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Hadley + Maxwell

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.

Exhibitions

  • Poste Restante

    JASON DODGE, HADLEY + MAXWELL, ALLISON HRABLUIK, AARON FLINT JAMISON, SAM LEWITT, HEATHER AND IVAN MORISON, AVIGAIL MOSS, PAMELA ROSENKRANZ, DEXTER SINISTER, MATT SHERIDAN SMITH, OSCAR TUAZON
    April 9–May 28, 2011

    <em>Poste Restante</em>, Installation View

    <em>Poste Restante</em>, Installation View

    <em>Poste Restante</em>, Installation View

    <em>Poste Restante</em>

    <em>Poste Restante</em>

    Presenting the work of eleven artists and collaborators, this exhibition refuses to deliver. It offers artworks sent via national postal systems addressed to the gallery as “Poste Restante”. Typically relied upon by travelers and lovers, “Poste Restante” is a request for a post office to hold a letter or package until picked up by its recipient. The works are exhibited as received, in unopened envelopes or parcels, accompanied by any paperwork generated during transit, including customs forms, bills of lading, and pro forma invoices. Delivery is deferred as the packages wait, held by the gallery for a recipient whose identity is unknown.

    Objects are shaped by various encounters with systems of commerce, information, publicity and transportation. Stubbornly resistant to dematerialization, the art object remains local, specific and visible only in certain spaces, while operating in far-flung networks, both physical and immaterial. Guarantors of the exhibition as an exhibition, the art objects in Poste Restante serve as ground for exchanges of immaterial services, writings, and conversations. Through the suspension of delivery we remove the object-in-itself from scrutiny and see in clearer relief the systems the object both calls to life and circulates within.

    The exhibition will travel to further destinations, including both commercial galleries and non-profit spaces, marking out a geographical network of communication and interests analogous to those of the participating artists and organizations. Parallel events, including talks, performances, and publications, will accompany the exhibition at each location.

    Curated by Eric Fredericksen

    Postscript 42: Sophie Brodovitch on Poste Restante (PDF)

  • Heyday

    PETER FREITAG, KRISTI MALAKOFF, SARAH MASSECAR
    April 1–May 6, 2006

    Pulling apart ready-made objects, images and modes of production, the artists in Heyday reveal through deconstruction. Using the methods of decoupage and assemblage, the works in the exhibition share concerns regarding manufacture, currency and coining new languages. Peter Freitag works with extant imagery from European resort brochures. Removing all props from the images, Freitag creates populated vignettes in which the staging of a hotel room or the contrived position of a model are eerily foregrounded. Kristi Malakoff creates exquisitely delicate scenes from paper money. For example, she has reconfigured an idyllic three-dimensional cabin from a $100 bill and created a bird series from $2, $5, $10 and $20 bills. Malakoff’s detailed miniatures shift the currency of money, highlighting the idealized images sanctioned to describe nationhood and history. Sarah Massecar deconstructs and reassembles objects, focusing on the labour in re/making. Massecar has investigated the de/reconstruction of a wallet as well as texts that centre on themes of labour and DIY such as Flaubert’s Bouvard et Pecuchet. The dismantling carried out by these three artists potentially reflects the dismantling of a once-thriving capitalist society. After a heyday or period of greatest success or power there is an inevitable decline. Through their processual and conceptual operations, Freitag, Malakoff and Massecar question the present moment and capital’s shifting role.

