Gallery Gachet 2001 Exhibition Schedule
1. Jan 19 - Feb 17 Daphne Blanco-Sarlay Walking Towards the House of Dreams
The multi-media exhibition by Dafne Blanco-Sarlay investigates the nature of introspection as a tool for recognizing individuality and uncovering human connectedness. A large central installation engages the viewer in contemplating important questions such as "How can we create political and social awareness in a contemporary climate of persistent attitudes of indifference and hopelessness?" She explores non-traditional materials such as wood, metal and clay within the context of two-dimensional collage, in order to engage the senses in a visceral experience. Through entering into the many-layered images created by the artist, the viewer also re-encounters the essence of the female body and powerful symbols that catch the viewer's eye, transporting them to their own vital center. Her art delivers a message that is universal - not even culture, background and language become obstacles.
Dafne Blanco-Sarlay's paintings function as a narration of the journey towards introspection, the inner dimension, and the abyss of dreams. She has studied Fine Arts at the National University of Mexico and recently participated in the exhibition "Le Coeur sur la Main - 12 Latin American Artists in Vancouver" at the Alliance Francaise Gallery, Vancouver.
2. Feb 23 - March 24 Diane Jacobs Objects of Menace
This exhibition explores the artist's concepts of fear - in particular, how fear influences the shape of her life through subtle or overwhelming means. It investigates the creative mechanisms she utilizes in order to discover, acknowledge and manipulate fear's shifting forms. The work describes the process of weeding negative effects down to a manageable size and acceptable conformation. The work also examines the terrifying possibility of body and mind turning against itself. Through the identification of symbols of loss and rediscovery, the artist seeks to maintain, reclaim and develop aspects of the self in the face of adversity and possible destruction. In the outcome, the realization is reached that fear is a constant, though sometimes useful companion.
3. March 30 - April 21 David McMullen, Chaotica
Jadea Cooke and
Bruce Ray
The exhibition will convey a sense of randomness, which will be created through the visual communication of dream imagery, thought, or the fluidity of life set in motion. Chaos Theorists suggest, "The only true order to the Universe is disorder. What we call organized nature is actually ultimate disorder." In particular, the artists will address dream imagery set in motion within the psyche.
Bruce Ray is an Outsider Artist who is mainly self-taught, but who has also studied at the Art Studios, a Vancouver Studio with instruction for consumer/survivors. His work identifies with the human psyche, and contains the duality of nightmare/dream-like qualities. He blends imagery and context together in a manner, which relates to Freudian and Jungian imagery.
David McMullen is an Outsider Artist who is self-taught. He has recently completed commissions for Aids Vancouver, and describes his imagery as whimsical. His work has an underlying quality of hidden meaning both through the use of symbols and text. He relays "order within disorder" in his work.
Jadea Cooke is a self-taught artist working within the Outsider Art genre. Her work is contemporary, informed by the energy and theories of abstract expressionism and the techniques of impressionism. The artist works with opposites, incorporating feelings of chaos and serenity, ideas of beauty and repulsion, and conditions of health and illness. For the artist, the act of creation is a visceral experience, one that involves the totality of the body and the integration of the body and movement in the work. The artist states, "I have been down the spiral pike of life and my work is an exploration of the polarity of life - the light and darkness, the states of sanity and the insanity and the transcendence representing the powerful state of my psyche…" Jadea Cooke touches on this transcendence in her work, relaying the healing path in dealing with the circumstances of her life. During the troubled period of her life, the artist began creating art with limited resources, using materials such as chalk, liquid eyeliner, nail enamel, white out, and whatever else she could get her hands on! Currently, she uses materials such as acrylic paint, oils, and India ink. She creates textured, mixed media pieces built within the context of her early experiences to expand upon her current visions.
4. April 11 - April 27 An Exhibition of Art by Members Connecting Edges
Of Gallery Gachet at the Roundhouse
Curated by Karen Stanley
The Connecting Edges Exhibition considers the details of how adjacent communities braid together and fray apart. One aim of this group show is to untangle preconceptions and to weave communities of diverse people together constructively, through artistic expression. The exhibition will make visible the nature of Gallery Gachet's collective structure, and profiles local artists' creative processes and their work as they explore issues of community. Special Events at the Roundhouse include artist Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa creating a pre-exhibition installation, Community Walks: Between Here and There from Gachet to the Roundhouse - the Roundhouse to Gachet with Curator Karen Stanley, on-site work by artist Solomon Fagan, an Outsider Art Forum, and Movement in Performance Art: A Workshop facilitated by Dean Fogal, Founder and Artistic Co-Director of TooBa Physical Theatre Centre
5. April 27 - May 5 A Series of Works by Polish Motifs
Artists of Polish Descent
Curated by Tamara Szymanska
A series of recent work of artists of Polish descent that explores issues of culture & identity. Artists participating in this exhibition live in BC but originate from Poland. The works exhibited show a strong respect for tradition, techniques, craftsmanship, and contemporary thematic structure. Themes portray marks of presence that are made by individuals in their environment.
