Artist talk with Paul Mathieu< /strong>: Friday\, May 11\, 6 to 7pm
Curator’s Tour with Loui s-Alexandre Douesnard-Malo on Saturday\, June 2 at 2pm at Satellit e Gallery. Space is limited. Please RSVP to reserve your place: debbie@satellitegallery.ca or 604-681- 8425.
Elegant Disorder: Perspectives on Porcelain is a group exhibition featuring contemporary artists Paul Mathieu\, Sin-Ying Ho\, She lley Miller\, Elizabeth Zvonar and Brendan Tang. Presented at Satellite Gal lery\, this exhibition engages with the history of porcelain - in particula r\, contemporary expressions of the blue-and-white motifs reminiscent of Ch inese Ming Dynasty wares. With more than a dozen works on display touching on pottery\, sculpture and photography\, this exhibition joins new perspect ives to familiar porcelain motifs.
The works in this exhibition make a compelling statement: porcelain is an active and vivid vehicle for our im agination. It has always been a force in global trade and industrialization since early modern times and\, while its proliferation is a direct consequ ence of Western colonialism\, it is seldom considered within critical discu ssions of that history. This ancient material may seem obsolete within toda y’s technocratic societies\, yet it continues to thrive\, as it has for tho usands of years\, in both applied and creative fields.
Elegant Di sorder seeks to make visible the tensions between local and global ide ntities embedded within porcelain’s materiality and design. It is from this perspective that each artist in the exhibition subverts expectations of cr aft and decorative arts as well as gender roles. Each engages with the ques tions of history\, technology\, sexuality\, colonialism\, and labour that h ave long intersected on porcelain’s elegant surface.
Artist Biogra phies
Sin-Ying Ho’s works are part of her series Meeting Places (2007-2009). Her work reflects the impact of globalization on the cultural borrowings and interactions in an accelerated “global villa ge.” She currently teaches at Queen’s College in New York City.
Shelley Miller’s work is situated in public space s\, in both ephemeral form and impermanent materials. Miller is a Montreal- based artist whose installations\, sculptures and public works have been ex hibited across Canada as well as in India and Brazil. She completed her BFA degree at the Alberta College of Art and Design in Calgary\, and received her MFA from Concordia University in 2001.
Elizabeth Zvonar’s pieces explore the material relationship of porcelain to the body and sexuality. Zvonar holds a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Desi gn. Her work has been extensively exhibited\, most recently in Vancouver at the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Contemporary Art Gallery\, as well as in ternationally.
Brendan Tang’s work enters the dialog ue on contemporary culture\, technology and globalization through a fabrica ted relationship between ceramic tradition and Techno-Pop Art. Most recent ly\, his work has been exhibited at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréa l (as a 2010 Sobey Finalist)\, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Power Plan t.
Elegant Disorder: Perspectives on Porcelain is curated by Louis-Alexandre Douesnard-Malo\, a candidate in the Maste r of Arts program in Critical and Curatorial Studies at the University of B ritish Columbia. For more information please visit: http://www.curatorialstudies.ca
This exhi
bition is made possible with support from the Michael O’Brian Family Founda
tion\, the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies
through the Department of Art History\, Visual Art and Theory\, in collabo
ration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of Br
itish Columbia and Satellite Gallery.
http://www.satellit
egallery.ca