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  • Anne Low

    Anne Low is based in Vancouver. Solo exhibitions include Some Rugs and Blankets, The Taut and the Tame, Berlin (2012) and Women’s Assembly: Two Scenes from a Radio Play, Hex Projects, London (2008). Her collaboration with Evan Calder Williams, A Fine Line of Deviation, was shown at Issue Project Room, New York in 2016. Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include Dream Islands, Nanaimo Art Gallery (2017); Separation Penetrates, Mercer Union (2017); Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery (2016) and Reading the Line, The Western Front, Vancouver (2015). Her ongoing project with Derya Akay, Elaine, has hosted events at Haunt, Vancouver and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She has collaborated with The Grantchester Pottery as part of The Grantchester Pottery Paints the Stage, Jerwood Space, London, 2015; ARTIST DECORATORS, ICA, London, 2013 and Studio Wares, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, 2013. Her weavings made in collaboration with Gareth Moore were shown as part of his work A place, near the buried canal for dOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, 2012. In 2016, Low and Moore co-curated the exhibition Kitchen Midden, which included artworks, objects and artifacts from the collections of 87 artists.

  • Sylvain Sailly

    Sylvain Sailly is a Vancouver-based artist. His animations and sculptural installations explore contemporary information systems used by technology industries. The works, which might be constructed as immersive multimedia installations or intimate web-based GIFs or videos, reference the contexts and histories of image-making technologies and the relationships between the screen, the viewer and the material world. Sylvain Sailly has exhibited at Mains d’Œuvres, Paris; Today Art Museum, Beijing; Jakarta Biennale XIII; Vancouver Art Gallery; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; Western Front, Vancouver; and 221A, Vancouver.

     

  • Bopha Chhay

    Director/Curator 2016–2022.

Exhibitions

Witch With Comb

ANNE LOW
September 9–October 28, 2017

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

Artspeak - Anne Low - "Witch With Comb"

In The Ormolu Clock a short story by Muriel Spark the narrator is staying in the well kept but modest Guesthouse Lublonitsch. The focus of the story revolves around the narrator’s observation of Frau Lublonitsch, the proprietor of the guesthouse. Despite her rumoured wealth she still maintained the modest dress and work habits more reminiscent to that of a peasant. At one point in the story the narrator catches a momentary glimpse into a room through a door, that up until that moment, had remained locked. The narrator’s description of the magnificence of the room revealed a canopied bed, stacked with plush pillows, highly adorned quilts and Turkish carpets all in hues of deep crimson, dark wood and flashes of gilded gold, a glistening tiled stove and an elaborately decorated clock. The narrator is struck by the opulence of the bedroom, seemingly the antithesis to the rest of the establishment with its humble scrubbed and polished wooden interior. Before closing the door an employee mentions that the room is Frau Lublonitsch’s bedroom.

Anne Low’s new body of work Witch With Comb carries a similar sentiment to this momentary glimpse into the bedroom as described in The Ormolu Clock. Beginning with ingress to The Ugly Room (2017), the shutters at the entrance; viewed from the street, partially opened, they hint at a space lived in. In their form and material the sculptural works within the exhibition consider our relationship to the domestic spaces we inhabit, raising questions about the ways we chose to decorate and adorn these spaces and the objects we chose to live with.

The proprietor of the room is present, but only in the form and material of the sculptural works. We’re clued into the daily rituals and the relationships they’ve formed with these objects within the space. These works were formed by the familiarity and intimacy of their proprietor. Accumulated crumpled notes and papers, unopened letters, a cut out of Durer’s Avarice, sit atop a well worn, discoloured pillow and bed. Their haptic arrangement is as if they’ve been emptied out from the bottom of one’s bag or bottom drawer, temporarily forgotten, only to later be revisited. How do collections of found objects, trinkets and miscellany, placed alongside and within sculptural works, affect each other? Has their former utility been completely relinquished? Is there a sense that they’ve shirked their preciousness, or a need for preservation as they adorn and share the surface of the handwoven fabric. The presence of these sculptural works adheres not only to the private sphere of their owners taste, habits and desires, but also expanded interpretations of objects and materials and our subsequent relationship with them.

Postscript 71: Laura Piasta on Anne Low

Talks & Events

Publications

  • Slow, incremental, non-linear

     

    Title: Slow, incremental, non-linear
    Series Title: Beacon – a series in ten issues
    Author: Bopha Chhay
    Artist: Laiwan
    Series Editor: Bopha Chhay
    Design: Vicky Lum
    Copyeditor: Alexandra Bischoff
    Publisher: Artspeak
    Printed by: Metropolitan Fine Printers
    Year Published: 2023
    Cover: soft
    Binding: staples
    Dimensions: 15.2 x 22.9 cm
    Edition of 100
    ISBN: 978-1-927630-23-5
    Cost: $12
    Subscription: $100


    Single Issue – Choose Shipping Option




    BEACON Subscription (Ten Issues) – Choose Shipping Option



     

    ‘BEACON – a pamphlet series in ten issues’ focuses on how the commitment of artists’ to wider social movements informs contemporary artistic practice. The series will feature texts by artists whose practices engage with language and visual arts.

    Current issues:
    01 – Ruth Buchanan
    02 – Hong-Kai Wang
    03 – Christina Battle
    04 – Justine A. Chambers
    05 – Sameer Farooq and
    Jared Stanley

    06 – Gelare Khoshgozaran
    07 – Lana Lopsei
    08 – Be Oakley
    09 – Bopha Chhay
    10 – Nasrin Himada