Exhibitions

• rapture : rupture

  LAIWAN, SAM SHEM
  December 11–January 29, 2000

  This exhibition is a culmination of a collaborative process between Laiwan, an established interdisciplinary artist and writer, and Sam Shem, an emerging artist working in installation. Taking the form of on-going discussions and shared readings over the past year this collaboration has informed their respective new works.

  Sam Shem’s work will be installed in the gallery space. This new installation work uses small circular mirrors, painted walls, lighting and bubbles produced by a bubble machine: ephemeral materials that are contingent upon the bodies of viewers to craft the experience and atmosphere of the work as they move through it, while reflections appear and disappear, bubbles fall and break. The work draws attention to its own impermanence and the transitory nature of experience through the immediacy and indeterminate approach to materials and space.

  Laiwan’s new text work will be presented in the publication centre and will take two forms: an ‘installed’ poetic text will be present when the exhibition opens and a theoretical text which will be added for the final half of the exhibition period.

• Interface

  VERA GARTLEY
  September 9–October 8, 1994

• Mohawks in Beehives and Other Works

  SHELLEY NIRO
  November 19–December 18, 1993

• AKWABA

  MAUD SULTER
  September 10–October 9, 1993

  AKWABA is a meditation on the african cultural artefact in relation to the Self for the diasporan African and the functioning of the Black object in the Western museum. In Proverbs for Adwoa the artist uses the akua ma doll as self portrait. In Fetish #1-3 the mask used in the female clitoridectomy rites is paired with texts etched into copper plaques inscribed with the words Flesh, Blunt and Glass suggesting invasion of the body and incision to the psyche.

• Working Documents

  Working Documents Exhibition
  January 16–February 6, 1993

  An ARTISTS’ DAY Event with drawings by 50 Vancouver Artists.

• 3 Works

  TERENCE GOWER
  April 4–May 2, 1992

• Subdivisions

  STEPHEN WADDELL
  February 22–March 21, 1992

• Working Documents: Drawings by 50 Vancouver Artists

  Cate Rimmer
  January 16–February 6, 1992

• Hard Weed

  HACHIVI EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS
  November 2–November 30, 1991

  Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds’ works of art are created from concepts and images that present a pulse of forms in action, reflecting the constructive and destructive politics of daily life. The works are based in a broad range of media, namely, drawings, prints, non-objective paintings and textual messages deployed through posters, billboards and digital signs.

• Double Bind

  MICHELLE NORMOYLE
  September 28–October 26, 1991

• Greek Sculpture Fragments

  AARON VAN DYKE
  August 24–September 21, 1991

• Queer Landscape

  KEVIN MADILL
  March 28–April 26, 1991

• Lani Maestro

  LANI MAESTRO
  January 18–February 16, 1991

• Research and Discovery

  PANYA CLARK
  January 18–February 16, 1991

• No Memories In Heaven

  FRANK GAUDET
  November 24–December 22, 1990

• S.I.N.

  MINA TOTINO
  November 24–December 22, 1990

• Island

  MARTHA TOWNSEND
  October 20–November 17, 1990

• Conviction

  SARA LEYDON
  September 14–October 13, 1990

• Magasin/Magazine

  ELLEN RAMSEY
  August 31–September 22, 1990

• Excerpts from Jack London’s Martin Eden

  KAY HIGGINS
  June 1–June 30, 1990

• Roy Kiyooka

  ROY KIYOOKA
  May 8–May 26, 1990

• Reading

  LORNA BROWN
  March 24–April 21, 1990

• Drawings, Editions, Prototypes

  KEN LUM
  February 17–March 17, 1990

• Picture Window

  NANCY SHAW
  January 13–February 10, 1990

• New Work

  KELLY WOOD
  November 18–December 16, 1989

• Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality

  WILL GORLITZ
  October 14–November 11, 1989

• Et in America ego

  EDWARD POITRAS
  September 9–September 30, 1989

• Cruck

  PHILLIP McCRUM
  May 12–June 10, 1989

• Deliberate Transgressions

  KATHY SLADE
  March 31–April 29, 1989

• Pastoral

  ARNI HARALDSSON
  February 11–March 4, 1989

• Dictionary Series

  LAUREL WOODCOCK
  January 14–February 4, 1989

• Passion

  CHRISTINE DAVIS
  December 3–December 24, 1988

• Paintings

  CORINNE CARLSON
  November 4–November 26, 1988

• Relations

  ANNE RAMSDEN
  October 8–October 29, 1988

  Anne Ramsden continues her ongoing exploration into dominant systems of knowledge and structures of power in Western culture and society. Her exploration has been articulated in works that incorporate different mediums and a shifting emphasis while continuing to critique colonialism, the construction of systems of thought, nature, culture, discourses of power and the experience of otherness.