6. May 11 - June 2 Community Exhibition Disclosures 8
Curated by
Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa
The Exhibition Divine Servitude brings together works of art that address representations of servitude in popular culture. Such images are found in news media, sitcoms, children's stories, popular products and through advertising. The connection of self-sacrifice to a synthetic higher cause (such as a social class, race, or romantic ideal) has served to justify the iconography of servitude. Icons in this exhibition have been derived from personal experiences of servitude (minimum-wage jobs or other types of suffering), or historical examples such as slavery and the domestic oppression of women in the 1950's.
This exhibition is part of the Mayworks Festival 2001. The Mayworks Festival is inspired by world-wide efforts against injustice and exploitation, and is a celebration of working-class solidarity.
Disclosures is an annual exhibition related to the concerns and visibility of consumer/survivors.
7. June 8 - June 30 Carmen Bizet and Parallel Visions
Laurie Marshall
This exhibition is concerned with visual interpretations of music from the perspective of two member artists (Laurie Marshall - who is a self-taught artist located within the Outsider Art movement and Carmen Bizet-Irigoyen, a Mexican-Canadian artist currently studying at Emily Carr). A visual environment will be created from the perspective of these two different artists that will resonate their positioning and play with the differences in their visual aesthetic and individual, symbolic language. The artist will engage in research concerning the historical and cultural aspects of the varying music genres, and this research will be reflected in the work. Each artist will have a music tape with the same recordings of music from different genres, and will paint, sculpt, print, draw and create box art inspired by this music. The exhibition space will be constructed in an effort to replicate a casual, living environment where viewers will be encouraged to look, listen, talk, dream, and transcend the everyday existence. Music from the chosen genres will be an integral part of this environment.
A section of the exhibition will contain a rhythmic arrangement of large, abstract paintings and smaller, figurative works. The exhibition will also include a series of box art pieces.
8. July 1 - July 28 Gallery Closed Summer Break
9. August 3 - Sept 1 Group - members Last Stop Vancouver
Curated by Solomon Fagan
The proposed project is a group exhibition around the concept of "de-centeredness" (geographical, cultural, and personal)-and is intended to explore the way these levels of the sense of identity and belonging interact with each other. This will be done both by individual artists in their own interpretations of this idea through their works (all types of media are invited to submit work) as well as through an overall installation-type approach to curating: the overall gallery space will be considered as a sort of 3D topography, and the submitted works within it as close-ups of this geography-and road signs along the way-- filtered through the personal worlds of the human psyche. Like being "inside"--or surrounded by--a map of someone's mind. Maps of Vancouver along with 19th century phrenological charts will be selectively hand-copied and superimposed on a giant scale so as to line the entire interior gallery space, and provide the 3D metaphorical "map" in which submitted works will be situated, symbolically placing the viewer in the "center" of this metaphorical space.
The exhibition title "Last Stop Vancouver" is intended to reflect the sense of being on a cultural fringe, and put forward the idea that such a cultural state has its advantages as well as its disadvantages. The intention is both to acknowledge the myth of Vancouver's "world-class" status, and to put forward the idea that there exists other advantages that result from being culturally peripheral, in a state of infancy, from being thrown on one's own intellectual and creative resources unbound by the hegemony of the socio-political "center". This involves Vancouver's representation in the media as "world-class" because it has attracted international chains and mega-stores (e.g. The Hard Rock Café, Planet Hollywood, etc.)-as a debunking of the illusion of corporate culture. Hence "Last Stop Vancouver" will be about exposing the vacuity of media fantasies and providing the alternative of personal creation-with art as a metaphor for individual "identity" and "world" creation.
The "target" audience is those living in Vancouver (artists or not) who are unable to "buy into" the media-projected idea of Vancouver as a cultural hub, but who still believe that it is an interesting place and would like to work to create their own culture. This also involves the sense that "culture" is not only something prescribed from on high through a canon of famous artists and their works, but is also something personal and individual and the responsibility of us all.
This exhibition is to be curated by member artist Solomon Fagan. Solomon Fagan holds a BFA in studio art from the University of California, Santa Cruz, and has been creating and exhibiting his art in the US and Canada for over a decade. The show will feature Gallery Gachet members and outside artists through an open call for submissions. The curator is currently seeking works and involvement by artists from outside the gallery.
