’t know what that says about them as human beings.

Venge:  I think that #BlackLivesMatter and the increased public awareness of Black lives not seeming to matter is the truth being re-exposed. The dominant culture opens one eye, closes the other, and then, over a decade or so/or less, closes the other. This is not the first time African Americans have had to yell very loudly to make us White people listen, this is not the first time native peoples of the world have had their lives paid lip service to. Will we go beyond half sight/ half hearing? Will we be hearing and seeing the very same outrages committed in the names of Whites everywhere and acting surprised all over again? I do not have much faith in us… I listen, see, and I haven’t actually done a damn thing.

Venge:  Or is that, perhaps, what I need to do?

Olga:  Yeah, I’m definitely not trying to say I have answers, because I sure as hell don’t. I think you’re right. It comes and goes out of season for the dominant culture to care about POC. It’s fucked up that their fights get picked up and dropped according to the flavour du jour. I mean not to be cheesy but I think this is the role of art. To bring these issues to the forefront, to make people uncomfortable in an environment they didn’t expect it. Maybe people are tired of politics. Maybe the fight needs to move into a different arena.

Venge:  I think you’re right, not cheesy: art has the ability to challenge, to bring up the well-hidden, obvious failings of the society in which it persists. Persists despite funding losses, proscription, mockery, derision. Art is powerful, and its power belongs equally to all who participate. I don’t mean that all galleries are open to all artists… I mean that art and artists have a voice outside of absolutes, outside of societal ‘truths’. It is sometimes possible to hear another better when you are silent in the presence of their creation.

Venge:  This seems like a very good time to talk about Paul Wong’s poem from 1999. He is speaking of a time of great creative upheaval and willingness on the parts of artists and audiences alike to leap into the unknown.

Olga:  Yeah, I love the poem; that’s why I wanted to talk about it. I think I first saw it in one of the other publications grunt did and I remembering chuckling to myself. I didn’t know anything about performance art before I started working at grunt, so it was amazing to learn about the performance scene in the ‘90s. I think the poem is kind of what people say about performance art, either against it or as a way to defend it.

Venge:  Yes. It a celebration of the form, the adventure, the confusion and, oh yeah, heavy drinking and the cigarette break!

Venge:  There was also this sense that anyone might be a part of the experience. That maybe our purpose one the planet was to make art – with our bodies, our stamina, our loud and quiet voices and our outrageous chutzpah!

Olga:  Yeah, looking back at the photos and seeing the footage of the performances and even hearing people’s stories made me wish I had been there. You know, like people say they wish they’d been in New York in the ‘80s or whatever. But I think grunt managed to channel that feeling into the gallery as a whole. From the first time I went there, to a solstice party, everyone was so friendly and welcoming. We kind of created this family out of that place. I know it’s been around for 30 years, so I’ve seen the different iterations of the family, but man! it feels great to have been a part of it. To still be a part of it even though I live far away now. I feel like grunt will always be a place I can go home to, you know?

Venge:  What is on the walls or installed in the room, the people who come for a while and stay forever: it all feels like a part of a wonderous spiral, ever-changing and yet always moving back towards itself and away again. It has been a privilege for me to be a small part of that and a thrill to have met so many amazing people. I’m with you: near or far, I will be there.

Olga:  Wow. That’s so beautiful Venge. That place opened up so many things in me. Not to get all existential, but it really changed the way I thought about myself. I think working there finally gave me the confidence I needed to pursue the things I loved. The people I met there definitely changed my perception of what normal is. I think it allowed me to be myself and to grow into myself as well.

Venge:  I think there is more to be said about everything we have spoken about – way more. But I do have to shave my head sometime this afternoon and am wondering: are there things we left unsaid which we should have mentioned? Are there points you really wanted to make that you have left unstated? Where are you in this process now?

Olga:  I think it’s mostly been said, to be honest. I thought we could maybe share a couple of our favourite moments from our time there to end it?

Venge:  Sounds good. I’ll leave out the crying. You start.