  Ramsden uses the museum as a text with its own system of meaning and enforcement of meaning. Through the choice of objects and their positioning, museums construct a version of history that is accepted as authoritative ands unassailable. The notions of ‘objectivity’ and ‘preciousness’ often associated with the presentation of museum exhibits is broken through Ramsden’s use of a shifting photographic approach or style. In her words: “The images draw on diverse photographic genres in a mostly formal sense: self-portrait shadow, beastial diorama, Romantic landscape, documentary”. The museum does not acknowledge its own subjectivity, however, Ramsden includes in her works evidence of the artist’s activity and tends to more frankly acknowledge them as products of a point of view rather than autonomous objects which present themselves as unassailable fact.

• Behind the Sign

  ROY ARDEN, PETER CULLEY, JEFF DERKSEN, STAN DOUGLAS, DEANNA FERGUSON, SARA LEYDON, DONNA LEISEN, KATHRYN MACLEOD, DOUG MUNDAY, CATE RIMMER, CALVIN WHARTON
  September 10–October 1, 1988

  “Behind the Sign” an exhibition of collaborations between writers and visual artists, will be shown at Artspeak Gallery from September 10 to October 1, 1988. Over the past eight months, five visual artists and five writers have collaborated in pairs to develop works for this exhibition. The list of participants reveals an impressive array of talent from Vancouver’s visual art and writing communities: Stan Douglas and Deanna Ferguson; Roy Arden and Jeff Derksen; Donna Leisen and Calvin Wharton; Doug Munday and Kathryn MacLeod; Sarah Leydon and Peter Culley.

  The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue with texts by Scott Watson, Cate Rimmer, and Miriam Nichols.

• Stirring the Oatmeal

  KATHERINE KORTIKOW
  July 2–July 23, 1988

• Lure

  ALLYSON CLAY
  June 4–June 25, 1988

• West

  ROY ARDEN
  May 7–May 28, 1988

• Chinese Pictures

  HENRY TSANG
  April 9–April 30, 1988

• Burning

  MARK LEWIS
  March 12–April 2, 1988

  The exhibition Burning by Mark Lewis consists of a series of eight colour composite images, each image accompanied by separately framed, colour-coded text. The images are composed of fragments of illustrations from glossy magazines. In Lewis’ words, “The work uses common popular photographic imagery, placing it in narrative configurations in order to suggest and construct certain amorous possibilities. The series attempts to trace and complicate the relationship between images, fantasy and masculine desire, and does so by making critical discourses dirty.”

• Queen of Puddings

  BRENNA GEORGE
  February 13–March 5, 1988

• TV Spots

  STAN DOUGLAS
  January 16–February 6, 1988

• The Patrons

  The Patrons
  June 5–June 29, 1987

• Grunt Or Artspeak

  LORNA BROWN, LAURA LAMB, DOUG MUNDAY, REID SHIER, NANCY SHAW, DEANNA FERGUSON, KATHRYN MACLEOD
  June 5–June 29, 1987

  Curated by Glenn Alteen, Ellen Ramsey and Cate Rimmer

  3 Gallery show curated by respective curators and presented at Charles H. Scott Gallery
  Review: Vanguard Sept/Oct ’87, by Colleen Fee

  Grunt Or Artspeak, an exhibition featuring a selection of work representing three local alternative galleries, Grunt, Or and Artspeak, will be at the Charles H. Scott Gallery from June 5 through 28, 1987. The opening reception will be from 8-10p, Friday evening, June 5, and a reading by members of Artspak/Kootenay School of Writing (K.S.W.) will take place in the Scott Gallery at 3pm Saturday, June 13.

