Lorna Brown is a visual artist, writer, educator and editor, exhibiting her work internationally since 1984. Brown was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004 and is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting projects that consider the varying conditions of public places and public life. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. Brown received an honorary degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2015), the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
Director/Curator of Artspeak 1999–2004.
Kevin Rodgers received in BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design. He has shown at Stride (Calgary), part of the Phoebe Street Project (Toronto), and Galerie Sans Nom (Moncton). His previous work has involved text and image installations using pop culture forms to address romantic obsessions such as stalking and fan clubs.
Derek Sullivan received his BFA from York University in 1999 and is currently doing graduate work at Guelph University. His work, dealing with ubiquitous architectural forms found in suburban landscapes, strip malls and transportation monuments, has been shown at ARTFirm, Red Head Gallery, and YYZ in Toronto.
KEVIN RODGERS, DEREK SULLIVAN
October 20–November 24, 2001
Passengers & Tour Guides is a collaborative installation by two young Toronto artists whose practice spans across the visual and language arts, involving popular culture, architecture and notions of landscape.
Neither Rodgers nor Sullivan have travelled west of the Rockies. This exhibition plays on their status as outsiders, creating a fictional place based on the eastern cliche of the West Coast.
A large scale paper map with drawings of an imagined coastal city, punctuated with text gleaned from a fictional cast of characters, spans the length of the wall. The imagined utopia of a westcoast city is ironically articulated in a style that references tourist maps, literary illustrations of mythical locales, well-known landmarks, sprawling suburbs and awkward architectural renderings. Adjacent to this in the gallery sits an archive comprised of a collection of images, photographs, photocopies, clippings and fragments of texts, furthering the fiction of the site.
Rodgers and Sullivan explore the construct of the West Coast as it is seen from outside, with its attendant romanticization and associations with the ‘frontier’.
Passengers & Tour Guides
Title: Passengers & Tour Guides
Category: Exhibition Catalogue
Artist: Kevin Rodgers, Derek Sullivan
Writers: Lorna Brown
Design: Kathleen Ritter, Kevin Rodgers, Derek Sullivan
Publisher: Artspeak
Year published: 2001
Cover: Paperback
Binding: 5 panel foldout with 6 foldout inserts
Process: Offset
Features: 6 foldout inserts, 7 colour images
Dimensions: 21 x 12 x 1 cm
Weight: 98 g
ISBN: 0-921394-36-5
Price: $4 CDN
Passengers & Tour Guides is a publication undertaken to extend the exhibition by the same name which took place in the fall of 2001.
The exhibition was a collaborative installation by two artists whose practice spans across the visual and language arts, involving popular culture, architecture and notions of landscape. Prior to the exhibition, neither Rodgers nor Sullivan had traveled west of the Rockies and Passengers & Tour Guides played on their status as outsiders, creating a fictional place based on the eastern cliché of the West Coast.
This book project contains a version of Sullivan’s large scale paper map of an imagined coastal city that spanned the length of one wall of the gallery. Postcards picture two views of the installation as well as source materials from an archive of images, photographs, photocopies and clippings. Rodgers’ fragments of texts in hand written note form are gleaned from a fictional cast of characters. Rodgers and Sullivan explore the construct of the West Coast as it is seen from outside, with its attendant romanticization and associations with the ‘frontier’.