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Reminder to check out my Process Journal recently updated. Scroll way down.

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week 10 - Winsor Art Projects

Guest speaker: Jennifer Winsor

Today we heard from Jennifer Winsor, on her experiences as a gallery owner in Vancouver, and on her current business, Winsor Art Projects. Winsor hails from the banking industry. Armed with a strong business background and an eye for opportunity, she arrived in Vancouver a decade ago and proceeded to establish Winsor Gallery. Currently she heads the Winsor Art Project, which, from the description on our course website, is an international project-based entity producing art exhibitions around the world.

Among her featured artists:

Andy Dixon, Lumbermen 2018, 2018 acrylic and oil pastel on canvas, 76x96.

Patric Hughes, Pop Out, 2017, 66 x 175 x 20cm

Alan Wood, collage, circa 1991, photo cred: John Bishop

Atilla Richard Lukacs, Boy With Green Arms, 1999, colour silkscreen with oil  and tar, 163 x 130 cm.

Dana Claxton, Paint Up #2, 2009, dye coupler printed canvas,125.7 x 125.7 cm.

During the engaging hour long talk, Winsor referred to Andy Dixon as “a bright young thing’ and spoke of the ‘commercialization of Native culture’ among other things.

She positions her gallery business as a ‘credible element known to show meaningful works that are socially and critically relevant’ and that have the ability to ‘generate a revenue stream.’

Among the nuggets of business wisdom were more than a few names dropped, such as Rick Erikson, the ‘kingpin of patrons to the arts’ as she referred to him. I see Winsor operating in the similar way to recently retired gallery owner, Diane Farris--drawn to large, bold, audacious and provocative works. After further research, I am feeling critical of the fact she only featured one female artist among the many artists she spoke of, and off the many artists she works with only two are female. I would have liked to ask her why this is, but for now...

Ben Skinner, No Future Plans, acrylic, drywall mud over foam,

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WEEK 9 - Dr.Curtis Collins

Guest speaker:

Director and Chief Curator of the  Audain Art Museum,Dr. Curtis Collins

The following notes are excerpted from the presentation by Dr.Collins.

We were fortunate to have guest speaker Dr.Curtis Collins today, speak to us about the gallery system in Canada. His presentation began with an introduction to the Canadian art scene which is defined, first and foremost, by the National Gallery of Canada. Canada’s mandate on arts from the late19th to early 20th century was primarily through the male /British or colonial lens and determined within context of ‘the male gaze.’ However, a shift has begun since the 1980s under the directorship of Shirley Thompson, that has seen the embracing of a different aesthetic.

Dr. Collins went on to speak about  highlights from his working career while identifying issues of relevance to us as emerging artists.

The Beaverbrook Gallery, steeped in a history similar to the National Gallery of Canada, hired Collins to bring their image into current relevancy as a contemporary gallery for the arts. Almost immediately, this renegade curator installed a provocative painting by Attila Richard Lukacs across from Salvador Dali’s Santiago El Grande which shook up the establishment to say the least. This action speaks to a style of curating that is edgy, risk-taking, pushing up against an established colonial/British-old-guard perception of what is good or acceptable art. Lukacs painting was denounced as nothing more than “full anal flaunt“ and suddenly there was controversy in Canada of the likes that only contemporary art can produce. By this measure, Dr.Collins was indeed fulfilling his job description, and  to the terror of the directors of the Beaverbrook Gallery...be careful what you wish for.

Penticton Art Gallery was another example Collins referenced, with a similar story of butting heads with the establishment during his employment, this time over a sculpture by local sculpture artist, Michael Hermesh.

photo from article written by John Schreiner

The penis was declared inappropriate for a public sculpture, was covered with a box-like object, was cataclysmic in the Canadian media, was uncovered, and in true Penticton fashion the offending penis was removed in the dead of night. End of discussion? I am from the Penticton region and was curios about the fate of the statue which is no longer on the round-a-bout. The Red Rooster Winery bought this work and has it displayed on their property.

Collins advice to emerging artists:

Get to know your target institution by frequent visits and volunteer work and to ‘tailor your proposal to the institution.’ For example, Western Front in Vancouver has a certain mandate to present video and sound installation as well as performative. If you are a painter, this institution would not be the right choice for your work and would be a waste of time to send a proposal. Collins also advises to talk to curators so that you can appropriately edit the content of your proposal package, maintain consistancy of the work presented and be more selective on where you choose to show.

