Archive
Search
Artspeak,

Artspeak

Richard Fowler

Richard Fowler is a defence lawyer and partner at Gibbons Fowler Nathanson in Vancouver. He has been involved in many trials, including Air India and was counsel for Glen Clark. He is very interested in art and is currently on the board of the Western Front Foundation. He is married to a lawyer, Margot Fleming, and has two young boys, Sam and John.

Exhibitions

  • Set: Room 302

    GEOFFREY FARMER, JUDY RADUL
    October 22–November 26, 2005

    Judy Radul and Geoffrey Farmer in collaboration

    Curated by Lorna Brown and Jonathan Middleton

    An act can be the process of doing or performing something, a decree or a written document, a part of a theatrical performance, a pose of intentional or unintentional insincerity. Acts hover between the real and the represented; they can be symbolic, an oblique sublimation of another, earlier act, or through repetition, can form a habit. Judy Radul’s diverse practice in performance, video, installation and writing has focused on a range of acts—rehearsals, casting calls, entrances and exits, acts of speech—that underlie or anticipate the gestures captured in the frame of the camera or the stage. Objects can be acted upon, can prop up an act, support it, influence its effects, or be entered as evidence. Objects that suggest costumes, make up kits for a reconstruction, or stand in for absent actors, populate the installation work of Geoffrey Farmer. Whether an invitation to re-enact the role of a movie hunchback, or a ’70’s feminist performance artist, his arrangements of materials and constructed environments forecast the creation of a persona and encourage an imagined narrative.

    Room 302 is a result of Radul and Farmer’s shared interests, realized through remaking, redoing and reconstructing with objects, arrangements and the mediating camera. Their collaborative installation restages the cusp between the ‘truth’ of a performance and the suggestive power of an object, the indirect means by which we grapple with the complex territory of the real.

    GEOFFREY FARMER’s work has been included in numerous national and international exhibitions, including solo exhibitions at Or Gallery, Vancouver; Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; the Power Plant, Toronto; and 1999 Melbourne Biennial. JUDY RADUL’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including solo exhibitions at Presentation House, the Belkin Satellite, and Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver; and The Power Plant, Toronto. She has performed widely, including at the Western Front, Vancouver and Institute of Contemporary Art, London UK.

    Set is a series of three exhibitions, a site-specific performance event and artist talks, exploring the concepts of rehearsal and reenactment and how they relate to social roles, institutions, and histories. Set is produced in collaboration with the Western Front and is supported by the British Council’s UK Today Series and the Independent Critics and Curators program of The Canada Council.

    For a full list of Set events, visit www.setproject.ca

    Postscript 16: Richard Fowler on Set: Room 302 (PDF)