Internationally acclaimed Vancouver artist Ken Lum, opens the series with a text work entitled I Said No in the window of the Gallery. This text is characteristic of his signage work and is pointed, humorous, and compelling in its address to the public. I Said No exclaims variations on the ability and potential to say “no” as a civic and social right. This work has already generated a wide public response. Lum’s work will be followed in April by a window project by Kathy Slade.
Lorna Brown and Jamie Hilder have created projects for the Audain Gallery website (http://www.audaingallery.ca/coming-soon). Lorna Brown’s AdmIndex uses the textual and visual languages of administration from the websites of the institutions, non-profit organizations, businesses and civic agencies that operate near the Woodward’s development. Through indexing the values expressed in their mission statements and elements used in their logos, AdmIndex traces the relationships between the stated goals and public identities of these organizations and the web of intention that “administers to, and services the Downtown Eastside in distinct ways.”
“Downtown Ambassador” is based on documentation of Hilder’s performance, text, and video work of urban art initiated in Vancouver. For four days last summer, Hilder patrolled tourist areas of Vancouver dressed in a uniform resembling the distinctive garb of the Downtown Ambassadors, a “hospitality force” established by the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association. But rather than providing helpful tourist hints to visitors, or moving homeless people along, Hilder provided the alternative histories of these sites as well as their relationship to the present political and economic climate of Vancouver. This intervention into the imagining of Vancouver vividly brings forward its radical history.
A public symposium, Coming Soon: Negotiating the Expectations of Art in the Public Sphere, will be held at the Audain Gallery on Saturday, January 23.
Miwon Kwon makes a strong link between public art and the production of urban identities: “Despite the discussions of ‘placelessness and crisis’ and the ‘death of cities’, ‘place-making’ remains a central imperative in public arts programming today.”
Building from this concept of art and place-making, “Coming Soon” aims to address questions regarding the different, and often competing, public and artistic expectations of art as a public discourse. Two panel discussions with artists, curators, and cultural critics will open these issues: Lorna Brown (CA), Jamie Hilder (CA), Am Johal (CA, moderator), Makiko Hara (CA), Ken Lum (CA), Bik Van Der Pol (NL), Jeff Derksen (CA, moderator) and others.
Symposium
Time: January 23rd, 3-6pm
Location: 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver
About the Audain Gallery
Named in honour of arts supporter Michael Audain, the Audain Gallery will serve as a vital aspect of the Visual Arts program at SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, particularly in relation to the School’s pedagogical practices, its emphasis on critical thinking, and its engagement with contemporary art practices. The Audain Gallery’s mission is to advance the aesthetic and discursive production and presentation of contemporary visual art in Vancouver and internationally through a program of exhibitions in a flexible project space and in support of engaged pedagogy. The Audain Gallery encourages conceptual and experimental projects that explores how contemporary art is socially and politically formed and formative. The Gallery works in close collaboration with the SFU Visual Arts faculty: Sabine Bitter, Allyson Clay, Judy Radul, Elspeth Pratt, and Jin-Me Yoon.
The Audain Gallery is curated by Sabine Bitter.