He also encourages us to look at other options to show work outside of the traditional gallery or artist run centers. Many college and university campuses have galleries that welcome local and national artists. And there are mandates within institutions that are also to be considered, for example, The Esker Foundation which is a privately funded gallery in Calgary that ‘supports the production of groundbreaking new work.’ There are many options out there to be explored as ways to have your art seen. The examples provided by Collins will be very helpful to me after I leave school.

Collins’s curatorial position at the Audain Art Museum in Whistler BC is an 

photo cred: Liane Hung

example of the collaboration that happens between the curator and the administrator or owner, in this case Michael Audain. Collins is both Director & Curator, a dual job description that I image would work well with someone of his boundary pushing nature. He spoke of the consistent interactions between him and Mr.Audain, which his dual role would likely require. Collins is dedicated to a personal mission statement of his curatorial position developed over a long career in this industry. “Read art history, be up on contexts of art/strategies of art, provide space for artists to work, be flexible and have latitude.” His intelligent analysis of what it takes to be successful as a curator will be useful to me whether I pursue this position or as an artist. He graciously and generously imparted such wisdom, gained through both success and failure, which will remain with me as I go forth and art.

Many thanks to Dr.Curtis Collins for an informative and entertaining hour of story telling from the world of a curator pushing colonial boundaries of the Canadian Art world. 

Ancestral Modern: Australian Aboriginal Art from the Kaplan & Levi Collection            October 6 – January 28, 2019 (photo from the Audain Art Museum website)

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WEEK 7 - Guest speaker Hank Bull

HP Radio Show, Hank Bull and Patrick Ready, 1977

This week we had the pleasure a talk from visiting artist and curator, Hank Bull (past Director of Western Front Gallery, co-founder of Centre A and founding member of the HP Radio Show.)

The following is a video production from the Western Front website, of a pilot produced by The HP Radio Show featuring Hank Bull and Patrick Ready in 1978. It is an example of Bull’s early work. Please take the time to view.

    https://front.bc.ca/events/the-hp-video-show/

Back to our guest speaker: Hank Bull, was well received. His insights to the art of curation and the routes into creativity and art work was much appreciated.

Hank Bull, 2017

Hank demonstrates the concept of art as play in works such as the HP Sedan Bottle, and his geometric acrylic box paintings. His perspective is a distillation of the 70s era of art, new directions and refreshing ideas that speak to an ‘incubator environment,’ as Bull states, ideas that live at the crossroads between artist and curator.

HP Sedan Bottle, 1975

Bull introduces several of his influences,noted for my further exploration--two in particular, Dr.Faustroll and Robert Fillieu. The book by Dr.Faustroll, Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician was described by Bull as being highly influential him and many of his peers as emerging artists in 1970s, an era overshadowed by decades of a hierarchical model that defined the artist in a way that did not resonate with this new generation. He explained that it was an era that was difficult for a young emerging artist to work within because as he says, ‘everything had already been done.’ The direction he and others in the 70s took then was to veer off and just ‘do their own thing’ since there were limited opportunities within the establishments of the art world at that time. There are many reasons for this phenomena worthy of further analysis which is beyond the scope of this post.

To continue, Bull also spoke of the works and writings of fellow artist Robert Fillieu, who also had a lasting impact on Bull’s work. Fillieu was already active in the ’70s at Western Front during Bull’s formative ‘emerging artist’ stage of his career. He quotes Fillieu:  “the most important work you can do as an artist is support the work of another artist,” and encourages us all to maintain this connected attitude toward each other within the arts community.

I drew the conclusion that this ground swell of shift-in-attitude in the 70s, within which Bull began his career, became the foundation for change which reflects the art world today is a more inclusive, global, less hierarchical model that embraces diverse art practices and provides opportunity to emerging artists like never before. Just a small example of this is the use of social media like Instagram to curate ones art and perform to a global audience. As I listened, my thoughts turned to my explorations of Deleuze and Guattari, and the analogies they draw to the rhizome model of human inter-activity. The connection was real.