Olga:  Haha! Oh, there were definitely tears of frustration! There’s no denying that. But somehow it was all worth it. So, one of my favourite things was the first solstice party I went to. There was a photo of me standing next to Lawrence Paul and I totally freaked out when he got tagged in it because I had learned about him in school and there I was just casually standing next to him, not knowing. Everyone thought it was hilarious that I didn’t know it was him and that I was freaking out about it. It was a crazy experience. And probably every time after I talked to him I was like, “OMG. I’m talking to Lawrence Paul. Why am I saying all these stupid things?”

Olga:  My other favourite thing was probably standing in the corner at the openings talking to you, Jessica, or Diana. It became such a running joke between me and Jessica that “the corner” was our thing.

Venge:  One of my early memories of grunt was standing in the gallery at Fiona Mowatt’s opening of her Giant Condoms exhibition: all these exquisitely drawn representations of the ordinary made extraordinary by context. That was a long time ago and, at the time, was taken by many as feminist and political statement.

Venge:  When I went to Glenn Alteen in the early thousands, after many visits to the gallery and some actual participation, very much in need – as a crazy woman on disability – of a volunteer position, he was completely non-judgemental. He made it so easy and so ordinary. I will always love him for that.

Olga:  I agree. Glenn is the most unpretentious art dude ever!

Venge:  grunt has been a home for me, a hiding place, a meeting ground, an argument, a celebration of life and continues ever to be a place of profound learning. I feel very lucky to have worked there, to share connections with the people there and to have met you, Jessica, Diana, Kendra, Steven and so many great people, including Lawrence Yuxweluptun!

Olga:  Hear hear! Also I loved talking to Demian about robots. Let’s not forget that.

Venge:  Oh those robots! They are here, Demian, you were so right: they are taking over!

Olga:  Haha! Well, Venge, it has been lovely taking this stroll down memory lane with you. And getting fired up about social justice. I feel like the conversation doesn’t really end here, does it? We’ll always be talking.

Venge:  That’s very true and also cool: we’ll be talking ‘til we can’t.

Download the 30th Anniversary eBook here.

URL: https://grunt.ca/exhibitions/arctic-noise/

ARCTICNOISE 

Exhibition Title: ARCTICNOISE
Artist: Geronimo Inutiq
Curators: Guest curated by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen, produced in conjunction with International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA); Glenn Alteen and Tarah Hogue (grunt gallery); and Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith (Ethnographic Terminalia)
Exhibition Dates: Aug 5 – Aug 22, 2015
Reception: Monday, August 17 (7–10pm)
July 20, 2015 (Vancouver, BC) – grunt gallery, Ethnographic Terminalia and the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) are excited to present anexhibition, panel, workshop and a performance for ARCTICNOISE. The exhibition is located at grunt gallery and runs from August 5 to August 22, 2015 with an reception on Monday, August 17 (7–10pm).

ARCTICNOISE is a media installation by Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo) that draws on archival film footage and sound materials sourced from the Isuma Archive at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as sound and film materials from the artist’s personal collection and other ethnographical material. Conceived as an Indigenous response to Glenn Gould’s celebrated composition “The Idea of the North”, Inutiq will appropriate Gould’s piece as a musical score, paired with new voices and imagery to produce a layered and multi-vocal work.

The project folds into Inutiq’s larger practice of his alter-ego, madeskimo, that draws on the use of instruments, and digital and analogue synthesizers, as well as the remixing and processing of samples from a large variety of sources— including traditional Inuit, Aboriginal, modern electronic and urban music—in order to create an experimental platform.

At its crux, ARCTICNOISE intends to initiate conversations between various communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and to provoke thoughtful exchange about the roles of Inuit orality and materiality in a post-colonial space within the context of new media artwork. New media, with its appropriative and collage-like nature, is employed as a specific strategy to foster a multi-vocal and multi-generational approach to these sensitive issues.

