Artspeak
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Michael Christie is the author of The Beggar’s Garden, a collection of linked stories that won the 2011 Vancouver Book Award, and was a finalist for the Rogers Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize. He holds an MFA from the University of British Columbia, and his fiction has been twice nominated for the Journey Prize, Canada’s top short story honour. Currently, he lives in Thunder Bay, where he teaches Creative Writing at Lakehead University, and is at work on a novel about a woman living with agoraphobia.
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A curator and writer based in San Francisco, where she is Curator and Head of Programs at the CCA Wattis Institute. Nguyen was formerly Director/Curator of Artspeak from 2011-2016. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and periodicals nationally and internationally, with recent texts in catalogues published by Pied-à-Terre (San Francisco), Gluck 50/Mousse (Milan), and the Herning Museum of Art (Denmark). Nguyen is the recipient of the 2015 Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Emerging Curators in Contemporary Canadian Art and the 2016 Joan Lowndes Award from the Canada Council for the Arts for excellence in critical and curatorial writing.
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Originally from Quebec City, Roy-Bois currently resides in Vancouver. He received his BFA from Université Laval in Quebec (1996) and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montréal (2001). His installations have been shown across Canada and internationally. Solo exhibitions include Polarizer, Southern Alberta Art Gallery (2009), Let us, then, be up an doing…, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2008); Divertissements, Point éphémère, Paris (2007); Improbable and ridiculous, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2006); J’ai entendu un bruit, je me suis sauvé, Or Gallery, Vancouver (2003). He is currently artist-in-residence at Langara College, Vancouver.
Exhibitions
I had a great trip despite a brutal feeling of cognitive dissonance
SAMUEL ROY-BOIS
February 4–March 17, 2012
OBJECTS REMAIN SPELLBOUND IN THE MERCIFUL SEPARATION OF SPACE, NO MATERIAL PART CAN COMMONLY SHARE ITS SPACE WITH ANOTHER, AND A REAL UNITY OF DIVERSE ELEMENTS DOES NOT EXIST IN SPACE.
—Georg Simmel
THE FORM OF A CITY CHANGES, ALAS, MORE RAPIDLY THAN A MAN’S HEART.
—Baudelaire
Artspeak is pleased to present I had a great trip despite a brutal feeling of cognitive dissonance, a new solo exhibition by Vancouver-based artist Samuel Roy-Bois. Reconfiguring and partitioning the gallery, the exhibition demonstrates the artist’s continued interest in the deconstruction of space. An enclosed living area—inhabited by a stranger free of charge for the duration of the exhibition—will be made private with no public access, its occupant given full authority over its usage. Paired with the built environment is a voice recording that furthers the gallery’s transformation into an intimate place of residence.
Through concealment, the installation portrays a character with a double identity—the individual that we hear and try to visualize and the one that we will never see and may occasionally hear. By juxtaposing the viewer and the occupant’s respective experiences, Roy-Bois creates an uncanny moment in which they imagine each other, creating a new imagined reality. In addition to bringing forward notions of estrangement, space retribution, and struggles for power, the exhibition contributes to an ongoing discussion in Vancouver about how land in the city is divided, occupied, and used.
Talks & Events
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SAMUEL ROY-BOIS
February 25, 2012World Art Centre , 2nd Floor
SFU Woodwards, 149 West Hastings Street
4PMArtspeak is pleased to present a talk by Vancouver-based artist Samuel Roy-Bois, presented in conjunction with his solo exhibition, I had a great trip despite a brutal feeling of cognitive dissonance.