Bull provided a brief overview of the history of his involvement in the Vancouver art scene and spoke a bit about Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art). Its important to note that although he was a founding member, his presentation of this long-running exhibition space was almost entirely focused on the artists and the exhibits. He reminded us to keep these conversations going through mindful collaboration with curators and artists, as well as an awareness of the grassroots efforts that take hold and reshape the institutions of art.

Bulls art practice includes the use of materials that are available for free for the taking from the streets and back alleys such as cardboard and pallets, wonderful materials, gifts from a consumer driven society (its the least they can do) that artists can use in infinite ways to express creativity.

Hank Bull Palindrome Photographic light-jet print 31.5" x 39.4" Courtesy of Franc Gallery

Bull elevates the humble cardboard box with his brilliant piece ‘Palindrome’ and provides critique or synopsis that creates identity within the viewers mind. To quote Bull  “the box is a painting, useful for exploring ideas, exists in the space between painting and photography, a sculpture that can be flattened and mailed, then reassembled in a new location...or it can be laid flat and stored under the bed.” He created the art object within the discussion around it, as well as the work itself.

Hank Bull: Connexion January 20-April 6, 2017 Curated by Joni Low (Vancouver) and Pan Wendt (Confederation Centre Art Gallery) Organized and circulated by the Confederation Centre Art Gallery

On curating: Bull begins with the etymology of the word curate, to mean ‘caring for art’. His approach in curation is to break down the hierarchies and stresses the importance of collaboration. He is described as an ‘arts organizer.’

He champions the ‘dumb ideas’ and encourages us to celebrate our dumb-ass ideas as the breeding ground from which the best art springs forth. Many excellent examples from his rich history of performative art and interdisciplinary art practice back up his truth, including the work HP Sedan.

My question asked during Q&A was ‘what magazines or other publications does he read“

Most recently he was reading :

Mousse - Italian contemporary art magazine Yishu - Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art

His talk was concluded with further thoughts on the role of ‘curator’ operating in a system of a type of ‘battle of ideas,’  and stresses that the curator is in a power position, holding real agency to push art that reflects the dramatic questions within our current ideologies. And Bull, consistent with his message, pushes his own big question “God has been dying for three thousand years, that’s what gods do, die...we are living in a post-god world. We are living in a world of ideological warfare.”

Bull subscribes to a global consciousness in his approach to curating. He speaks again of a non-hierarchical approach to curation which has evolved to a type of un-managed collaboration on a global scale. Here he references a fax machine as his primary tool for participating in a recent exhibition in communist China about the subject of ‘money, ground-breaking on many levels. For examples of other unmanaged collaborations that use technology to collaborate, he references two recent events: Idle No More and The Umbrella Revolution

And last but not least:

Art’s Birthday, January 17, since 1,000,000 BCE

http://www.artsbirthday.net/

Many thanks to Hank Bull for speaking to our class, Intro to Curatorial Studies, at KPU Surrey

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WEEK 6 - Field Study: grunt gallery and Equinox Gallery

Jovencio de la Paz, As in the summer, so too the winter, 2017.

Merritt Johnson, Fetish (object/object/object), 2018.

grunt gallery

Today we are exploring the history of artist-run centers and involvement in art and activism, beginning with a visit to grunt gallery.

Works from the grunt gallery exhibition include] Woven Work From Near Here -Curated by Emily Hermant and T’ai Smith 

grunt gallery located at 116-350 E.2nd Ave Vancouver, BC

The booklet is very useful source of information. It listed ‘East Van Graphics’ as the printer and I checked out their website with thought to the future for promotional material for my own art practice.

The curators bios were filled with excellent information as well. I noted that T’ai Smith is currently working on a book titled ‘Fashion After Capital.” From the title I guess it is exploring the age-old debate “is fashion art/is art fashion” and noted that the question is relevant enough today as ever.

The communications directory conducted the tour for our group. The focus is on artists and art that, in her words, are ‘on the bleeding edge of things.’ To exhibit work that is not necessarily ‘part of the silo’s of main stream art.’

grunt gallery is an artist run gallery since ‘84, non-profit, ownership of the property, inclusion. They send out public call for artists (and curators) approximately three times/year. They work 1-1.5 years out for future programing.

