Lorna Brown is a visual artist, writer, educator and editor, exhibiting her work internationally since 1984. Brown was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004 and is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting projects that consider the varying conditions of public places and public life. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. Brown received an honorary degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2015), the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Director/Curator of Artspeak 1999–2004.
Roger Farr co-edits Thuja Books with the Friends of Runcible Mountain, and is a collective member of the Kootenay School of Writing. Books include Ventilation Flow (Thuja, 1999), System to Pointing (Pulley Press, 1999), and D R O N E 1-30 (electronic book: www.ksw.net/form/drone.html). Other work appears in estrus, rout/e, Judy, and The Capilano Review. Translations of Le Livre de Mallarmé appear in the first issue of W, and are ever forthcoming. An essay on lexicalization in Bruce Andrews and p. inman will appear in the next issue of Endnote. He lives in Strathcona with Zoë Lamb.
Neil M Hennessy is a pataphysician who graduated from the University of Waterloo with a Bachelor of Mathematics in Computer Science and English Literature. He and Derek Beaulieu comprise the Trans-Canada Research Team. His digital poetry originates in Toronto, but is installed on computer screens via UbuWeb, Digital Ephemera at Coach House Books, and [sic]. His critical work on digital poetics has appeared in Open Letter, and will be presented at E-Poetry 2001: An International Digital Poetry Festival at SUNY Buffalo.
Reg Johanson is a contributor to the ongoing writing projects Tads, Rout/e, and Judy. He is the author of two chapbooks, Mi-Gook (1998) and Disjecta Membra (1999), both from lefthand press. A third chapbook, Chips, is forthcoming from Thuja Books. He teaches English at Capilano College and is a member of the Kootenay School of Writing collective.
Ryan Knighton teaches literature and other writings at Capilano College where he also works as editor of The Capilano Review. He has published poetry and essays in numerous Canadian journals and magazines. _Swing in the Hollow, a first book of poetry and photos, is published by Anvil Press.
Jason Le Heup is the editor of pulley press & co-edits the experimental publishing project Judy with Chris Walker. His work appears in a number of publications including the upcoming poetics anthology side/lines: a poetics from Insomniac Press. He is also the guest editor of HOST: twelve small canadian magazines, a two issue project from The Capilano Review that investigates the poetics of marginal publishing.
Leannej, is a writer, text based artist and social critic. She uses many of the same approaches to her text as visual artists. It is often the narrative process itself that is the central point or theme of her stories. In FRONT Magazine, leannej constructs “story diagrams” which leads the viewer through a series of conditional outcomes. The story schematic invites her viewers/readers to consider the process of narration: not just how stories are told, but how the viewer/reader constructs their own narratives. Her work appears regularly in FRONT Magazine. Three of her short stories will appear in the Flat Earth Excavation Company: a surrealistic Fiction anthology. She is completing her novel, The Sarah Jefferson Stories.
Chris Turnbull has been a regular contributor to Judy 1, 2 and 3, and TADs, editing a couple early issues with George Stanley and Reg Johanson, respectively. She sporadically designs and publishes the mag Rout/e, and was published in the catalogue for Istvan Bodocsky’s wind-related art (Davis, California). In December 2000 Thuja Press (imprint of Runcible Mountain) published her poetry chapbook, Shingles. She currently lives outside of Ottawa and is working on a collection of short stories and abstract kites.
ROGER FARR, NEIL HENNESSY, REG JOHANSON, RYAN KNIGHTON, JASON LE HEUP, LEANNEJ, CHRIS TURNBULL
April 28–June 2, 2001
This exhibition will propose a consideration of the gallery space as a reading room, allowing visitors to loiter long enough to engage with work that breaks apart the distinctions between writing, visual art and technological applications. Ryan Knighton’s poetic practice, for example, uses his JAWS voice computer program designed to accommodate his visual impairment as part of the method and content of his work. For SIFT, Knighton’s work will be installed at a computer station, opening up the elaborate process of his practice in an interactive fashion. In addition, materials and publications from Pulley Press will be selected in a curatorial collaboration with Jason LeHeup. His transgressions of the parameters of arcade games have resulted in a series of portraits of the children he would produce should he mate with his male cohorts and this photographic evidence will be included in the exhibition. leannej’s constructs stories that are diagrams, leading the reader/viewer through a labyrinth of conditional outcomes. Previously installed as magazine inserts, these works are reproduced as works on the gallery walls.
ROGER FARR, TESSA LAMB, LEANNEJ, REG JOHANSON, RYAN KNIGHTON, MYKOL KNIGHTON, JEREMY TURNER
May 29, 2001
Artspeak is pleased to host the reading and web launch of “SIFTED: The Read Room” which accompanies SIFT: The Read Room; an exhibition running from April 28th to June 2nd, 2001.
SIFTED: The Read Room
Title: SIFTED: The Read Room
Writers: Roger Farr & Tessa Lamb, Neil Hennessy, leannej & Jeremy Turner, Reg Johanson, Ryan & Mykol Knighton, Jason Le Heup, Chris Turnbull
Editor: Artspeak
Category: CD-ROM
Design: Mia Thomsett
Publisher: Artspeak
Year published: 2001
Process: Digital
Features: 50 bw images
Weight: 54 g
Dimensions: 18 x 11 x 0.5 cm
No longer available
In conjunction with the exhibition SIFT: The Reading Room, Artspeak has produced SIFTED: The Read Room. These projects present the work of Vancouver and Toronto writers who have made forays into visual arts practice, breaking apart the distinctions between writing, visual art and technological applications. With a CD-ROM of images and web projects, Sifted is the culmination of the collaborative work of several writers and their invited colleagues that took place over the duration of the exhibition.
Ryan Knighton and Mykol Knighton’s project draws on Ryan’s poetic practice and work in the exhibition, using the synthesized voice of his JAWS computer software for the visually impaired as part of the method and content of his work. Their collaborative work, titled Clutch, combines a sequence of photographs of an abandoned car which decompose the functioning car into its parts with text and sound investigating language/machinery, narrative, memory and hyperlinking relationships between image and anecdote.
Roger Farr and Tessa Lamb’s collaborative and recombinant project Album, a book in process uses hypertext to unhinge the linear syntax imposed on historical and visual narratives by the codex book form. Composed of blurred black and white snapshots and edited diary passages culled from the web, Album makes public the privacy and intimacy usually attributed to the autobiographical genres of the family photograph and the personal diary.
leannej and Jeremy Turner have created parallel projects that reflect their shared interest in the narrative process and the construction of identity. leanne’s work in the exhibition titled Maybe its Just a Phase, is a installation of diagrammatic text/stories that lead a reader/viewer through a maze of conditional outcomes. Jeremy’s practice and recent writing in FRONT magazine have involved re-creating historical and contemporary figures/identities through the form of the internet chat room, manufactured interviews and diaries.