KIOSK, by Gaye Chan, Rebecca Bayer, Vanessa Kwan, Laiwan, Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed. Curated by Shaun Dacey, July – September 2013. An installation at Civic Square, Bob Prittie Library, Metrotown will play host to a series of unique public art projects this summer. Designed by artist/designer Rebecca Bayer to evoke the form of an information booth, the structure will be the base for a series of projects that launch from the form and function of a kiosk. Six local and international artists will alternate sharing and transforming the purpose-built structure through the months of July to September. Commissioned by the Burnaby Art Gallery with support from BC Arts Council, KIOSK presents performances, installations, exchanges, and conversations for a pedestrian public to encounter.
Image credit: Rebecca Bayer at http://rebeccabayer.com/index.php?/projects/kiosk-project/
ARTIST STATEMENTS AND BIOGRAPHIES:
Gaye Chan: SWEAT | July 10-14
Project Reception: Thursday, July 11, 6-8pm
A five-day performance that’s part theatre and demonstration, SWEAT features Gaye Chan weaving baskets made from bale straps collected from neighbouring shopkeepers. SWEAT is a part of Chan’s ongoing work with EATING IN PUBLIC, a collective that she co-founded in 2003. Chan will perform basket weaving from 2-5pm, Wednesday to Sunday.
Chan, born in Hong Kong and immigrated to the United States in 1969, received her MFA from San Francisco Art Institute and is currently a professor and the Chair of the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Hawai’i. She is a conceptual artist who is recognized equally for her solo and collaborative activities that take place on the web, in publications, the streets and galleries. Her recent work often ruminates on how cartography and photography simultaneously offer and occlude information. gayechan.com
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Rebecca Bayer: GIVE AND TAKE | July 16-August 11
Project Reception: Friday, July 26, 6-8pm
GIVE AND TAKE is a “free store” for books, magazines and small objects. In collaboration with passers-by and volunteer shopkeepers, the kiosk will collect and distribute the ephemera of everyday life, one piece at a time. Referencing the state of changing infrastructure the area surrounding Metrotown is currently experiencing, GIVE AND TAKE accepts constant change, simultaneously reflecting and absorbing surrounding situations. Bayer teaches and mentors at UBC School of Architecture & Landscape Architecture and at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Bayer holds a Master of Architecture from UBC and a MFA from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design (London). Bayer is one of five artists-in-residence collaborating at Ten Fifteen Maple as part of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation Field House program. rebeccabayer.com
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Vanessa Kwan: EVERYTHING BETWEEN OPEN AND CLOSED | August 15-28
Project Reception: Wednesday, August 28, 6-8pm
Utilizing the kiosk as a small personal sign shop, Kwan will be the kiosk’s eccentric sign-maker, not selling anything, but quietly proliferating signs on the outer surfaces and spaces of the kiosk. Over the course of two weeks, the signs will accumulate as sandwich boards, hanging signs, banners, and so on. The aim is to introduce an unusual sculptural and emotional quality to the site. As the weeks progress, the site will become more visually hysterical, beginning with “open” and “closed” and diversifying from there. Kwan will occupy the kiosk from 12noon to 5pm, Monday to Friday.
Kwan is a Vancouver-based artist and programmer. Her most recent project is Sad Sack, an ongoing series of collaborative events, objects, thoughts and writings about melancholy. vanessakwan.com
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Laiwan: FREE SAGE: FREE ADVICE | August 30-September 15
Project Reception: Saturday, September 7, 2-4pm
Collecting and distributing advice from Burnaby seniors, this project provides a forum for elders, acknowledging their presence and importance in our communities. The title hints toward ideals of generosity, particularly regarding the wisdom of our elders and the plant world. Members of the public who visit the kiosk will be offered a free piece of wisdom on paper from the seniors community, along with a dried bundle of sage for burning and cleansing.
Laiwan is an artist, writer, educator, curator and activist. Born in Harare, Zimbabwe, of Chinese origin, she moved to Canada in 1977 to leave the war in Rhodesia. She founded the Or Gallery in Vancouver in 1983 and initiated the First Vancouver Lesbian Film Festival in 1988. Recipient of the 2008 Vancouver Queer Media Artist Award, she teaches at Goddard College in Washington State in the MFA Interdisciplinary Arts Program, and is Chair of the Grunt Gallery Board of Directors in Vancouver, Canada. laiwanette.net
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Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed | Mid-September
Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed create a platform for exchanging information and services with the more-than-human inhabitants of Burnaby. Location and details TBA. Jickling experiments with the possibilities of form, participation and meaning-making across disciplines and publics. Her projects often take shape as site-specific sculptures, public installations, events, exchanges, photographs, multiples, printed matter and other ephemera. Atypical forms of distribution, entrepreneurial scheming and audience-seeking are important strategies for supporting and disseminating her work. hannahjickling.com
Reed works with specific groups of people such as Twin Peaks fans, lesbian separatists and high school art teacher candidates. Reed favours collaborators that reflect her interest in participatory culture, affinity groups, and fantasy-based subcultures. Her projects take vernacular form as television shows, publications, postcards and other forms of easily transmittable and dispersed media, so as to circulate back into the communities from which they are generated. reheardregalement.com
For more information about the gallery’s exhibitions, programs, and tours, call 604-297-4422 or visit www.burnabyartgallery.ca. Located in the beautiful surroundings of Deer Lake Park, the Burnaby Art Gallery is open Tuesday to Friday, 10:00am to 4:30pm and on Saturday and Sunday, 12noon to 5:00pm. Admission is by donation; parking is free.