The space, exhibiting fourteen works by various artists, seemed to provide space for each work to be appreciated. I feel this was possible to achieve in a relatively small gallery space because of the strong theme of woven materials whether they be metal, textile or 2 dimensional and rendered in paint, the pieces lead the viewer around the room in a comfortable way. These works were not sold through the gallery so the absence of a commercial angle also felt like ‘breathing space’ where I could appreciate the greater narrative contained within each piece.

Equinox Gallery

#110 - 525 Great Northern Way Vancouver, BC 

Photo: https://www.equinoxgallery.com/exhibitions/gordon-smith-through-the-trees/art/91421

Gordon Smith, Through The Trees, 2018

In contrast to grunt gallery, the Equinox Gallery is a privately owned commercial gallery with art works displayed for sale. There is no public or private funding involved. The gallery exists purely as a commercial enterprise and carries ‘inventory’ with a focus of exhibiting to sell art to collectors directly or via designers and art consultants. Work is carried on consignment with a percentage of the selling price paid to the artists (typically 40% to the artist and 60% to the gallery.)

Artists are acquired (the stable of artists) mainly through referrals, which begins as a process of getting to know the artist, to see how serious the artist is, and whether they will continue to produce for a long time--in other words are they a viable commodity. For example, artist Marten Elder was first noticed at Capture Festival and then studied before being brought on.

The gallery also represent estates such as for Jack Shadbolts and Harold Town, in order to dispose of estate collections.

Our tour or talk was presented by Deidre, a sales manager of the gallery. 

The gallery has no particular mandate and cannot be compared to an artist run gallery in this respect. The collector’s interests are the main concern and the market is tested for each product. In other words, art works (artists) are chosen based on what might sell, what work is interesting within the public realm. (public realm meaning public institutions)

Of interest to note: there is a connection to Emily Carr College of Art and Design in that several of the professors and some alumni are represented by Equinox Gallery.

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Process Journal Exhibition proposal & Public Exhibition/Screening

November 11                                  

To date our group has met every Thursday since my last update here. We have been very efficient in agreeing on a short list and then narrowing in down even further. Our focus on the absurd as represented through video and spoken work has helped to keep us moving forward.  This sample below is from my sketch book notes for the assignment. Besides curating the artists work, we also had to pay attention to the time lengths, and other details such as rolling credits at the end. Some of the videos did not have rolling credits and as we did not want to disrupt a careful order, we decided to inform the audience so that they understood the potential for one video to start without a standard ending to the previous one. The research conducted, revealed the reason for lack of credits is that some of these videos are of a performance art work, and the videos are the afterlife or record of these works.

In the week prior to the screening, I emailed our list to Casey at VIVO to be formatted into an MP4 file for download. Her reply was that she could not get approval from all the artists and that the budget of $400 was too low to include all 12 videos. We were asked to scale it back to 8 videos. We debated and finally had a working solution but in the meantime Casey informed us she had 8 artist approvals and that was going to be what we were getting. 2 of the videos cut by Casey were also on our cut list. The other 2 were disappointing news that we lost them.

We also lost 12 minutes from our program so we decided to scrap the intermission since we felt that 62 minutes was not long enough to break up and still maintain a flow to the screening.

The file will be sent to me via email on Tuesday. We have the room booked and I booked a technician from the KPU IT department to meet me there for assistance with the equipment.

Leah has the popcorn machine under control. Eric is presenting the introduction. Winnie sent an invite to Winston and he said he will try to be there.

We are going to have a short meeting to think about possible questions we may receive at the end of the screening. 

October 23

Group meeting on October 17 at KPU was successful. We developed our ideas while working through the curatorial project guideline provided. Some questions were identified and we had time to ask questions following the conclusion of guest speaker presentation by Hank Bull.

Questions were to clarify  what the key/core objects were and also whether there was a need for visual or other illustrations.

We set up our notes on google docs where it could be accessed and edited by any member of the group, and we divided up the written component and the presentation component. Everyone is involved equally. There is a good group dynamic at this stage.

Most importantly we have decided on at least half of our content and will do further research this coming week to source out one or two longer features that tie in with our theme “Skewing The Familiar.”

Sept. 25

A visit to VIVO to meet with Casey Wei:

In preparation for this meeting, I researched using the ‘subject search’ using the catalogue on the VIVO website. Options to choose various subjects are presented in alphabetical order. Eventually my search became focused on poetry + film + art, or a combination of these parameters.