A curatorial essay written by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen will be available at the exhibition. This essay will also be included in the forthcoming publication forARCTICNOISE.

grunt gallery | Address: Unit 116 – 350 East 2nd Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T4R8
grunt.ca/exhibitions/arcticnoise

Additional Programming –

Workshop:
Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art
Saturday August 15 (9:30 am to 5:30 pm)
at VIVO Media Arts | vivomediaarts.com
2625 Kaslo Street, Kaslo St, Vancouver, BC V5M 3G9

Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen, with grunt gallery’s Curatorial Resident Tarah Hogue, are collaborating with the collective Ethnographic Terminalia to produce a workshop at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), which will be hosted by VIVO on Saturday, August 15th from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, open to the public for viewing.

Following the 2015 ISEA theme of Disruption as it relates to the archive and its expression in new media, “Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art,” will include presentations of electronic art works and theoretical frameworks that disrupt material, figurative, discursive, cultural, and political manifestations of the archive, broadly conceived. The workshop will result in a DIY publication of the proceedings that will be made available to the public in limited edition print and online formats.

ethnographicterminalia.org
isea2015.org

Performance:
DISTURBANCE Performance
Saturday, August 15th @ 8:00 pm
at the Vancouver Art Gallery | vancouverartgallery.org/
750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7

Arrive by 8pm to watch a performance by Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo) – the artist behind ARCTICNOISE.

Vancouver Art Gallery’s FUSE is a wildly popular event where art, music and performance collide. On August 15, 2015 FUSE will be the site of DISTURBANCE, guest curated by Kate Armstrong and Malcolm Levy in connection with the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2015), one of the world’s most prestigious global festivals presenting work at the intersection of art and technology.

Panel:
ARCTICNOISE: DIALOGUES
Wednesday, August 19 (6:30 pm to 8:30 pm)
at Native Education College | necvancouver.org
285 E 5th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 1H2

This event will include an artist talk by Geronimo Inutiq, a discussion of the curatorial process by Britt Gallpen and Yasmin Nurming-Por, and a presentation by Christine Lalonde, Associate Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada. These will be followed by responses from two local respondents (TBC).
– 30 –

Media Contact for the exhibition:
Karlene Harvey, grunt gallery | 604-875-9516 or, karlene@grunt.ca

Media Contact for ISEA programming:
Maria Fedorova |isea2015-artinfo@sfu.ca

Funding Acknowledgments:

ARCTICNOISE is co-presented by ISEA and grunt gallery. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the McLean Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. A very special thank you to VIVO Media Arts Centre and the Native Education College for hosting the panel and workshop forARCTICNOISE.

CURATORS: Guest curated by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen, produced in conjunction with International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA); Glenn Alteen and Tarah Hogue (grunt gallery); and Kate Hennessy and Trudi Lynn Smith (Ethnographic Terminalia)

grunt gallery, Ethnographic Terminalia and the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA) are excited to present an exhibition, panel, workshop and a performance for ARCTICNOISE. The exhibition is located at grunt gallery and runs from August 5 to August 22, 2015 with an opening reception on Monday, August 17 (7–10pm).

ARCTICNOISE is a media installation by Geronimo Inutiq (madeskimo) that draws on archival film footage and sound materials sourced from the Isuma Archive at the National Gallery of Canada, as well as sound and film materials from the artist’s personal collection and other ethnographical material. Conceived as an Indigenous response to Glenn Gould’s celebrated composition “The Idea of the North”, Inutiq will appropriate Gould’s piece as a musical score, paired with new voices and imagery to produce a layered and multi-vocal work.

The project folds into Inutiq’s larger practice of his alter-ego, madeskimo, that draws on the use of instruments, and digital and analogue synthesizers, as well as the remixing and processing of samples from a large variety of sources— including traditional Inuit, Aboriginal, modern electronic and urban music—in order to create an experimental platform.

At its crux, ARCTICNOISE intends to initiate conversations between various communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, and to provoke thoughtful exchange about the roles of Inuit orality and materiality in a post-colonial space within the context of new media artwork. New media, with its appropriative and collage-like nature, is employed as a specific strategy to foster a multi-vocal and multi-generational approach to these sensitive issues.

A curatorial essay written by Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen will be available at the exhibition.

