A curator and writer based in San Francisco, where she is Curator and Head of Programs at the CCA Wattis Institute. Nguyen was formerly Director/Curator of Artspeak from 2011-2016. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and periodicals nationally and internationally, with recent texts in catalogues published by Pied-à-Terre (San Francisco), Gluck 50/Mousse (Milan), and the Herning Museum of Art (Denmark). Nguyen is the recipient of the 2015 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Emerging Curators in Contemporary Canadian Art and the 2016 Joan Lowndes Award from the Canada Council for the Arts for excellence in critical and curatorial writing.
Cate Rimmer, 1961, is a curator from Calgary, Alberta. She was the founding Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery, Director of Truck Gallery and was a Curator in Residence at the Saidye Bronfman Centre in Montreal. Rimmer has published reviews, articles and catalogue texts. She received a diploma in Curatorial Studies from Emily Carr and graduated with a MLitt (with distinction) in Museum and Gallery Studies from the University of St Andrews, Scotland.
Jen Weih is a Vancouver-based artist whose practice includes video, print, sculpture, installation, and sound performance. Her work has been exhibited at the Or Gallery, Western Front, Burnaby Art Gallery, The Apartment, Helen Pitt Gallery, and Oakville Galleries. She teaches at Emily Carr University and is on the board of Other Sights for Artist Projects. She was programming coordinator at VIVO between 2000-2003, where she founded the Signal & Noise Festival of Contemporary Media. She received her BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in 1999 and her MFA from UBC in 2009.
Speakeasy: Salon
CATE RIMMER, JEN WEIH
March 23, 2013
Speakeasy: Salon is a series of talks and presentations that interrogates Artspeak’s mandate to encourage a dialogue between visual art and writing. In this incarnation, speakers will present within the conversational salon format on wide-ranging subjects including art, music, literature, politics, popular culture, and science. Speakers select their own topics for discussion and are not expected to be experts in the subjects they present. Each session ends with a conversation between participants and speakers, creating an opportunity for the exchange of ideas and critical discourse, and a mutual scholarship of the topics explored. Speakeasy: Salon references both the demand for interdisciplinary learning in contemporary art and writing practices and an interest in the informal academic institution.
JEN WEIH: YOU TELL THE OCEAN IT DOESN’T KNOW
“I am going to talk about the sprawling set of interests I have related to the fact that the sun is moving really really really fast. It has its own orbit of the galaxy. The image of the sun floating quietly in space with the planets moving around it in circles was true for a time, but is now a fiction of convenience. Likely topics include- the Copernican revolution, the ego, the site of art, Agniezka Kurant, maybe Stephen Kaltenbach, the infinite, probably Borges on Xeno, and hopefully dancing.”
CATE RIMMER: A SAILOR’S PORNOGRAPHIC KEEPSAKE
A consideration of a historical “marital aid” and related maritime erotica.