    Postscript 20: Lee Henderson on Heyday (PDF)

  • Negotiating Desire

    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

Talks & Events

  • Intangible Economies

    JUAN A. GAITAN, MELANIE GILLIGAN, ANTONIA HIRSCH, HADLEY + MAXWELL, CANDICE HOPKINS, OLAF NICOLAI, MONIKA SZEWCZYK, JAN VERWOERT
    November 18–November 20, 2011

    GreyChurch Collection & Project Space, 3092 Fraser Street, Vancouver

    FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18

    7pm: Antonia Hirsch
    8pm: Hadley+Maxwell

    SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19

    11am: Melanie Gilligan
    12:30pm: Lunch
    1:30pm: Monika Szewczyk
    3pm: Olaf Nicolai
    4:30pm: Clint Burnham (Response)

    SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20

    11am: Juan Gaitán
    12:30pm: Lunch
    1:30pm: Candice Hopkins
    3pm: Jan Verwoert
    4:30pm: Marina Roy (Response)

    Respondents:
    Clint Burnham and Marina Roy

    Artspeak and Fillip present Intangible Economies, a three-day forum that broadens the notion of economy beyond its financial dimension. Initiated by Fillip Associate Editor Antonia Hirsch, the Intangible Economies series focuses on the multifarious forms of exchange fuelled by affect and desire and speculatively investigates the fundamental role these affective transactions play in modes of representation and, accordingly, in cultural production.

    The premise of Intangible Economies is the assumption that personal relationships are produced by economic activity, and that conversely, affect, and in particular desire, generates economic transactions. In the wake of recent global financial crises, it seems critical to interrogate the notion of “value” in a broader sense. Intangible Economies seeks to tackle the difficult task of tracing the role of affect in economic exchanges relative to artistic production, while also enacting the unruly force of such transactions.

    Intangible Economies was initially developed through a series of texts published in Fillip magazine over the past year and will culminate in a book anthology published as part of Fillip’s ongoing Folio Series in 2012.

    The Intangible Economies forum is generously hosted by Jane Irwin and Ross Hill through the GreyChurch Collection & Project Space and made possible with support from the City of Vancouver and the Canada Council for the Arts. Additional support provided by Best Western Hotels.

  • Performance

    HADLEY + MAXWELL
    April 8, 2011

    Hadley + Maxwell performance presented in conjunction with the exhibition Poste Restante.

  • Canadian Art Gallery Hop

    HADLEY + MAXWELL, RACHEL SAWATSKY, PETER FREITAG, KRISTI MALAKOFF, SARAH MASSECAR
    April 21–April 22, 2006

    Canadian Art Gallery Hop: Hosted by the Canadian Art Foundation and sponsored by the Consul General of the United States.

    Friday, April 21st, 2006

    Join fellow art lovers and scenemakers at the annual Gallery Hop kickoff in an original environment created by artists Hadley + Maxwell. “Art and Language” is this year’s theme and ticket sales benefit Artspeak, one of Vancouver’s most influential artist-run centres as it celebrates its 20th anniversary.

    Saturday, April 22nd, 2006: Free Gallery Talks

    Spend the afternoon sampling some of Vancouver’s best galleries. Canadian Art will have the experts on hand across the city to introduce the work on view. Pick up your Hop schedule and map in the Saturday, April 22, edition of the Globe and Mail. Free admission.

    Please join us at Artspeak for the first of the free gallery talks at 1:30 pm. Rachel Sawatsky explores the politics of self-regulation and pleasure in the works of Peter Freitag, Kristi Malakoff, and Sarah Massecar.

  • Farewell & Welcome/Project: Morisot

    HADLEY + MAXWELL, LORNA BROWN
    March 5, 2004

    The Board of Directors of Artspeak invite you to join us in bidding farewell to Lorna Brown and to welcome our new Director/Curator. On this special occasion, a new Artspeak Edition will be launched.

    Project: Morisot, 2004 is a photographic print, edition of ten, signed and numbered by the artists Hadley + Maxwell. In their Décor Series, the artists collaborate with a curator, gallery director, dealer, collector, or other subject of cultural production and dissemination. They perform a temporary redecoration, or installation, in the subject’s home, which is then documented for exhibition. Project: Morisot, a collaboration with Lorna Brown, is the most recent project in this series.

  • 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.

Publications

  • Negotiating Desire

    ND front
    ND back

    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.


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