"Canary" by James Whitman - FRESH PICK Volume 1 Edition 24

The wild bird, endemic to Macaronesia, is gregarious and builds cup-shaped nests while often fiercely defending it's territory. It feasts in flocks while foraging on the ground, and cannot survive without gravity. James Whitman's "Canary" is a wild bird of a different feather.

"Canary" comes from the figures and creatures in the artists "Some Kings" series. Whitman tells us the 'kings' are caricatured alien or ‘other’ subjects generated from a formal play with the construction of face, countenance, and the kinds of social space these can generate. They are purposely deadpan and low affect. They acknowledge us and present themselves, but they don’t elicit our attention or social engagement, and beyond holding our eye, they make no social display. As with wild animals, we don’t share their society and they are indifferent to us.

The kings’ social world, social relations, the state of the land they inhabit and its economics have been bracketed off, left open. We are not presented with the depiction of an imaginary or allegorical society and its functions and relations, but with difference, with our world become different. The point isn’t so much the specifics of that difference, but to depict the absence of our society, the world without our administration. These drawings both depict a certain semi-developed state of the not-wilderness of British Columbia, and shift this familiar mundane land of overgrown logging roads, abandoned fridges, and ten year old spruce over into a fantasy of an unpeopled world. They imagine a world that exists quite sufficiently without any of the very particular forms of meaning peculiar to our species. A world without our presence as witnesses.

James Whitman has an honours BFA from UVic 1998 and is currently represented by the LES Gallery in Vancouver. He is artist, curator, collaborator and has sat on board of the Vancouver Access Artist Run Centre and the ‘536’ curatorial society “with a focus on exhibitions in unusual situations”. He has completed residencies in Leipzig Germany and Dawson City, Yukon. He is a member of the Vancouver-based drawing collective Lions Pile. You can find more work by the artist at LES Gallery, Outbuildings and Livestock and Lions Pile.

Buy "Canary" now from $45+!

"Sweet Smell of Success" by Matthew Sweig - FRESH PICK Volume 1 Edition 23

Welcome to "The Sweet Smell of Success". This series is a fragmented self-portrait made up of the little physical evidence of the artist’s ancestral past. Further to past works dealing with urban debris and the memory of objects, this work strives to illustrate the many ways in which one views themselves. The people are distant maternal relatives captured from old photographs. The screen printed pattern is extracted from monetary notes from Czar ruled Poland from the early twentieth century where Sweig’s paternal family was at the time the photographs were taken in Canada.

Matthew Sweig is educated in the field of Landscape Architecture and practices in Toronto, Canada. Gary Michael Dault of the Globe and Mail’s review of Sweig’s “Reconstruction of a Demolition” exhibit from 2005 could equally describe this piece. “A glance at the picture reproduced here - or even a prolonged study of it - will probably not serve to identify it as a painting rather than a photograph. But a painting it assuredly is, a vastly labour-intensive, black-and-white acrylic on canvas...” More information on the artist’s original works can be found at www.matthewsweig.com. He is represented by the XEXE Gallery in Toronto, www.xexegallery.com.

Buy "The Sweet Smell of Success I" now from $45+!

PAUL BUTLER EXHIBITION-IN-PRINT - Artists to be published

The artists who responded to our open call for submission, and who have been selected for publication in our Paul Butler exhibition-in-print project are now announced. The full press release and list of artists can be found on our website. Thank you for "Submitting to Paul Butler"!

Full press release can be found here: http://www.vantageartprojects.com/Current_Submissions.html

Please find below the list of artists whose work was selected for publication in the upcoming Exhibition-in-print book curated by Paul Butler. The full list to be published in at the end of this message and includes 40+ individuals. We would like to stress that in keeping with the process outlined, Paul blind-juried the work of all submitting artists. Further to the open submissions, Paul was invited to ask a small number of artists to contribute along with his own work. These artists also paid a submission fee.

The quality of the submissions were high and came in from all corners of the globe making the final decision of what works to publish difficult. The selections were made very carefully based on the best fit with our curatorial theme and guided by the critical essays to be published with the artwork.

ARTISTS TO BE PUBLISHED - VP1_PB1

Amarie Bergman
Lisa Birke
Melissa Brown
Lydia Burggraaf
John Campbell
Robert Caspary
Lucia Cipriano
Jennifer Delos Reyes
Rebecca Donald
Christopher Donnelly
Aganetha Dyck
Julie Gendron
Sheila Heti
Robin Lambert
Marissa Largo
Henry Mah
J Mawby
Christian Nicolai
Jennifer O'Leary
Richard Palanuk
Mitzi Pederson
Perry Rath
Scott Rogers
Jesse Sherburne
Julia Sherman
Jony Silver
Eric Steen
Derek Sullivan
Aislinn Thomas
Julie Thomson
Margaux Williamson
Sascha Yamashita
Weakhand
The Make It Collective (Gabe Baribeau plus other members)
26 Collective (Melanie Rocan, David Wityk, Fred Thomas, Shaun Morin, Ian Augus,
Michael Topf)
The Reverse Pedagogy Team (Venice 2009)

V.A.P. is committed to offering inclusive opportunities for artists. As a part of our programming, V.A.P. provides open call, blind juried opportunities for artists via exhibitions and art publications.

"Man Trap" by Dana Holst - FRESH PICK Volume 1 Edition 22

Man Trap” by Dana Holst is from a new series "Prey" which explores from a psychological perspective the human/animal instinct to stalk other beings - sometimes for survival but mostly for fun. It is a look at the need to act out upon and keep in touch with primal urges, filtered through a sanitized world of industrial and computer prowess where human hunters use technology against lowly beasts, often to unfair advantage. In the drawing “Man Trap” a young woman in silk tights and a frilly can-can costume lifts her skirt up, concealing her face and exposing her legs and panties, setting her trap. Playfully humorous, drawn with delicate and bold marks in black oil paint on pink paper, “Man Trap” uses feminine wiles alone, with the viewer being the stalked prey. "Prey"evokes fairy tale darkness, surreal charm and wry wit, all commenting on human ignorance and our oblivious desire for fun.