ARCTICNOISE exhibition catalogue (print version available in our Gift Shop)

Links:
ISEA: Disruption
ARCTICNOISE
Ethnographic Terminalia

ISEA 2015 – Vancouver: Grunt Gallery Spotlight with Tarah Hogue from Jimmy Phung on Vimeo.

Review of ARCTICNOISE by Weiyi Chang in the November 2015 issue of Luma Quarterly.

ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING:

Workshop:

Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art
Saturday August 15 (9:30 am to 5:30 pm)

at VIVO Media Arts | 2625 Kaslo Street, Kaslo St, Vancouver, BC V5M 3G9

Yasmin Nurming-Por and Britt Gallpen, with grunt gallery’s Curatorial Resident Tarah Hogue, are collaborating with the collective Ethnographic Terminalia to produce a workshop at the International Symposium of Electronic Arts (ISEA), which will be hosted by VIVO on Saturday, August 15th from 9:30 am to 5:30 pm, open to the public for viewing.

Following the 2015 ISEA theme of Disruption as it relates to the archive and its expression in new media, “Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art,” will include presentations of electronic art works and theoretical frameworks that disrupt material, figurative, discursive, cultural, and political manifestations of the archive, broadly conceived. The workshop will result in a DIY publication of the proceedings that will be made available to the public in limited edition print and online formats.

Ethnographic Terminalia
ISEA: Disruption
Terminus: Archives, Ephemera, and Electronic Art

Panel:

ARCTICNOISE: DIALOGUES
Wednesday, August 19 (6:30 pm to 8:30 pm)

at NEC Native Education College | 285 E 5th Ave, Vancouver, BC V5T 1H2

This event will include an artist talk by Geronimo Inutiq, a discussion of the curatorial process by Britt Gallpen and Yasmin Nurming-Por, and a presentation by Christine Lalonde, Associate Curator, Indigenous Art, National Gallery of Canada. These will be followed by responses from two local respondents (TBC).

DISTURBANCE Performance
Saturday, August 15th @ 8:00 pm

at the Vancouver Art Gallery | 750 Hornby St, Vancouver, BC V6Z 2H7 

Vancouver Art Gallery’s FUSE is a wildly popular event where art, music and performance collide. On August 15, 2015 FUSE will be the site of DISTURBANCE, guest curated by Kate Armstrong and Malcolm Levy in connection with the 21st International Symposium on Electronic Art (ISEA 2015), one of the world’s most prestigious global festivals presenting work at the intersection of art and technology.

– 30 –

Media Contact for the exhibition:

Karlene Harvey, grunt gallery | 604-875-9516 or, karlene@grunt.ca

Media Contact for ISEA programming:

Maria Fedorova |isea2015-artinfo@sfu.ca

Funding Acknowledgments:

ARCTICNOISE is co-presented by ISEA and grunt gallery. We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, the McLean Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. A very special thank you to VIVO Media Arts Centre and the Native Education College for hosting the panel and workshop for ARCTICNOISE.

Grunt gallery is grateful for the support of our Operating Funders: The City of Vancouver, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.

grunt gallery wishes you a happy Aboriginal Day!

grunt has a rich history of working with indigenous artists, check out some of these project sites that archive text, images, video and more.

1) Indian Acts: Aboriginal Performance Art
A website that grunt gallery curated for Activating the Archives, it chronicles a performance art conference that took place in Vancouver in 2002.
Check out essay’s written by Tania Willard, Dana Claxton, Daina Warren, Archer Pechawis and more…

2) Nikamon Ohci Askiy (songs because of the land)

In December 2008, artist Cheryl L’Hirondelle made daily journeys throughout Vancouver and “sung” the landscape she encountered. These encounters were captured by mobile phone by the artist and whatever other technologies are made available by participating viewers/audience (video, photo, audio). Check out this interactive website that includes sound bites from L’Hirondelle’s recordings.

3) Beat Nation

The little exhibition that could. Some might not realize the humble beginnings of Beat Nation and how it began as a youth project website between grunt gallery and Native Youth Artist Collective. Check out the website that was originally created in 2009, the amount of emerging artists who have since built tremendous careers is inspiring.

Check out all of grunt’s project websites here.