Artspeak
Annabel Vaughan
Annabel Vaughan is an intern architect working in Vancouver. She is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Her practice works to understand how Vancouver has come to be the city it is, where it is headed in the future, and how the culture of art and architecture will affect the outcome. She has co-written articles for Artspeak, West Coast Line, and Vancouver Matters (Vancouver: Blueimprint, 2008) with Rob Brownie.
Exhibitions
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JENNIFER ALLORA AND GUILLERMO CALZADILLA, ROY ARDEN, THE ATLAS GROUP / WALID RAAD, MICHAEL BARNHOLDEN, YAEL BARTANA, CAO FEI, GERMAINE KOH, GONZALO LEBRIJA, SERIPOP, JAYCE SALLOUM, RON TERADA, ANNABEL VAUGHAN, NEIL WEDMAN
June 10–August 6, 2006This exhibition is curated by Melanie O’Brian and Helga Pakasaar, and organized by Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery.
Please check www.presentationhousegallery.org for more details about Territory.
Territory is a visual art project concerned with mapping urban experience, civic space and contested terrains. The project includes installations at Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery as well as in public sites around Vancouver, guided walks, lectures, a film series, and publication.
The works in Territory involve navigating real and imagined territories – geographic, political, economic and social. The exhibition expands on earlier articulations of the notion of derive, or wandering, as a way to investigate urban environments. Cities are understood as essentially unreadable cartographies, fragmented and unstable. This project points to the spatial collisions of urban life, such as those resulting from rapid urban development and increased privitization of public space. The works in Territory reveal how cultural mythologies, both local and global, are scripted into built environments and determine human interactions. The social impact of the often invisible boundaries delineated by political conflict, gentrification, security, and communication systems becomes apparent as the artists call attention to the intersections of psychological, social and physical space.
Five artworks have been commissioned for the public domain: photographic billboards by Roy Arden, roaming mobile signboards by Ron Terada, soil transplants by Germaine Koh, photographs by Jayce Salloum dispersed through various distribution systems, and silkscreens postered around the city by Seripop. Encountered by chance and through uncanny recognition, these ephemeral works provoke tensions between public and private space. Distinctions between private acts and communal life are seen as porous. These artists temporarily occupy and lay claim to civic terrain and transient street life.
Presentation House Gallery will be exhibiting the work of five artists that offers poetic interpretations of the conditions that impact global cities. Footage of an industrial port in China’s Pearl River Delta by Puerto-Rican based artists, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, offers a meditation on global economies. Yael Bartana, an Israeli artist living in Amsterdam, manipulates images of street demonstrations by Israeli and Palestinian youth. The documentary material about post-civil war Beirut by the Atlas Group / Walid Raad, working out of New York and Lebanon, questions the representation of urban ruination and political violence. Gonzalo Lebrija, from Guadalajara, Mexico, looks at the potential violence of collective behaviour in street culture. Cao Fei, one of China’s most notable young artists, tracks the daily routines of a milkman in Guangzhou where she lives. Artspeak will present two of her media works that are concerned with urban fantasies and cultural mythologies.
Territory also involves mapping the city through guided walks from literary, visual art and architectural perspectives that will bring to light some of its hidden narratives. Michael Barnholden will animate the events of two downtown riots, Neil Wedman will interpret the history of sidewalks, and Annabel Vaughan will trace threads of Vancouver’s original urban grid along Carrall Street. The guided walks are on Saturdays at 2pm. Film series at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street Wednesday, July 19, Thursday, July 20, screenings begin at 7 pm.
On July 19 at 7 pm, Cao Fei will discuss her artwork, followed by a screening of her film, “Father”.
Talks & Events
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Carrall Street Publication and Edition Launch
ALTHEA THAUBERGER
September 30, 2009Join us for the launch of Althea Thauberger’s catalogue in conjunction with her Artspeak event Carrall Street.
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ALLORA & CALZADILLA, ROY ARDEN, THE ATLAS GROUP/WALID RAAD, YAEL BARTANA, CAO FEI, GERMAINE KOH, GONZALO LEBRIJA, JAYCE SALLOUM, SERIPOP, RON TERADA
May 30, 2009Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery are pleased to announce the launch of TERRITORY on Saturday, May 30, 7 pm at Presentation House Gallery, 333 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver BC.
This publication documents the Artspeak/Presentation House Gallery co-production TERRITORY, a visual art project concerned with urban experience and civic space that included gallery installations, public projects around the city, walking tours, a boat tour and film screenings.
Featured Artists:
Allora & Calzadilla, Roy Arden, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Yael Bartana, Cao Fei, Germaine Koh, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jayce Salloum, Seripop, Ron Terada.
Texts by Michael Barnholden, Germaine Koh, Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar, Jordan Strom, Michael Turner, Annabel Vaughan and Neil Wedman.
64 pages, Designed by Studio:Blackwell
Special launch price: $18, regular price: $22
Please join us for bubbly, readings, music and famous ham.
This event is in conjunction with the launch of the Spring 2009 issue of The Capilano Review “Moodyville”, a co-production with Presentation House Gallery.