10. Sept. 7 - Sept 29 Laura Babak & Irene Loughlin Take A Pill
Laura Babak's installation work is inspired by the work of Lucy Gunning, and by her personal history as a horse trainer. In the past, Laura Babak has explored the seeming phenomenology of female fascination with horses that exists as an almost hypnotic identification in youth. She will recreate stable aspects of such an environment in a closed-off section of the gallery with a small entry for the viewer. In a soundscape placed within the context of the installation, she will include the non-visual aspects of a "stall walker" that is, a horse that walks around a stall compulsively and repetitively, to such an extreme that it is irritating and unsettling for a human viewer. Babak juxtaposes this natural behaviour with the imposed historical and contemporary definitions of female hysteria, which may be natural and "justifiable" reactions to a pervading contemporary climate of sexism and oppression or a nervous system response to prescribed medication (for example, "hysterical" reactions to Valium commonly prescribed in the 1950's, or the hyperactivity currently ascribed to Prozac). The soundscape will also explore the similarities between the human voice and animal behaviour, including crying, laughing, whinnying, naying - all elements that point to definitions of "hysteria". In a video aspect, the artist will follow the horse in its repetitive stall walking to convey the sense of time that is a determinant of hysterical behaviour. The installation/video work will be titled "Atravet" after a horse tranquilizer commonly used to sedate horses when their behaviour becomes irritating or uncontrollable from a human perspective. Irene Loughlin will explore issues of sedation and experiences of "hysterical reactions" as well as the transcendence of current power structures. The woman as artist, the solitary soul, the mentally unbalanced creatress, will also be explored in this work as it relates to contemporary and historical views of women. Physical explorations of the "hysterical" female alcoholic/drug user will be explored taken from the artist's own history and the environment where the gallery is located. Abject art will be explored beyond common interpretations of abjection as aesthetic rather than as related to female history. An installation will include the partial construction of a 1970's wood paneling basement room (another private domain made public) and smearing abject art techniques. The 1970's wood paneling piece will also relate to and contrast Laura Babak's natural wood/ stall walker installation. In relation to Laura Babak's work, Irene Loughlin will expand on work concerning images of falling by hanging from architecture in the area of Gallery Gachet, exploring phenomena of vertigo and escape from perceived threat within architectural structures. These sequences of hanging from local architecture will be videotaped and projected in the installation. (Some scenarios of justified "female hysteria" in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver where the gallery is located, Canada's most economically-deprived area, have included women falling from the fifth floor of their single residency occupancy unit -SRO and standing, grasping the Balmoral hotel sign five stories up because she feared for her life by staying in the apartment). Some other common contemporary phenomena of "female hysteria" have also included "cocaine psychosis" where women and
men obsessively check through the debris on the street looking for drugs. This hanging/falling/checking-influenced work will also be taken into a barn setting, where the artist will be videotaped hanging and physically joining through movement with barn structures. This work will explore the historical phenomena of "female hysteria" as a construct/cover up for privatized experiences of abuse, both physical, mental, and sexual, and the resulting psychological definitions of women's physical manifestations of these scenarios. The myth of female hysteria that functions as a covering up for power constructs of male domination and abuse will be exploded through making public private domains of terror and sublimation in a historical context.
11. Sept 30 - Oct 6 Gallery closed Autumn Break
12. Oct 12 - Nov 3 Performance Art Series Live at the End
Part of Vancouver Performance Art of the Century
Biennale 2001
Curated by Irene Loughlin &
Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa
Fluid Sexuality will explore sexuality that lives beyond constructions of gender, sexual orientation descriptions (gay, queer, bi, straight), role-playing (top, bottom, S & M, vanilla sex etc.) and societal definitions of the body, beauty and desire. This exhibition will explore the defiance of societal meaning dictating how individuals should choose sexual partners, and deconstructs the signifiers that lead to the perception of an individual's sexuality and their partner's sexuality. Issues addressed in Fluid Sexuality may explore the effect that the physical and social environment has on the way persons define sexuality for themselves. For example, persons may be closeted about their preferences and definitions for themselves due to an environment of violence. Definitions of sexuality need not be only limited to the body, but in sexuality as it exists in less tangible forms - independent of human presence or interaction. (i.e. the presence of sexuality in organic or non-organic forms.)
Youth Participation and Young Audiences:
Fluid Sexuality will focus on the curatorial mentoring of young, emerging performance artist Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa (who received a Quest Grant in the Interdisciplinary/Performance Art Category) will be mentored by Alvin Erasga Tolentino and Bryan Mulvihill, as well as the curator of last year's Performance Art Series - Echoes and Labyrinths by member artist Irene Loughlin. Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa produced the curatorial writing and concept for Fluid Sexuality, and will be mentored in the production of a catalogue and critical writing for the series. Youth participation and young audiences will be focused on in the Cabaret aspect and the live interactive element of the Downtown Eastside Tea Party, with the assistance and mentoring of artist Bryan Mulvihill.
13. Nov 10 - Dec 1 Ken Phibbs Functional Art
Ken Phibbs specializes in functional metal artistry, creating light sculptures, boxes, stands, shelving etc. His primary focus is on light sculptures, which are designed for adjustment of the light source, adjustable moving parts and replacement of the electrical components such as bulbs, diffusers, switches and transformers. With meticulous attention paid to detail and finish, and in contrast to the traditional or "architectural" use of his chosen materials, Ken portrays an organic / futuristic / classical feel to his designs. Ken uses new and found metals, glass, fiberglass and hardwood in the creation of his designs. Using the computer as a tool, he drafts his original paper sketches to complete final measurements and esthetic details while troubleshooting function and design issues.
14. Dec 7 - Jan 5 Members Group Exhibition Xmas Group Exhibition
An opportunity for members to explore work within the realm of functional art objects. A partial fundraiser for Gallery Gachet.
