Sharla Sava is a writer and university educator. She has lectured, curated exhibitions, and published a variety of articles about art after modernism, discussing the work of Robert Filliou, Antonia Hirsch, Ray Johnson, N.E. Thing Co., and Jeff Wall, among others. She completed her PhD at SFU in 2006 and is currently Assistant Professor at York University.
Director/Curator of Artspeak
1995-1999.
Felt Histories
THECLA SCHIPHORST
October 24–December 5, 1998
Felt Histories features a computer interactive sound and video installation by Thecla Schiphorst. The proximity and touch of the viewer directs the interaction of the piece, disturbing the viewer/object relationship that is traditionally experienced in a gallery space. The site of interaction is a door frame, situated at the far end of the gallery. Within the frame, the image of a mature woman waits silently, her back to the gallery visitor. The silence in the room is echoed in the stillness of the image, and can be broken only through the visitor’s interaction at the threshold of the door frame. The door frame serves as an architectural device and reference by which our bodies are measured and contained, while the proximity and touch sensitive surface operates as a boundary and portal between public and private spaces. Schiphorst employs new technologies and architectural devices to critique ideas of embodiment and to examine spaces which have been historically determined as private and feminine.
Felt Histories is the second in a series of three exhibitions dealing with architectural space and the body. Using computer-based technology and representations of the body, the works in these solo exhibitions will explore domestic and institutional space, revealing aspects of social organization and control found within these gendered systems. A publication discussing these works will be released in December 1998, with essays by Lucy Hogg and Sharla Sava.
Cocktail Party/Catalogue Launch
JOHANNES ZITS, THECLA SCHIPHORST, CHARLES REA, LUCY HOGG, SHARLA SAVA
December 18, 1998
Cocktail Party and Catalogue Launch for publication “Altered Visions”.
Title: Altered Visions
Category: Exhibition Catalogue
Artist: Charles Rea, Thecla Schiphorst, Johannes Zits
Writers: Lucy Hogg, Sharla Sava
Editor: Jacqueline Larson
Design: Roberta Batchelor
Publisher: Artspeak
Printer: Imprimerie Dufferin Press
Year published: 1998
Pages: 64pp
Cover: Paper
Binding: Perfect Bound
Process: Offset
Features: 19 b&w images, 10 colour images
Dimensions: 20 x 22 x 0.6 cm
Weight: 220 g
ISBN: 0-921394-31-4
Price: $4 CDN
Features three essays examining the relationship of the body to domestic and institutional space in the solo exhibitions of Charles Rea, Thecla Schiphorst and Johannes Zits. The catalogue includes full colour images of each installation as well as the artists’ working notes and sketches prior to making the work.