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ALTHEA THAUBERGER
October 2, 2008This public forum will provide an opportunity for further community engagement and critical discussion around the social, political and artistic questions raised by Althea Thauberger’s Carrall Street. An open conversation will be initiated by a diverse body of speakers that include local architect and activist Annabel Vaughan, founding Simon Fraser University faculty member and writer Jerry Zaslove and Miami based writer and curator Ruba Katrib.
Join us for this compelling discussion at 7pm on Thursday, October 2nd at 33 West Cordova, Vancouver.
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ALTHEA THAUBERGER
September 30, 2008
8-11pm in the 200 block of Carrall Street
Althea Thauberger’s site-specific performance work will take place on the 200 block of Carrall Street in front of Artspeak. Collaborating with diverse local communities in Artspeak’s neighbourhood of the Downtown Eastside/Gastown, the one-night performance will present the street (brightly lit like a film set at nighttime) as a stage where the roles of participant and spectator blur. The interweaving of organized performers, passersby and audience members will allow for unforeseen interactions to take place, resulting in a destabilized form of community theatre that reveals something of the street’s history, its current successes and stresses, as well as its future.
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CAO FEI
July 19–July 20, 2006Film series at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street
Wednesday, July 19, Thursday, July 20, screenings begin at 7 pm.
On July 19 at 7 pm, Cao Fei will discuss her artwork, followed by a screening of her film, “Father”.
Cao Fei (b. 1978 in Guangzhou, China) lives in Guangzhou where she produces films, photography and theatrical works. Her artwork has been included in recent exhibitions on contemporary Chinese art, such as “Between Past and Future: New photography and Video from China” and “Follow Me!:Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium” She has participated in major international exhibitions such as the Third Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fifth Shanghai Biennial and is in the forthcoming Sydney Biennale.
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Wandering the Leqleqi Portage | Transecting Vancouver’s Narrative
ANNABEL VAUGHAN
June 17, 2006June 17 and July 29
Walking from Crab Park on Burrard Inlet to the eastern edge of False Creek this walk will trace one thread of Vancouver’s story along Carrall Sreet.
Meet at the band stand in Crab Park at 2pm.
Annabel Vaughan is a graduate architect working in Vancouver. She is a sessional Professor in the School of Architecture + Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia and a member of Space Agency, a local group of artists, architects and writers making space for the discussion of architecture in the public realm.
Publications
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Title: Carrall Street
Category: Artist Book
Artist: Althea Thauberger
Writers: Jerry Zaslove, Rob Brownie & Annabel Vaughan, Jonathan Young & Kim Collier, Lani Russwurm, Ruba Katrib, Kate Fowle
Editor: Melanie O’Brian
Design: Hodgkinson Design
Publisher: Artspeak
Printer: Generation Printers, Canada
Year published: 2009
Pages: 50pp
Cover: Paperback
Binding: Perfect Bound
Process: Offset
Features: 87 colour images; 18 b&w images
Dimensions: 26 x 18 x 1 cm
Weight: 273 g
ISBN: 978-0-921394-62-4
Price: $7 CDNThe Carrall Street publication documents Althea Thauberger’s site-specific work that took place on the 200-block of Carrall Street in front of Artspeak on September 30, 2008. It considered the specificities of the site as a nexus of social, economic, political, and cultural realities. The block was closed to traffic and illuminated by film lights. Collaborating with local communities, individuals, and organizations, Thauberger invited a diverse group to undertake independent actions or activities within the event’s framework.
Approximately forty performers worked across and through the delineation provided by the block, extending their activities into alleys and bars. The performances ranged from repeated physical actions, oratories, orchestrated conversations, and scripted performances that often occurred at an intimate scale, to reflected or framed quotidian situations. Because the event encompassed the entire block, the work took on an expanded subject matter that included the attitudes and activities of spectators and passersby, heightened aesthetics and conditions of representation, the street’s physical surroundings and architecture, and transitional moments in the street’s development.
The publication includes commissioned texts, scripts, a partial transcription of the Carrall Street forum, archival documents, and images.
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Title: Territory
Category: Catalogue
Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Roy Arden, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Yael Bartana, Cao Fei, Germaine Koh, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jayce Salloum, Seripop, Ron Terada
Writers: Michael Barnholden, Germaine Koh, Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar, Jordan Strom, Michael Turner, Annabel Vaughan, Neil Wedman
Editor: Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar
Design: Studio:Blackwell, Toronto
Publisher: Artspeak, Presentation House Gallery
Printer: Generation Printing, Vancouver
Year published: 2009
Pages: 64pp
Cover: Paperback
Binding: Perfect Bound
Process: Offset
Features: 36 colour images
Dimensions: 25.5 x 20.5 x 0.5 cm
Weight: 285 g
ISBN: 978-0-021394-58-7
Price: $5 CDNThis publication documents the Artspeak/Presentation House Gallery co-production TERRITORY, a visual art project concerned with urban experience and civic space that included gallery installations, public projects around the city, walking tours, a boat tour and film screenings.