Temporary Assignment - New work @ the Richmond Art Gallery

I've just finished installing a new piece called Ingress/Egress @ the Richmond Art Gallery. The exhibition is called Temporary Assignment and it's up from November 19th - 30th, only a short run, but there will be a closing reception on Friday, November 30th from 7-9 PM and you're invited! After 20 years the gallery is re-surfacing their walls, so they've invited 10 artists to create work that goes right onto or in my case, right into the gallery wall. There's some really interesting work in the show, so I hope you get a chance to drop by. Here's the gallery's website for details about getting there: http://www.richmondartgallery.org/ 

And here's some background on my piece from the official statement:

Ingress/Egress explores notions of affect and agency and the roles that language, technology and architecture play in determining identity and defining the limitations or expectations of body and self.

 

 The two text block tableaus incorporate fragments of found language, including case study data, pop song lyrics, confessional diary entries and social media ‘status’ updates. 

 Each tableau can be read as an entry point or an exit, a virtual portal to explore or escape the public dialogues, private monologues and ambient textual noises that envelop our bodies and inform or intrude upon our innermost self.

Ingress/Egress by one definition suggests: “The power or liberty of access” in relation to “the act or right of going out”.

By carving and rendering text directly into the wall of the gallery, Ingress/Egress hopes to lead the viewer into a consideration of the spatial, textual and virtual constructions that support our public meanings and institutions  and perhaps, suggest a way to carve out our own version of self from the wall of information that increasingly defines our media saturated lives. 

                                

So much for strategy, in reality, 20 years of repeated painting made the gallery walls incredibly hard and very resistant to being intruded upon.  

Knuckles bloodied and arm muscles cramping, I persevered and adapted and some unanticipated surface applications developed alongside the more successful incursions below the surface and while my tactics for tackling the wall were severely challenged, in the end, my intentions were perhaps even better served and I'm pretty happy with how the piece turned out.

Hope you can make it to the Gallery for a look at the finished results. 

The Process - video premiere

Hey All, The Process, another video from the Acts of Domestic Terror series is being screened this Friday, November 9th @ VIVO Media arts centre, 1965 Main Street, Vancouver. I'm very happy to be included in the program of In Media Res, curated by The Automatic Message, especially as this will be the very first public screening of the video.  It all starts @ 8:30 PM and goes til 1 AM, not sure what time my piece will be on, but if you can make it down it'd be great to see you and I'd love to hear what you think.