12 March 2020 through 30 April 2020
Opening reception for the artists Thursday 12 March 2020, 6-9pm
Guest curated by Dan Starling
Jelena is an optimistic university student who spends a lot of time in coffee shops, dividing her time between serving customers and working on writing her first novel. After being offered a magic flute that has the power to turn sorrow into joy, she is at first hesitant to accept the gift and the responsibility that comes with it. But after she finds her grandmother Denise missing and a mysterious messenger delivers a note to her that uncovers the truth behind a historical assassination, the flute becomes indispensable in outwitting a group of conspirators including Humpty Dumpty and Canadian billionaire Chip Wilson whose aim is to keep the world ignorant of the truth. Will Jelena find her grandmother and save the world, or is the whole thing just deep fake news story?
The idea for the exhibition is to generate a sequence of works by different artists that builds a narrative in their accumulation. The works were selected sequentially following the "monomyth"; the description given by Joseph Campbell of a narrative sequence in his book The Hero With a Thousand Faces that determines the plot points common among stories. The structure is so pervasive that it saturates our popular entertainment. The "stages" are, in simplified form:
Artist 1. Stephen Waddell
Stage 1. ORDINARY WORLD
Artist 2 - Claire Geddes Bailey
Stage 2. DISRUPTION also known as the “CALL TO ADVENTURE”
Artist 3 - Luke Parnell
Stage 3. QUESTIONING also known as the “REFUSAL OF THE CALL”
Artist 4 - Rosamunde Bordo
Stage 4. DECISION (to act or not) can be encouraged to act by a “MEETING WITH THE MENTOR”
Artist 5 - Tom Richardson
Stage 5. UNKNOWN also known as “CROSSING THE THRESHOLD”
Artist 6 - Michael Lachman
Stage 6. HELP OR TESTS FROM ALLIES OR ENEMIES, whom they meet on their journey.
Artist 7 - Marina Roy
Stage 7. QUESTIONING THE CONSEQUENCES (of the decision, “Can I go back to the old life?”)
Artist 8 - Rowan Melling
Stage 8. THE FINAL TEST/ ORDEAL
Artist 9 - Diyan Achjadi
Stage 9. REWARD (new knowledge)
Artist 10 - Stephanie Gagne
Stage 10. ROAD BACK
Artist 11 - Shelley Rothenburger
Stage 11. RESURRECTION
Artist 12 - Liljana Mead Martin
Stage 12. MASTER OF TWO WORLDS
Stephen Waddell received his MFA from the University of British Columbia in 1994, and has exhibited in galleries and institutions including Monte Clark Gallery, the Vancouver Art Gallery, Espai d’art contemporani de Castelló in Castello, Spain, Kunstforum Baloise in Basel, Switzerland, the Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver, and C/O in Berlin. Waddell’s works are included in the permanent collections of the Armand Hammer Collection in Los Angeles, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, and numerous others. Waddell’s most recent books include Dark Matter Atlas (2017) published by Distanz and Hunt and Gather (2011) published by Steidl. In 2019, Waddell won the Scotiabank Photography Award. The artist lives and works in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.
Claire Geddes Bailey makes videos, structures, sounds, cakes, and texts. Dwelling on the narrative qualities of materials, words, symbols, and spaces, her work often addresses legibility. She sees a parallel between surfaces of objects and the texture of language. Claire holds a BA in English literature and visual art from UBC. She lives and works as an uninvited guest on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples, including the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh nations.
Luke Parnell is Wilp Laxgiik Nisga’a (House of Eagles) from Gingolx on his mother’s side and Haida from Massett on his father’s side. His artistic training is both traditional and classical - he apprenticed with a Master Northwest Coast Indigenous carver and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from OCAD University and a Masters of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His medium is predominantly wood, however his materiality is determined on a project by project basis. Northwest coast Indigenous art is the basis of his practice and praxis, centering on narrative, specifically transformation narratives.
Rosamunde Bordo is an interdisciplinary artist invested in exploring narrative possibilities through collections of objects and images, appropriated/ready-made texts, and a practice of creative writing. She is currently an MFA candidate in visual art at the University of British Columbia. For her thesis she is working on an ongoing project called The Denise File which is an investigation of a woman known to the artist through a collection of postcards. Within this sprawling multidisciplinary project, she explores love and desire, the role of mediation, and the construction and conflation of factual and fictional narratives. She is also cofounder of everydaystollen, an experimental podcast series. She is currently based on the traditional unceded lands of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations, known as Vancouver, B.C.
