Proclamation - poster project in Toronto

Two days wading through sudden summer rains and steamy heat, moving east to west, along Gerrard, jogging up Parliament onto College and over to Dundas and back again, marching south through Cabbagetown and Leslieville, meandering north, up Spadina and beyond, skirting the fringes of the 'Annex' and wandering further, almost lost, towards the borderlands of the 'Junction'. New developments, old neighbourhoods, different histories, same problems.

 

  

Rent Assembly: 2 new projects

I'm very pleased to announce 2 new projects being presented as part of the Rent Assembly event  http://rentassembly.org/ happening in Vancouver, May 24 -26.




Rent Assembly: a gathering of renters in a time of siege, considers the historic roots, economic causes, and cultural implications of Vancouver's growing divide, with readings, performances, panel discussions and art actions that explore various aspects of gentrification, colonialism and class struggle, as set against the backdrop of Vancouver's increasingly unaffordable housing market.

For the first project, Rental Agreement, I've created a poster which I'll be putting up on the streets, adjacent to some of the event locations and along the general migratory routes throughout the city frequented by my fellow renters. The poster stylistically embodies a proclamation and features a short text that makes nods to both Marx and the Canadian TV series Da Vinci’s Inquest (filmed in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), alluding to the ways in which we all are potentially ‘renting’ the spaces (or bodies) that we inhabit. The graphic element of the poster implies a peripatetic movement through zones of temporary shelter, or the erratic ECG readout of a revenant body politic.



The second project, Self Guided Walking Tour 1-5, consists of 5 short digital slideshows looped together, featuring a selection of photographic images I’ve taken over the last 10 years, documenting the seemingly vanquished objects and the increasingly contested interstitial spaces of the DTES. Each ‘tour’ contrives to visually immerse the viewer in a historically and emotionally charged territory littered with the relational signifiers of ownership, authority and agency. The slideshow is being screened at the closing event @ Instant Coffee, 441 Powell, Sunday May 26, 7-10 pm.

If you're in town this weekend, I hope you can make it to an event or two or at least maybe catch a glimpse of one of the posters in your neighbourhood. And if you're out there 'under siege' in another place, good luck and I've got extra posters if you want to bring them to your contested territories ! 

Recent Developments: some new images and some long-term issues that just won't go away.

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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.