When I arrived at VIVO, Casey had prepared Vimeo links with passwords so that I could view the individual videos. This list and further discussions with her were followed up by some excellent recommendations by her for further exploration of this general theme of poetry.

October 10

Meeting with some of our group members, myself included, to discuss the project using moodle information & proposal reminder.

Meeting update: While Leah and Eric were at VIVO conducting their research, Winnie and I had viewed several films and had a 1 hr meeting to compare notes. We chose two films from Leah’s short list and two films from my short list

The Dying Swan, Survey of Empathy, Proverbium, and I Am Into Your Fire. We felt drawn to these films and found they had themes of thwarted success and wrong approaches that were portrayed in numerous ways. Piano music and other audible sounds were a strong element, poetry or some metered form of dialogue overlaid the images. 2 black and white films and two vibrant color films, male and female voice represented. We are planning a group meeting next week where we can present our ind. findings and interests and collaborate on setting a theme and dividing up the project work load.

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WEEK 5-Surrey Art Gallery

Surrey Art Galley Field Study, 13750 88 Ave, Surrey Curator, Jordan Strom Much like the trip to the VAG, this was yet another perspective on the role of a curator within an art gallery. Surrey Art Gallery is the second largest public art museum in the Metro Vancouver region with a focus on local artists and interactive arts as well as textile arts.

Curator of Exhibitions and Collections for Surrey Art Gallery, Jordon Strom begins with an over view of how the budget operates to support the mandate of the Surrey Art Gallery: Budget is a consideration in many aspects such as future growth of the permanent collection of textiles & fibers work and is important to note the SAG has maintained strong focus on textile artists.

In this sense it is one of the responsibilities of the gallery curator to prepare proposals for the Acquisition Committee

Strom points out that textile works are just beginning to be seen as contemporary. In past decades fabric art works have been an area marginalized. Specific example of this is artist Eva Kuchinsky who has been active since the 1980s and is now featured with her work, Neptunes Ear, (date)  (Important to note that this is a possible future acquisition for SAGs permanent collection) Unfortunately I was unable to find any further information through internet searches in regards to this artist.

There were several works present by local First Nations artist Roxanne Charles, including one piece I have viewed in a previous exhibit at the SAG, a collaboration work by Roxanne Chalrles, Feather Anouse, Harley Chappell, Leanne Wells, Samantha Wells, and Joan Williams, titled ŚKE,KÁL/ Microphone.

Strom provided an overview of SAGs approach to individual artists: generally they acquire only 2-3 works of any one artist due to facility size restrictions. An artist may be featured or part of a collection of present works within a loose chronological sequence-Or as part of a theme that leans toward the landscape for example.

Textile works exhibited included a work by Ruth Scheuing, MetAMORPHOSeS #11 SPideR, He goes on to say he is curating “shows that bring in the ‘rough edges’ and not necessarily a strict adherence to textiles. This is evident in the work by Roxanne Charles, Surrey Urban Sprawl, 2014, in which she combines various building materials such as vinyl siding, interwoven with traditional cedar bark materials.

I particularly enjoyed the exhibit featuring Kathy Slade: This is a chord. This is another. The Pom Pom was well positioned in the space, with plenty of ‘breathing room’ available to the viewer, accented with the only other red color in the room, the pressed vinyl record on the wall slightly offset behind it. Beautiful presentation of minimalism through the ‘feminine’ aesthetic of textile. Strom used the word ‘Duchampian’ to comment on Slade’s work with embroidered ‘set lists’ and ‘tabs’ which are a quick route to learning to play a song on the guitar. The exhibition was a juxtaposition of time--the time consuming hand work of embroidery with the quick shortcut to learning a chord on a guitar without the need to learn to read music— I see elements of Jasper John’s work with the flag and bullseye in Slade’s work.

The curating process for any given exhibit at the SAG typically consists of a 2-3 year lead time to decide on such factors as an ‘adjacent artist, incorporate participatory and interactivity.’ The mandate requires flexibility, Strom explains, choosing work that is the most critical as opposed to the ‘nicest.’ The use of endowment funds was explained to be quite specific in it’s attached requests, for example an endowment fund may require to be used to collect paintings from the 1980s, or with a focus on agriculture. These acquisitions often lead to interesting exhibits exploring areas of local community that would otherwise not be seen or heard locally. This is one way in which exhibits come into production but there are many others such as: research, timing/themes, and submissions by artists and other community groups.