Award-winning artist, Dana Holst was born in Kitchener, Ontario in 1972. She graduated from the University of Waterloo with a BA in Fine Arts in 1995. Post graduation, she received the Don Phillips Scholarship resulting in a year long printmaking residency at Open Studio in Toronto.

Her work has been exhibited across Canada and is in private collections throughout North America. Public collections include:The Glenbow Museum in Calgary, the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston; Carleton University Art Gallery in Ottawa; the Alberta Foundation for the Arts in Edmonton; the Art Bank ; the Colart Collection in Montreal and Ernst & Young in Toronto. Original works are available at Latitude 53 Contemporary Visual Culture, Edmonton, Katharine Mulherin, Toronto and Galerie St. Laurent + Hill, Ottawa. Her 2010 exhibition schedule includes the Odd Gallery, Dawson City Yukon and the White Water Gallery in North Bay Ontaro. Her personal web site is www.DanaHolst.com.

Buy "Man Trap" by Dana Holst here starting at $45+!

"Green Crocodile Hermes" by Biliana Velkova - FRESH PICK Edition 21

Shop 'Till You Drop!

And do so in style with "Green Crocodile Hermes" by Biliana Velkova whose work examines consumerism by exploring motifs of glamour, brand names and celebrity culture. Velkova searches for ways to fit these references into her everyday reality, incorporating photography, drawing, performance and social interventions into her art practice. As a teen, Velkova immigrated with her family from Bulgaria to Canada, basically transplanted from a Communist, childhood upbringing directly into Western, youth culture. Such profound culture shock provides an unique perception and fascination with consumerism, in both its shallow and far-ranging, socio-cultural effects.

Biliana Velkova has her BFA from Concordia and is a MFA candidate at the University of Saskatchewan, 2010. She is currently working on using performance and multi-media to blend the line between art, advertising and commodity to another level; producing a body of work that utilizes tools actually used in marketing campaigns, including video ads, poster campaigns, and “product launch” performances. Reminiscent of celebrity marketing campaigns that use a popular icon to create a brand name, this work challenges this phenomenon with the creation of “media-hype” around an unknown persona that is devoid of any famous trademark. This project questions how and when a common person becomes a brand, thus blurring the lines of art, commodity, and social identity. Biliana Velkova is represented in Vancouver by the Jeffrey Boone Gallery, www.jeffreyboonegallery.com.

OLIO FESTIVAL - "The Shoe Show" opening at Grace Gallery, Friday Aug. 14/09

VANTAGE ART PROJECTS supports Olio Festival and the arts events and showings around Vancouver. Check out the artists showing at each venue and "The Shoe Show" at Grace Gallery, 1898 Main Street. Opening party Friday, August 14th at 8pm.

[oh-lee-oh] -noun, plural olios.

1. a medley, as of musical or literary selections; miscellany.
2. a mixture of heterogeneous elements; hodgepodge.
3. a dish of many ingredients.

MISSION STATEMENT

Olio Festival is a not-for-profit Vancouver based cultural expose focused on bringing together taste-making music, comedy, design, art, and film to Vancouver, from across Canada, and around the world. As a reflection of the diversity of both the artists and the city, Olio festival moves through the neighborhoods of Vancouver creating exposure for businesses across the city.

http://www.oliofestival.com/

"Nail Gun" by Mark Mushet - FRESH PICKS V1E20

Nail Gun by Mark Mushet is from a series attempting to wrest some beauty from a typical worksite at one of the area’s many beige condo developments. Rather than focusing on the endless opportunities for “abject landscape” images the artist went for the macro view of the tops of a coiled string of partly oxidized, blued nail-tops. Intrigued by the idea of a casual spray of nails holding together countless square miles of beige stuccoed wall, Mushet likes to imagine the area’s future when only the nails are left on the concrete footing. This image is old-school film photography treated with cross-processing film developing techniques.

Born in North Vancouver in 1963, Mark Mushet has created images in many forms since 1985. He first trained in film and video, producing arts documentaries and shorts for television. In the late '80s he began work in still photography (self-taught) merging macro photography with contemporary music for a series of live slide-projection performances at galleries such as the Western Front and Helen Pitt.

By 1995, Mushet had established a career in editorial and design photography. He has contributed award-winning portraits of cultural, entertainment, business and sports figures to a variety of Canadian publications including Elm Street, The Globe & Mail, The Georgia Straight, Western Living, Vancouver, BC Business and Vancouver Review. He has also contributed to the British new music magazine WIRE and the US publication Fretboard Journal.

He was nominated for a Juno award for photography in the “Best Album Design: Photography” category in 2003 and has received 12 nominations and one win for “Best Photograph” at the Western Magazine Awards and nominations for “Best Portrait” at the National Magazine awards. He continues to produce images for contemporary-music packaging providing CD cover art for pianist/composers Wayne Horvitz and Robin Holcomb, composers Paul Dolden, Dennis Smalley, John Young, Bradshaw Pack, Sergio Barroso, Stephane Roy , Darren Copeland, David Berezan, Forrest Fang and many others.

He is currently co-publisher and Creative Director of Vancouver Review magazine www.vancouverreview.com and is curating its Centrefold visual arts section. His latest photography commission is a set of large format B&W portraits for the Museum of Vancouver’s Velo-City exhibit.