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  • Allora & Calzadilla

    Collaborating since 1995, Jennifer Allora (b. 1974, Philadelphia) and Guillermo Calzadilla (b. 1971, Havana) live and work in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Major exhibitions include the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago; Kunsthalle Zurich; Dallas Museum of Art; SMAK Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, Gent; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; the 51st Venice Biennial; the 2006 Whitney Biennial; and Torino Triennale Tremusei, Turin. Allora & Calzadilla were short listed for the Guggenheim Museum’s Hugo Boss Prize (2006) and have receive a DAAD fellowship for 2008. They are represented by Lisson Gallery, London, and Gladstone Gallery, New York.

  • Roy Arden

    Roy Arden (b. 1957 in Vancouver) lives in Vancouver; the primary subject of his photographs. Arden graduated from Emily Carr College of Art and Design with a bachelor in Photography and Interdisciplinary Studies in 1982. He has been exhibiting since the late 1970s and in the past 5 years has produced digital video works. Recent solo exhibitions include Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, England and Galerie Tanit, Munich, with forthcoming ones at the Charles H. Scott Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery. His work has been included in significant groups exhibitions such as the Busan Biennale 2004, Kunstmuseum Basel, 2004, Intertidal: Vancouver Art and Artists, Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerpen, 2006 and the major photography exhibition organized in conjunction with the 2005 reopening of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

  • Michael Barnholden

    Vancouver writer Michael Barnholden is the author of Gabriel Dumont Speaks (Talon Books 1993), On The Ropes (Coach House Books 1997) and Reading the Riot Act: A Brief History of Riots in Vancouver (Anvil Press 2005). He is currently the managing editor of West Coast Line.

  • Yael Bartana

    Yael Bartana (b. 1970 in Afula, Israel) currently lives and works in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. She received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Jerusalem, and her MFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York, before attending the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam in 2001. Her work has been exhibited at Documenta 12, Kassel; The Power Plant, Toronto; P. S. 1. Contemporary Art Center, New York; Kunstverein, Hamburg; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; 27th São Paulo Biennial; 31st International Film Festival, Rotterdam; and Stedelijk van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. Bartana’s work is represented by Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, and Sommer Contemporary Art Gallery, Tel Aviv.

  • Trevor Boddy

  • Cao Fei

    Beijing-based artist Cao Fei was one of four to be included in the Chinese Pavilion at the 52nd International Venice Biennale. In 2006, along with being awarded the Young Artist’s Prize from the Chinese Contemporary Art Awards, Cao Fei had solo exhibitions at Zhu Qizhan Art Museum, Shanghai; the Museum Het Domein, Sittard; and Lombard-Fried Project, New York. Her work has been shown in numerous group exhibitions on contemporary Chinese art, including China Welcomes You… at the Kunsthaus Graz Am Landesmuseum Joanneum, Graz, and The Real Thing: Contemporary Art from China, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool.

  • Germaine Koh

    Germaine Koh is a visual artist whose work is concerned with the significance of everyday activity, familiar objects, and common places. Her work has been presented De Appel (Amsterdam), BALTIC (Newcastle), The British Museum, the Liverpool Biennial, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, Künstlerhaus Bethanien (Berlin), le Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Seoul Museum of Art, Artspace (Sydney), The Power Plant (Toronto), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Martin-Gropius-Bau (Berlin), and la Biennale de Montréal. Formerly Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, she is also an independent curator, partner in the independent record label weewerk, and a sessional lecturer at Emily Carr Institute. Koh is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

  • Gonzalo Lebrija

    Gonzalo Lebrija (b. 1972 in Guadalajara, Mexico) lives and works in Guadalajara. He received his BFA at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO), Guadalajara. He is co-founder and director of Oficina para Proyectos de Arte (OPA), a non-profit exhibition space in Guadalajara. Lebrija’s work has been shown at the Museo Nacional Centro Reina Sofía, Madrid; Cervantes Institute, New York; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; the Americas Society, New York; San Diego Art Museum, San Diego; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; Jumex, Mexico City; Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Santiago; National Art Museum of China, Beijing; La Panaderia, Mexico City; and inSite05, San Diego and Tijuana. His work is represented by I-20 Gallery, New York.

  • Melanie O’Brian

    Director/Curator of Artspeak 2004–2010.

  • Helga Pakasaar

    Helga Pakasaar is Curator at Presentation House Gallery, and previously was curator at the Art Gallery of Windsor and the Walter Phillips Gallery. Recent projects include Moodyville and Simon Starling & Lazlo Moholy-Nagy. She has produced many exhibitions and publications on contemporary art including solo exhibitions on Eija-Liisa Ahtila, Judith Barry, Stan Douglas, Jochen Gerz, Judy Radul, Colette Urban and Ian Wallace. She is currently co-curating a series of exhibitions and projects for the Walter Phillips Gallery about the history of the visual arts at the Banff Centre.

