Overflow was a flexible, changing installation of glass bottles that responded to the architecture, socio-geographic location and history of Centre A’s Downtown Eastside space. It developed during the months before the opening, with the gallery participating in one of the more visible unofficial economies of the neighbourhood — the recuperation and redemption of bottles from across the city, through an arrangement with the neighbouring bottle depot, United We Can. The installation itself was a flexible mass of bottles arranged on the concrete floor and around the brick pillars and office furnishings of the vast space, lit primarily by the natural light from the wall of windows overlooking Hastings Street. With their labels removed, the bottles appeared both as abstract tokens for human presence and as a sparkling, seemingly liquid volume. All configurations retained a tension between the now-pristine bottles and the fact that they represented not only a humble yet economically valuable raw material that is a precious local resource and a subject of street-level expertise, but also alcoholism — one of the neighbourhood’s scourges. It is possible that the attractiveness and apparent value of the materials, displayed in all their uselessness in the somewhat refined gallery space, made uneasy position as a possible contributor to the gentrification of the neighbourhood.
For more information: https://germainekoh.com/works/overflow