Director/Curator of Artspeak
1995-1999.
Hadley+Maxwell have been working together since 1997. Recent presentations of their work include the solo exhibitions Improperties, Smart Project Space, Amsterdam, and who can resist a Human? who doesn’t finger lies?, YYZ, Toronto, and the group exhibitions It’s the End of the World as We Know It, La Kunsthalle Mulhouse and The End of Money, Witte de With, Rotterdam.
Kathleen Ritter (b. 1974) is an artist and a writer based in Vancouver. Her research and practice investigate institutional structures that surround and mediate the reception of art. Her work has been exhibited at Modern Fuel, Kingston ON (2008); the Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa ON (2008); Western Front, Vancouver (2004); Skol, Montreal (2000); and Access, Vancouver (2000). Her writing has been published in the anthology Places and Non-Places of Contemporary Art (2005) and the journals Prefix Photo, ESSE, Open Letter, and Fillip Magazine. She curated Expect Delays (2003) at Artspeak, a series of artist’s interventions that took place throughout Vancouver. She is currently Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
HADLEY HOWES, MAXWELL STEPHENS
February 6–March 20, 1999
A collaboration is an effective space to explore the movement of desire. We are searching for an understanding of the flow, the stoppage and slippage of desire in an autopoetic system. This searching becomes our process and the work itself, a serious play of possibilities.
We are exploring the boundaries of the contract between lovers (and between strangers) which designates the limitations of penetration and acceptance.
“Now we turn on the lights, and lean over to see the work born. Then, surprise before what, passing through us, was drawn; and if it is I who drew this unknown child then who are I?” (Helene Cixous, “Without End”)
—Hadley Howes and Maxwell Stephens, 1998
Organs say touch me
I will touch you
rubber says fondle
says skin
layers those layers of every memory
of fetish
that play
that I will do
so you can be.
—Sarah Wakefield, 1998
Catalogue Launch/Poetry Reading
HADLEY HOWES, STEPHEN MAXWELL, SARAH WAKEFIELD
March 18, 1999
Artspeak Gallery will be hosting a catalogue launch for the exhibition Negotiating Desire with artists Hadley Howes and Stephen Maxwell, and poetry reading by Sarah Wakefield. This exhibition runs until March 20, 1999.
Title: Negotiating Desire
Category: Exhibition Catalogue
Artist: Hadley Howes, Stephen Maxwell
Writers: Susan Edelstein, Kathleen Ritter, Sarah Wakefield
Design: Roberta Batchelor, R-house
Publisher: Artspeak
Printer: A. J. Graphics Ltd.
Year published: 1999
Pages: 16pp
Cover: Paper
Binding: Staple Bound
Process: Offset
Features: 7 duotone images
Dimensions: 19.5 x 14 x 0.3 cm
Weight: 57 g
ISBN: 0-921394-32-2
Price: $4 CDN
Negotiating Desire combines the intimate collaborative work of emerging artists Hadley Howes and Stephen Maxwell with the poetry of Sarah Wakefield. All three practitioners have used the imagery of rubber, wood and fetish objects as a departure point to investigate the nature of desire. Foreword by Susan Edelstein, essay by Kathleen Ritter.