  • Walid Raad/The Atlas Group

    In 1989 the media artist Walid Raad established The Atlas Group, a fictional archive project with the aim to research and document the contemporary history of Lebanon. Raad has found and produced audio, visual and literary documents that interpret this tragic history. The Atlas Group’s public manifestations include books, exhibitions and  lectures that are carefully staged performances by Raad in the role of informant and scholar. In this guise of an imaginary foundation, his project has slipped into and through art systems in ways that undermine and challenge notions of the autonomy of art, and pose questions about visuality itself. His wider aim is to dismantle the authority of historical discourse, and archives as depositories of collective memory, by activating personal recollection through documentary material.

  • Jayce Salloum

    While Jayce Salloum (b. 1958 in Kelowna, British Columbia) has spent a significant amount of time in Beirut, he currently resides in Vancouver, where he works as an artist, social activist, and curator. Recent solo exhibitions of his work include location/dis-location(s), MKG127, Toronto and Untitled, 1999-2005: everything and nothing and other works from the ongoing project, Museum Villa Stuck, Munich. Salloum’s work has also been included in the 8th Sharjah Biennial; Coding: Decoding, Nikolaj Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center; and the 15th Biennale of Sydney.

  • Seripop

    Montreal-based Seripop—Chloe Lum and Yannick Desranleau—have been designing and producing screen-printed posters, art prints, handbills, independent music packaging, and T-shirts for more than a dozen years. A solo exhibition of Seripop’s screen-printed poster works titled Seripop: Poster Art Extraordinaire [DIY or DIE!] was recently shown at Kapok, Hong Kong. Recent work has been included in We’re Rollin’, They’re Hatin!, a group exhibition that took place at Co-Prosperity Sphere in Chicago and explored the role of fantasy and role playing in contemporary art. Seripop was awarded a Juno Award for CD/DVD Artwork Design of the Year for MSTRKRFT’s 2006 album The Looks.

  • Jordan Strom

  • Ron Terada

    Ron Terada (b. 1969, Vancouver) lives and works in Vancouver. Terada studied at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and the University of British Columbia. Often using signage and advertising as art forms, Terada has been included in group and solo exhibitions across North America and internationally with presentations at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst Antwerpen, Antwerp; the Shanghai Biennial; the Prague Biennial; and the Melbourne International Biennial; amongst others. Ron Terada is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.

  • Michael Turner

    Michael Turner is an award-winning author of fiction, criticism, and song. As the Ellen and Warren Tallman Simon Fraser University Writer-in Residence, he curated “to show, to give, to make it be there”: Expanded Literary Practices in Vancouver, 1954-1969 at the SFU Gallery (Burnaby). His most recent work, 8×10, was nominated for the 2010 Ethel Wilson BC Book Prize for Fiction.

  • Annabel Vaughan

    Annabel Vaughan is an intern architect working in Vancouver. She is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at the University of British Columbia. Her practice works to understand how Vancouver has come to be the city it is, where it is headed in the future, and how the culture of art and architecture will affect the outcome. She has co-written articles for Artspeak, West Coast Line, and Vancouver Matters (Vancouver: Blueimprint, 2008) with Rob Brownie.

  • Neil Wedman

    Neil Wedman (b. 1954 in Vancouver) is a Vancouver artist and educator. His work has been exhibited across Canada including at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Or Gallery, Vancouver; and the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. His book Burlesk – A Novel was published by Advance Editions/Arsenal Pulp in 1999. His work is represented by Equinox Gallery, Vancouver.

Exhibitions

Territory

JENNIFER ALLORA AND GUILLERMO CALZADILLA, ROY ARDEN, THE ATLAS GROUP / WALID RAAD, MICHAEL BARNHOLDEN, YAEL BARTANA, CAO FEI, GERMAINE KOH, GONZALO LEBRIJA, SERIPOP, JAYCE SALLOUM, RON TERADA, ANNABEL VAUGHAN, NEIL WEDMAN
June 10–August 6, 2006

This exhibition is curated by Melanie O’Brian and Helga Pakasaar, and organized by Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery.

Please check www.presentationhousegallery.org for more details about Territory.

Territory is a visual art project concerned with mapping urban experience, civic space and contested terrains. The project includes installations at Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery as well as in public sites around Vancouver, guided walks, lectures, a film series, and publication.

The works in Territory involve navigating real and imagined territories – geographic, political, economic and social. The exhibition expands on earlier articulations of the notion of derive, or wandering, as a way to investigate urban environments. Cities are understood as essentially unreadable cartographies, fragmented and unstable. This project points to the spatial collisions of urban life, such as those resulting from rapid urban development and increased privitization of public space. The works in Territory reveal how cultural mythologies, both local and global, are scripted into built environments and determine human interactions. The social impact of the often invisible boundaries delineated by political conflict, gentrification, security, and communication systems becomes apparent as the artists call attention to the intersections of psychological, social and physical space.

Five artworks have been commissioned for the public domain: photographic billboards by Roy Arden, roaming mobile signboards by Ron Terada, soil transplants by Germaine Koh, photographs by Jayce Salloum dispersed through various distribution systems, and silkscreens postered around the city by Seripop. Encountered by chance and through uncanny recognition, these ephemeral works provoke tensions between public and private space. Distinctions between private acts and communal life are seen as porous. These artists temporarily occupy and lay claim to civic terrain and transient street life.

