Exhibitions

• Available Light

  MICHAEL DREBERT
  March 7–March 14, 2008

  

  

  

  

  

  Michael Drebert’s practice investigates quotidian actions and objects through subtle gestures of hope and sabotage. Potentiality figures strongly in his work: “An answer is not found before something is made. It isn’t even found once something is supposedly finished. The answer to a situation is to begin. I am interested… in the radical potential of performative gestures as an agent for cultural investigation and positive change… identifying unorthodox solutions to seemingly unsolvable issues, such as injustice, hopelessness and dismal democratic standards.”

  Through Drebert’s process, an identification of his subject often points to a consideration of phenomenological existence. This occurs in both his undertakings with objects as well as his so-called actions. For example, in Candle a manufactured candle is melted down, the wick frayed, and then both components recast in a mold of its original form. The wick is embedded in the body and can no longer be lit: the object becomes something new through the process of its own making.

  In early March, Artspeak will publicly disseminate a poster for Drebert’s new work Available Light. The poster states that between the dates of March 7 and March 14, the artist will use the available light in Vancouver to try to start a fire. Following an earlier project in which Drebert offered to “take you to Hope and back,” Available Light functions as a catalyst, one that has positive as well as potentially dangerous aspects. As the exact location, time and scope of the fire the artist will attempt to produce will be unknown, the gesture takes on both a romantic and saboteur-like feel, rife with associations. The potential destruction in Drebert’s gesture is as strong as the potential of hope.

  This performative poster project will take place between March 7–March 14, 2008 in various locations around Vancouver.

  Postscript 34: Jeremy Todd on Available Light (PDF)

• Recent Work

  JACK JEFFREY
  February 1–March 8, 2003

  The demarcation of boundaries and the occupation of space has figured strongly in Jack Jeffrey’s long-standing practice. Portable structures that carry the authoritative presence of agencies and bureaus that regulate our public environment ­ traffic cones, hazard symbols, bollards and stantions ­ are considered for their formal qualities and materials and reread as the result of aesthetic choice, as authored. Jeffrey alters these forms, hybridizing and testing their ability to garner attention, hold space and re-route spectatorship.

  This exhibition primarily focuses on ‘chocks’, the blocks used to ensure that trucks and other heavy vehicles remain stopped. These are objects that arrest movement, that wedge great volume and weight into a stationary position. They have been produced in materials such as plaster, rubber and wood; their scale has been altered and the relationship between the chock and its handle, the promise of portability has been pushed. In Untitled (Chock #3), a pair of pink wedges dangle from the wall on silky rope like the ballet slippers of lost girlhood while another chock creeps up in scale to become a miniature concrete staircase.

  In a counterpoint to the series of ‘full stops’ a new video work, Boundary Road, records the dividing line between the city of Vancouver and the city of Burnaby. From a moving vehicle, the camera records each side of Boundary Road in a north-south, then a south-north direction. Presented on two monitors, this work indicates the arbitrary nature of borderlines as it visually traces similar excursions through residential, commercial, industrial and recreational property. The twenty-minute trips point to the vacant signification of the street name and the eroding function of municipal divisions in the context of amalgamation.

  anarchive 21

  anarchive presents a selection of intriguing objects, catalogues, publications and artists’ books from our archive collection, investigating the relationship between visual art and writing

  Bibliography

  Alpers, Svetlana (1984) The Art of Describing, University of Chicago Press

  Ange, M (1995) Non-Spaces, Verso Bahba, H (1994) The Location of Culture, Routledge

  Batchelor, D. (2000) Chromophobia, Reaktion Books

  Burgin, V. (1997) In/Different Spaces, Univ. of California Press

  Burgin, V. (1996) Some Cities, Reaktion Books Causey, Andrew (1998) Sculpture Since 1945, Univ. of Oxford Press

  Foster, H. (1996) The Return of the Real, M.I.T. Press Fyfe, N.(editor) (1998) Images of the Street, Routledge

  Goodman, Nelson (1978) Ways of Worldmaking, Hackett Publishing Godfrey, Tony (1998) Conceptual Art, Phaidon Press

  Gregory, Derek (1996) Geographical Imaginations, Blackwell Lefebvre, Henri (1996) Writings on Cities, Blackwell

  Lefebvre, Henri (1991) The Production of Space, Blackwell McEvilley, Thomas (1999) Sculpture in the Age of Doubt, Allworth Press

  Miles, M. (1997) Art, Space and the City, Routledge

  Sorkin, Michael(editor) (1992) Variations on a Theme Park, Noonday Press

  Tucker, William (1974) The Language of Sculpture, Thames and Hudson

  Postscript 06: Jeremy Todd on Recent Work (PDF)