Woven Work From Near Here
Emily Hermant and T’ai Smith, Woven Work from Near Here. Vancouver, BC: grunt gallery, 2018
Inspired by traditional weaving practices—including Indigenous methods for weaving blankets and baskets alongside structures and patterns that have come from elsewhere—the exhibition presents recent experiments by artists who live and work near here. Juxtaposing materials and methods, the works in the show stretch what it means to be a woven textile.
The curators understand being “near here” as a spatial and temporal condition that defines the region currently known as the Pacific Northwest—a mesh of overlapping Indigenous and Settler cultures, legal-political systems, and territories. To live, work, and weave near here is to contend daily with the legacy of colonial settlement and expropriation. Marked by the dislocation of Indigenous weaving traditions between the early decades of the 20th century and the 1980s—decades after the Potlatch ban in Canada was lifted in 1951—the region has seen the re-emergence of this conceptual, functional, aesthetic and spiritual form. At once capacious and precise, new developments in weaving signal the potential of this practice to realign protocols and values.
Included in the show are works by artists Debra Sparrow or θəliχʷəlʷət, Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, Hank Bull, Jovencio de la Paz, Kerri Reid, Matt Browning, Melvin Williams, and Merritt Johnson.
For more information: https://grunt.ca/exhibitions/woven-work-from-near-here/
Fringing the Cube
Known for her expansive multidisciplinary approach to art making Vancouver-based Dana Claxton, who is Hunkpapa Lakota (Sioux), has investigated notions of Indigenous identity, beauty, gender and the body, as well as broader social and political issues through a practice which encompasses photography, film, video and performance.
Rooted in contemporary art strategies, her practice critiques the representations of Indigenous people that circulate in art, literature and popular culture in general. In doing so, Claxton regularly combines Lakota traditions with “Western” influences, using a powerful and emotive “mix, meld and mash” approach to address the oppressive legacies of colonialism and to articulate Indigenous world views, histories and spirituality.
This timely catalogue is the first monograph to examine the full breadth and scope of Claxton’s practice. It is extensively illustrated and includes essays by Claxton’s colleague Jaleh Mansoor, Associate Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art & Theory at the University of British Columbia; Monika Kin Gagnon, Professor in the Communications Department at Concordia University, who has followed Claxton’s work for 25 years; Olivia Michiko Gagnon, a New York–based scholar and doctoral student in Performance Studies; and Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art at the Vancouver Art Gallery.
This exhibition is presented by the Vancouver Art Gallery: October 27, 2018 – February 3, 2019.
Essays by Grant Arnold, Monika Kin Gagnon, Olivia Michiko Gagnon and Jaleh Mansoor
For more information: https://shop.vanartgallery.bc.ca/products/dana-claxton-fringing-the-cube
An Exhibition Never Opened
Gu Xiong: Migrations (https://ahva.ubc.ca/publications/guxiong-migrations/) was originally produced to accompany a forty-five-year retrospective organized by the Galaxy Museum of Contemporary Art (Chongqing, China, June 10–August 11, 2017) that was shut down before it officially opened and the catalogues were seized. The publication An Exhibition Never Opened documents these events and includes new writings.
For more information: http://interiormigrations.com/gu-xiong-migrations/
Tom Burrows
Scott Watson and Ian Wallace, Tom Burrows. Vancouver, BC: Figure 1 Publishing, 2018
Book information:
Tom Burrows, and the exhibition that preceded the book, presents work by the artist from his early career to the present. The book is a timely refocusing of attention on an artist who has made an immense contribution to the development of art in Vancouver, not only as an artist but as an educator and activist as well. Burrows first rose to prominence in the late-1960s and was included in several exhibitions at the UBC Fine Arts Library, an institution that was seminal in encouraging Vancouver’s growing and now vibrant art community. In 1975 he received a United Nations commission to document squatters communities in Europe, Africa and Asia, a work that is now in the Belkin’s collection. Burrows’ work, which demonstrates an interest in process and new materials, has encompassed a number of disciplines including sculpture, early performance art, video, painting and iconic hand-built houses on the Maplewood Mudflats and Hornby Island. Currently most well known for his innovative monochromatic cast polymer resin “paintings/sculptures” produced during the last forty-five years, the book examines the full breadth of his career with works from the Belkin’s permanent collection as the basis with other works from the artist, collectors and public institutions.
Burrows has had solo exhibitions in London, Rome, Tokyo, Berlin, New York, Edinburgh and across Canada. His work is included in private, corporate and public collections in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
For more information: https://www.figure1publishing.com/book/tom-burrows/?_ga=2.189039275.100248760.1684277138-2076941012.1683746629
For more information about the exhibition: https://belkin.ubc.ca/exhibitions/tom-burrows/
Graphic Culture, Illustration, and Artistic Enterprise in Paris, 1830-1848
Nineteenth-century Paris is often celebrated as the capital of modernity. However, this story is about cultural producers who were among the first to popularize and profit from that idea. Graphic Culture investigates the graphic artists and publishers who positioned themselves as connoisseurs of Parisian modernity in order to market new print publications that would amplify their cultural authority while distributing their impressions to a broad public.
Jillian Lerner’s exploration of print culture illuminates the changing conditions of vision and social history in July Monarchy Paris. Analyzing a variety of caricatures, fashion plates, celebrity portraits, city guides, and advertising posters from the 1830s and 1840s, she shows how quotidian print imagery began to transform the material and symbolic dimensions of metropolitan life. The author’s interdisciplinary approach situates the careers and visual strategies of illustrators such as Paul Gavarni and Achille Devéria in a broader context of urban entertainments and social practices; it brings to light a rich terrain of artistic collaboration and commercial experimentation that linked the worlds of art, literature, fashion, publicity, and the theatre.
A timely historical meditation on the emergence of a commercial visual culture that prefigured our own, Graphic Culture traces the promotional power of artistic celebrities and the crucial perceptual and social transformations generated by new media.
For more information: https://www.mqup.ca/graphic-culture-products-9780773554559.php