Presentation House Gallery will be exhibiting the work of five artists that offers poetic interpretations of the conditions that impact global cities. Footage of an industrial port in China’s Pearl River Delta by Puerto-Rican based artists, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, offers a meditation on global economies. Yael Bartana, an Israeli artist living in Amsterdam, manipulates images of street demonstrations by Israeli and Palestinian youth. The documentary material about post-civil war Beirut by the Atlas Group / Walid Raad, working out of New York and Lebanon, questions the representation of urban ruination and political violence. Gonzalo Lebrija, from Guadalajara, Mexico, looks at the potential violence of collective behaviour in street culture. Cao Fei, one of China’s most notable young artists, tracks the daily routines of a milkman in Guangzhou where she lives. Artspeak will present two of her media works that are concerned with urban fantasies and cultural mythologies.

Territory also involves mapping the city through guided walks from literary, visual art and architectural perspectives that will bring to light some of its hidden narratives. Michael Barnholden will animate the events of two downtown riots, Neil Wedman will interpret the history of sidewalks, and Annabel Vaughan will trace threads of Vancouver’s original urban grid along Carrall Street. The guided walks are on Saturdays at 2pm. Film series at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street Wednesday, July 19, Thursday, July 20, screenings begin at 7 pm.

On July 19 at 7 pm, Cao Fei will discuss her artwork, followed by a screening of her film, “Father”.

Talks & Events

  • Territory Book Launch

    ALLORA & CALZADILLA, ROY ARDEN, THE ATLAS GROUP/WALID RAAD, YAEL BARTANA, CAO FEI, GERMAINE KOH, GONZALO LEBRIJA, JAYCE SALLOUM, SERIPOP, RON TERADA
    May 30, 2009

    Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery are pleased to announce the launch of TERRITORY on Saturday, May 30, 7 pm at Presentation House Gallery, 333 Chesterfield Avenue, North Vancouver BC.

    This publication documents the Artspeak/Presentation House Gallery co-production TERRITORY, a visual art project concerned with urban experience and civic space that included gallery installations, public projects around the city, walking tours, a boat tour and film screenings.

    Featured Artists:

    Allora & Calzadilla, Roy Arden, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Yael Bartana, Cao Fei, Germaine Koh, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jayce Salloum, Seripop, Ron Terada.

    Texts by Michael Barnholden, Germaine Koh, Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar, Jordan Strom, Michael Turner, Annabel Vaughan and Neil Wedman.

    64 pages, Designed by Studio:Blackwell

    Special launch price: $18, regular price: $22

    Please join us for bubbly, readings, music and famous ham.

    This event is in conjunction with the launch of the Spring 2009 issue of The Capilano Review “Moodyville”, a co-production with Presentation House Gallery.

  • Territory Film Series

    CAO FEI
    July 19–July 20, 2006

    Film series at Vancity Theatre, 1181 Seymour Street

    Wednesday, July 19, Thursday, July 20, screenings begin at 7 pm.

    On July 19 at 7 pm, Cao Fei will discuss her artwork, followed by a screening of her film, “Father”.

    Cao Fei (b. 1978 in Guangzhou, China) lives in Guangzhou where she produces films, photography and theatrical works. Her artwork has been included in recent exhibitions on contemporary Chinese art, such as “Between Past and Future: New photography and Video from China” and “Follow Me!:Contemporary Chinese Art at the Threshold of the Millennium” She has participated in major international exhibitions such as the Third Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale, Fifth Shanghai Biennial and is in the forthcoming Sydney Biennale.

  • Talk

    TREVOR BODDY
    June 16, 2006

    “Vancouverism, Civic Space, and Dubai’s Very False Creek,” opening lecture at Presentation House Gallery by Trevor Boddy, Vancouver architecture / culture critic and urbanist. Presented in conjunction with the exhibition, Territory.

Publications

  • Territory

    Territory front
    Territory spine
    Territory back

    Title: Territory
    Category: Catalogue
    Artists: Allora & Calzadilla, Roy Arden, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Yael Bartana, Cao Fei, Germaine Koh, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jayce Salloum, Seripop, Ron Terada
    Writers: Michael Barnholden, Germaine Koh, Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar, Jordan Strom, Michael Turner, Annabel Vaughan, Neil Wedman
    Editor: Melanie O’Brian, Helga Pakasaar
    Design: Studio:Blackwell, Toronto
    Publisher: Artspeak, Presentation House Gallery
    Printer: Generation Printing, Vancouver
    Year published: 2009
    Pages: 64pp
    Cover: Paperback
    Binding: Perfect Bound
    Process: Offset
    Features: 36 colour images
    Dimensions: 25.5 x 20.5 x 0.5 cm
    Weight: 285 g
    ISBN: 978-0-021394-58-7
    Price: $5 CDN

    This publication documents the Artspeak/Presentation House Gallery co-production TERRITORY, a visual art project concerned with urban experience and civic space that included gallery installations, public projects around the city, walking tours, a boat tour and film screenings.


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