Tom Richardson’s practice explores intersecting themes in art history, narrative, music, and politics. His work has found itself in various forms ranging from exuberant multi-channel installation, single channel video, sculptural assemblage, drawing and painting. Richardson was a cofounding member and organizer of Duplex, an artist run gallery and studio facility in Vancouver. Richardson’s work has been exhibited and screened internationally, recent solo exhibitions include Big Industrial Zoetrope, VIVO Media Arts Centre, Vancouver (2018), Rehearsal for a Synthetic Theatre, Field Contemporary, Vancouver (2017), The Bureau of True Vision, Spare Room, Vancouver (2016).
Michael Lachman is an artist based in Vancouver, BC. His works take the form of sculptural installation, video, drawing and printmaking. He explores the mythos constructed through storytelling and questions the authority of the storyteller. He is particularly drawn to stories of duplicity and the unreliable narrative, which materialize through projects that are both investigatory and fictional, and at times draw from the esoteric and speculative.
Marina Roy is a Vancouver-based artist and writer, and associate professor in Visual Art at the University of British Columbia. She works across a variety of media — drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and animation. Her artwork investigates the grotesque at the intersection of language, image, and materiality; and her research interests include ecology, post humanism, and biopolitics. In 2001 she published Sign After the X (Arsenal/Artspeak); her newest book Queuejumping (Information Office) will come out in October 2020. In 2010 she was recipient of the VIVA art award.
Rowan Melling's research-based practice is rooted in and informed by literature and philosophy. Recently, he has started oil painting as a way to critique the multiplying culture of corporate self-actualization and self-branding. Motivated by his alienation and a desire for something less bad, Melling seeks alternatives to the entrepreneurial-self in his work. Melling has studied at the University of British Columbia.
Diyan Achjadi's practice in drawing, printmaking and animation considers surface ornamentation, historical prints, and illustrations as pictorial archives, and the potential of these forms as sites for knowledge transmission. She has exhibited widely at galleries and film festivals across Canada and internationally. Recent projects include Coming Soon!, a year-long commission for the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, and NonSerie (In Commute), part of How far do you travel?, a year-long exhibition on the exterior of public buses, commissioned by the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG) in partnership with Translink BC. Diyan received a BFA from the Cooper Union (New York, NY) and an MFA from Concordia University (Montreal, QC), and is an Associate Professor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver.
Stephanie Gagne is a Vancouver-based artist. She received a bachelor of fine arts degree in visual arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and a master of fine arts degree in interdisciplinary studies from Simon Fraser University. Her interests include popular culture, sexuality, neighbourhoods and childhood nostalgia. Stephanie's interdisciplinary projects involve sculpture, photography, drawing, and video.
Shelley Rothenburger was born and raised in Thunder Bay, Ontario and now resides in Richmond, B.C. She began formal studies in art in 1989 at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay and graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Fine Art in 1995 majoring in Painting. She continued her art education in 1997 upon entering Graduate School at the University of Alberta in Edmonton and completed her formal studies with a Master of Fine Art degree in painting in 2000. She has had multiple solo, juried and group exhibitions nationwide, most noted being a juried exhibition at the Art Gallery on Ontario in Toronto in 1996 and a solo exhibition at the Nickel Museum in Calgary in 2000. Her work is represented in the University of Alberta Master of Fine Art Collection, The Alberta Foundation for the Arts Collection and also in private regional, national and international collections.
Liljana Mead Martin is a visual artist living and working on unceded Coast Salish territories, Vancouver. Through sculptural and choreographic processes she explores connections between memory, embodiment, material and geography. In recent sculpture she deals with the external and internal environments as interchangeable forms engaged in a constant exchange, with reference to injury, resilience, loss and survival. Martin’s artworks and performance have been exhibited at The Klondike Institute for Arts and Culture (Dawson City YT), Artscape Gibraltar Point (Toronto Island ON) the Anna Leonowens Gallery (Halifax NS), Dynamo Arts Association (Vancouver), Recess (NYC) and the Nanaimo Art Gallery (Vancouver Island).
Dan Starling’s work plays with the conventions of narratives through intervention, extrapolation and reconfiguration to produce exciting juxtapositions that encourage critical engagement. Based in research, Starling’s work deals with how historical and contemporary aesthetic forms frame the narratives that in turn influence how we see ourselves individually and collectively. Starling has studied at Emily Carr University and Städelschule, Frankfurt, and has exhibited his work nationally and internationally. Starling’s work was most recently shown at Wil Aballe Art Projects, VIVO Media Arts Centre and the Libby Leshgold Gallery, Vancouver.
