Opening Reception: December 7, 8 PM. Show runs to January 26th. Accompanying talk December 11, 7 PM.
The Or Gallery is pleased to present Things’ Matter, a group exhibition curated by CCST candidate Klara Manhal featuring works by Kika Thorne, Heather Passmore, Michael Drebert and Jen Weih.
Accompanying Talk with artist Kika Thorne and political theorist Dr. Laura Janara: December 11th, 7pm.
Things’ Matter is an exhibition of contemporary art that draws on the concept of objecthood and thingness. Each artwork is invested in exploring the affecting nature of its material makeup and challenges the viewer to consider how inanimate things might be thought of as imbued with a vitality or life force. In a series of prints utilizing ink made of plant matter and illustrating theoretical grids of light bending, Kika Thorne explores how plant matter responds to the manipulation of being used as ink to describe its own photosynthetic processes. Heather Passmore makes paintings from raw milk paint, hand made by the artist. Passmore’s interest is in the medicinal and nutritional properties of raw milk and the politics surrounding its designation as an illegal substance in Canada. Jen Weih and Michael Drebert are less oriented toward the material and instead explore the thing’s capacity to seduce and the effective potential that the human desire for things has on human behaviour. In a gestural work, Drebert uses his own body to transport a fisherman’s glass floater from Haida Gwaii back to its place of origin in Kamakura, Japan. While objects aren’t normally thought of as having desires and needs, Drebert assumes the ball’s yearning to return home and uses himself as a carrier and witness in this service. For Thing’s Matter Jen Weih has made an animation using fragmented things pulled from the internet. Weih’s is an experiment in animating and anthropomorphizing these otherwise inanimate things that are the detritus of cultural production, human desire and need.
Kika Thorne is an artist, filmmaker and curator currently working towards her PhD in visual art at York University, Toronto. Kika Thorne received her MFA from the University of Victoria, BC and has exhibited extensively including projects at Berlinale Forum Expanded, Berlin; Murray Guy, New York; The Apartment, Access, Contemporary Art Gallery and Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver; Pleasure Dome, the Power Plant and G Gallery,Toronto, and recently at the Art Gallery of Windsor. Her work was also included in E-Flux Video Rental which toured the globe for five years.
Vancouver based artist Heather Passmore obtained an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2004. For the past ten years she has exhibited extensively in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. She conducts frequent artist talks and has published critical essays, and reviews. Heather has engaged in a number of international artist residencies and local community art projects. Her work was recently acquired by the Vancouver Art Gallery and is held in a number of other private and public collections.
Michael Drebert currently lives and works in Vancouver. He holds a BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and an MFA from The University of Victoria. Michael’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Helen Pitt Gallery, Western Front Gallery, Lobby Gallery, The Contemporary Art Gallery and Blanket Gallery, among others.
Jen Weih is a multi-media artist and sessional instructor at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. Jen graduated with an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 2006 and since has been exhibited nationally and internationally. In 2006 her design was chosen for the Art Underfoot: Sanitary Sewer Cover, public art project.
This exhibition is made possible through support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.