  The guest curators, Glenn Alteen, Ellen Ramsey and Cate Rimmer have included works by sixteen ‘young’ artists. Representing the Grunt will be: Dav MacNab, Gary Ouimet, Bill Rennie, Garry Ross and Hillary Wood; the Or: Daniel Congdon, Sheila Hall, Catherine Jones and Warren Murfitt; and Artspeak: Lorna Brown, Laura Lamb, Doug Munday, Reid Shier, and Nancy Shaw, Deanna Ferguson and Kathryn MacLeod.

  The exhibition will transfert the ‘character’ of these alternative galleries, stiguating them in a more central locations with a much broader audience than they normally reach.

  For the large part, the Artists in Grunt Or Artspeak share a similar academic background having received training from either an art college or university, Their work however, varies greatly in both subject matter and presentation ranging from video and photo-textual work to assemblage and painting.

• She who had scanned the flower of the world

  LAIWAN
  May 2–May 22, 1987

• Vers Us

  BOB SHERRIN
  April 4–April 24, 1987

• Recent Works

  ROBERT LINSLEY
  February 14–March 6, 1987

• Facsimiles

  REID SHIER
  January 17–February 6, 1987

  Fascimiles, a series of five ‘portraits’ by Reid Shier, will be on exhibition at Artspeak Gallery from January 17 to February 6, 1987. In this series, Shier combines enlarged ‘found’ photographs of people before and after plastic surgery with his own drawn facsimiles. In doing so, Shier raises questions about forms of representation, and our subjective perceptions of art and its function.

• One Gold Piece

  MARK GRADY
  November 15–December 5, 1986

• Vancouver Artists’ Bookworks Exhibition

  MARIAN PENNER BANCROFT, NANCY FROHLICK, ROBERT GORE, ARNI HARALDSSON, LAIWAN, DONNA LEISEN, ALEXIS MACDONALD, DOUG MUNDAY, KAREN STANLEY, FANNA YEE
  October 18–November 7, 1986

  From October 18 to November 7 1986, Artspeak Gallery will present the Vancouver Artists’ Bookworks Exhibition. Ten artists will be featured in the exhibition: Marian Penner Bancroft, Nancy Frohlick, Robert Gore, Arni Runar Haraldsson, Laiwan, Donna Leisen, Alexis MacDonald, Doug Munday, Karen Stanley and Fanna Yee.

  An artists’ bookwork can be anything that is in the form of, or takes its form from a book. The diversity of artistic approaches and content matter in contemporary bookworks are clearly in evidence in the Artspeak exhibition. The works range from Doug Munday’s sculpturally altered “found” book to Fanna Yee’s delicate, handmade book of “painterly” photographs.

  The Vancouver Artists’ Bookworks Exhibition is intended to be the first of an annual artists’ bookworks show at Artspeak Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, ARTSPEAK and the Kootenay School of Writing are offering three courses that pertain to the creation of unique bookworks: an artists’ bookworks workshop, a class in papermaking by hand, and one in hand bookbinding.

• The World in Wax

  LAURA LAMB
  September 20–October 10, 1986

• Work Related

  LORNA BROWN, MARGOT LEIGH BUTLER, CAROL WILLIAMS
  August 16–September 5, 1986

  Exhibition by WORKSITE artists.

• Pictures

  DOUG MUNDAY
  July 19–August 8, 1986

  Pictures, an exhibition of paintings and collages by Doug Munday, will be at Artspeak Gallery, Kootenay School of Writing, from July 19 to August 8, 1986.

  In his collages and large-scale paintings, Munday juxtaposes images from varying sources (the media, book text, personal photographs) in such a way that new symbolic relationships are created within the works. Munday is a recent graduate of Emily Carr College of Art and Design.

• David Steele

  DAVID STEELE
  June 21–July 11, 1986

  An exhibition of screen prints and etchings by local artist, David Steele, will be at the ARTSPEAK gallery, Kootenay School of Writing, from June 21 to July 11, 1986.

  The prints included in the exhibition are examples of Steele’s ability to unite the formal concerns of printmaking with challenging and paradoxical content. Influenced by Absurdist literature and theatre, and by films such as Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange, Steele creates double-edged images that are both frightening and humorous.

  While subject matter is important to Steele, the possibilites of experimentation within the printmaking mediums, and the formal concerns such as space, texture and colour, play a significant role in his work.

• Invisible Cities

  DONNA LEISEN
  May 23–June 13, 1986