A final comment from Strom to the art of curating “Let the artist shape your exhibition.”

Cora Li-Leger, Lineage, 2018

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WEEK 4 Guest speaker: Dana Claxton

Vancouver artist Dana Claxton is best known for her film, performance art and photography. Through her work, she explores beauty, the socio-political and ‘explores cultural ethnicity with the gallery space and artist run centers.’ Her hour-long lecture was accompanied by visual slide projection. Our lecture today lecture was held in the new gallery space at KPU. Appropriately titled Collaboration, Collectives and Curating, gave an engaging view of her work from the perspective of curatorial practice.

Claxton references the Exhibition ‘Beginning With The 70s’ to give example of the emergence of curatorial practices become more popular. She points out that “making art requires research.”

Several works, including Muckamuck Strike, Sew In, etc are used to draw a roadmap for curating an exhibition. Points to keep in mind are:

-budget (always a consideration)

-how to activate the gallery space

-activate the installation (with actual bodies)

In the case of her exhibition ‘Sew In’, activating the gallery space happens when the sewing group arrives and the tables are set up to begin sewing traditional ribbon skirts.

She speaks about ‘disrupting the gallery space (the white cube!) in a way that the activated space becomes part 2 of the exhibit. Considerations may include waivers to be signed and safety/liability measures.

Claxton covers essential and practical details of gallery exhibits, which a curator must take into consideration besides the narrative within the exhibited works.

She says curating is storytelling and that a curator must ask themselves what exactly is the story to be told

Lessons for a curator include the relationship to the artist, in the way a curator must fully support the artist’s vision, while maintaining the correct balance to the exhibit. She supports this point with examples of over curation, such as VAG Mash Up and Ian Wallace exhibition which contained too much stuff and redundancies, and under curation, such as my first submission of my mini gallery maquette which did not contain enough continuity of theme.

She went on to say, curating is about fluidity, some public art becoming problematic such as Emily Carrr’s “Indian Village’. Debate is necessary but change is not always the best outcome.

New evolution of curating is that there is a move toward getting away from a linear format of exhibiting works, a shift in thematics such as ‘insider’ vs ‘outsider.’

She emphasizes the importance of critical intent, meaning what is your curatorial intent. It helps to use a sketch-up of the exhibit.

Other tips would be to borrow from other collection, develop a catalogue as an art book. And to pay particular attention to the breathing spaces in a curated exhibition where the viewer can refresh their senses for the next experience.

I appreciated how Dana Claxton tailored the lecture specifically to the view point of the curatorial process. The information was completely relevant to our course objectives. It was a memorable lecture supported by a body of work of enormous insight and value to our current social changes as we move through reconciliation, though she never addressed this directly.

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WEEK 3 -  Field Study: Vancouver Art Gallery Tour & SFU Audain Gallery

This trip to the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG) was completely different from my previous experiences. It was presented from a curatorial perspective, a behind-the-scenes look at how an exhibit is developed and installed.

Director and Chief Curator, Bruce Grenville met with our group and gave a talk about curation practices using a current exhibit titled ‘Cabin Fever’ as an example. ‘Cabin Fever’ was analyzed from a curatorial perspective to explain how an exhibit reflects the mandate of a gallery. I came to understand that the curator responds to the gallery mandate while also creating a narrative or dialogue around something tangible, in this case the humble log cabin. That the VAG has a mandate to document local art history comes as no revelation but it was interesting to note their mandate goes further to 'look beyond to the international art world.’ As noted by Mr.Grenville, they ‘put the local in a global context.’ He sums up simply by saying “curators are responsible for responding to the gallery mandate.”

I found it very interesting to hear him speak about the curation process around this exhibit. “Cabin Fever,” he describes, was a series of steps. The first step was to group certain concepts of ‘cabin.’ Three parts emerged and a simple chronology was created from the concepts of ‘Shelter’, ‘Utopia’ and ‘Porn’ (as in Cabin Porn, by contemporary definition, anything which has become an object of consumption, of any form, for sensory pleasure. (Yes I just made that up myself!)

I noted the exhibition aesthetic to be more of a museum than gallery show. This became a jumping off point for further discussion on the differences. Museum displays are more often objects which are part of a material culture of manufactured and/or mass produced objects and materials. Galleries are primarily focused on the examination of these objects as visual art within a social context.

For example the exhibit Cabin Fever features a replica of Henry David Thoreau’s cabin and the cabin where the Unibomber lived--’one utopian, the other distopian.’ The curation process includes an examination of how the cabin manifests itself in popular culture by exploring painted works and sculptures with the theme ‘cabin.’ This questioning approach to ‘cabin’ moves far beyond a museum where the items would simply be represented in displayed as a collection without the development of a narrative of juxtaposition of ideologies which the objects come to signify.

Through this analysis and examples, I have gained an appreciation of the role of the curator--to engage the viewer in a thought provoking experience of art works. It is partly this experience of context that attracts attendees to galleries. Where as museums would be more appealing in a sense of the historic and factual presentation of objects themselves as priority.

The tour concluded and I went to the upper levels to see the other exhibits. Kevin Schmidt: We Are the Robots was super cool.

DIY concept is pushed in the overall aesthetic of speakers rendered in plywood.

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WEEK 2 - VIVO Field Study

Field study at VIVO

From the VIVO website:

The Satellite Video Exchange Society (also known as Video In Studios, now VIVO, incorporated 1973) was the first video exchange library, one of the earliest international video centres and remains one of Canada’s longest operating artist-run centres.

Today, VIVO’s mandate is to directly support artists and independent community-based producers to develop, exchange, and disseminate their skills in a supportive environment through accessible services and programs.

Access to the material necessities for quality production through affordable equipment rentals, editing 
facilities, software, and production space.

A broad range of skill development and education opportunities that encourage the exploration of 
technology and aesthetics within a critical, artistic framework.

Public programming: events, exhibitions, residencies, co-productions, and critical forums.

International distribution, work exchange, and media art preservation which supports the aspirations and 
livelihood of artists.

Western Canada’s largest public reference library and archive of media art, independent video, and 
related publications, documents, audio recordings, and photographs.                    

                                   _______________________________    

Our tour began with an introduction and talk from Winston Xin (Winston is a "Video maker, curator, writer, arts administrator. Malaysia-born, Toronto-bred, Vancouver based Xin has been a stalwart of both Out on Screen and Vancouver’s Video cooperative Video In, as well as a collaborator with local queer video makers." source: Kira Wu email)

Karen Knights (Developement) and Julia Aoki (General Manager) were on hand to lead us through VIVO’s resources. A video program was presented which included several short videos and a longer production by our very own Kira Wu.“Empty Ocrchestra,” Kira Wu, 1997, 13:30

This was an unexpected but well received surprise. I’m always interested in the life our instructors live outside of the classroom in regards to their art practices. The video was a good example of a program that is anchored by a longer film, in this case Wu’s film was presented at the end of the program, preceded by several short videos. This is a matter of curatorial decisions, as the long video can also be shown at the beginning of a program depending on many factors such as content, audience, venue for example.

The video program was a concrete example for our upcoming group project which will focus on identifying a theme and curating several videos into a program which will support and convey this theme.

This was my first introduction to VIVO, which I had never heard of before. It is important to know how to access the types of support and services that VIVO can offer, and to know they are available to me once I leave Kwantlen upon graduation next spring.

I am looking forward to meeting with Winston as our group moves forward with our project plans and ideas around our video program.

On a final note, part of the tour took us through the equipment room which gave new meaning to the word ‘obsolescent.’ Outdated equipment was still available and used primarily for archival work. The racks held equipment that took me back to the early 80′s when my husband and I owned Video Alley in Kerrisdale and the equipment looked like this following photo!

Many thanks to the friendly and welcoming people at VIVO. It was a great learning day to find out about the operations at VIVO.

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Sept 6, 2018

Hi, I’m Angela Eszter Wells, BFA-2019, BA-2019. Welcome to my blog for the course ‘Introduction to Curatorial Studies’ with instructor Kira Wu at KPU, Surrey Campus.

To see my work please follow me on Instagram @genuinescribble