Tuesday, June 30, 2009

"Sugar Rush" by Anna Wood - FRESH PICKS V1E18

"A-B-C, Easy as 1-2-3"

As June comes to a close, Anna Wood takes us back to our childhood games of hopscotch and alphabet with her untitled collage, nick-named by us "Sugar Rush".

This candy-coated artwork comes from a now venerable tradition. Collage, formally coined by Braque and Picasso in the last century, is as familiar in the playschool as it is in modern art. Images and text edited from other sources, glued together in an assemblage to create something new. Anna Wood draws from childhood memories of board games with her brother in this work. She has literally deconstructed the games of her youth to express her concerns of today. Anna is a Vancouver-based visual artist who has grown up around art and sculpture - her father is well-known BC-artist Alan Wood.

Anna's playful, colourful works on paper are musings of the artist's mind, a mix of nostalgia with a strong sense of moving forward albeit in a purposely discursive, adventitious, inquisitive way. The topographical map elements in this collage also hint at the adrenaline rush associated with a good old fashioned land-grab.

Buy "Sugar Rush" now and see if you get to slide on a Winegum, get stuck in a Toffee Pudding or go directly to a Sherbert Jet Fountain! (Dice not included. Not recommended for boring adults.)

Buy "Sugar Rush" starting at $45+!

Monday, June 29, 2009

June 26th Stone Soup Opening at Grace-Gallery Pix on Lindsay's Diet

Thank You Lindsay!

Look for yourself and be happy at: http://www.lindsaysdiet.com/photosnineteen/june2609/gallery.html

Rachel Zottenberg Director, Grace-Gallery and DJ Dani Vachon pictured at left.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

LifeLids Gala Auction a Success for the BC Children's Hospital Foundation

Gallery attendees viewing the lots at the LifeLids Auction in support of the BC Children's Hospital Foundation, Saturday June 27/09 at Winsor Gallery, Vancouver BC. The first-time auction was a great success!

Our event photos are with the Vantage Art Projects Flickr Photo Collections: http://www.flickr.com/photos/37046356@N06/collections/72157620647833847/

For additional photos please see Urban Mixer on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/urbanmixer/3667159757/in/photostream/

A 10 artwork limited edition portfolio (11" x 14") is available at www.vantageartprojects.com/BCCH_catalog.html. Editions start at $68 + packaging, shipping & handling. Click here to view and purchase these artworks: BCCH Fundraising Art Portfolio Catalog.

All proceeds in benefit of the BC Children's Hospital Foundation. Framing specifications and further donation to the foundation sponsored by Larson-Juh, premier framing supplier.

Artwork at left by Mark Mizgala.

Friday, June 26, 2009

LifeLids Gala at Winsor Gallery - Friday June 26th, Vancouver BC

Join Vantage Art Projects and Chip's Not Dead Yet and our 10 fantastic local artists for the LifeLids Gala and Auction at Winsor Gallery in Vancouver BC this Saturday night.

Vantage has produced a limited-edition print portfolio as a fundraising program for the Foundation. Prints start at $68 + taxes, shipping & handling. Artists are: Jane Brookes, Gabreyl Harrison, Nora Borden, Graeme Bergelund, Sascha Yamashita, Mark Mizhgala, The Dark, Stephanie Kewistep, Joe Gigliano and Rebecca Chaperon. http://www.lifelidgala.com/

The print portfolio is available starting at $68+ for each print at www.vantageartprojects.com/BCCH_catalog.html

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Stone Soup on Uncle Paulie's World - Art & Culture Blog

Uncle Paulie's World Covers "Stone Soup" Exhibition at Grace-Gallery in Vancouver

Uncle Paulie's World is "a blog about anything and everything related to art, my niece, life as a gay man in New York City, cool people and places
".

Final Stone Soup Opening June 26th/09, Grace-Gallery Vancouver BC

Image on Uncle Paulie's World blog article by Stone Soup artist, Rebecca Donald.

http://unclepauliesworld.blogspot.com/2009/06/luxurious-liquid-diet-vantage-art.html

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Stone Soup Opening - Week 3 - Christian Nicolay & Rebecca Donald






















Featured Artists: Christian Nicolay and Rebecca Donald. See Photos from Week Three of Stone Soup in the Vantage Art Projects Flickr Collections:

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

"Mysterious Escapades" by Rebecca Chaperon - FRESH PICKS Volume 1 Edition 17

In "Mysterious Escapades" a girl hides in the shadow of a tree beside a moonlit lake. A fox treads nearby while across the lake a figure looks out of the second story window of a pristine white building. The feral fox and the imposing architecture seem to accompany the spirit of adventure and childish anarchy.

"Mysterious Escapades" is part of a series of paintings from Rebecca Chaperon’s 2009 called "Catholic School Girls Rule". These works attempt to evoke a sense of the collective consciousness. Some of the work in this series touches upon the group mentality gained by donning a uniform and assembling with others of one’s age and stature. Conversely, other paintings in this series, such as "Mysterious Escapades", emit moments of heightened, self-aware solitude and independent agency.

Drawing from the misadventures of various heroines of Victorian literature, Rebecca Chaperon’s paintings often portray a female protagonist within a surreal landscape. Her work aspires to entertain the mind with possible narratives, while suggesting a separate haunting emotive undercurrent.

Born in England in 1978, Rebecca settled in Toronto, Ontario at age 8. She attended Emily Carr University where she studied fine arts until graduation in 2002. She has exhibited her work across Canada and has been featured in several Canadian publications. She currently lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. For more information on the artist and original work, see www.thechaperon.ca.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Stone Soup Opening - Week 2- Weakhand & Christopher Donnelly






















Featured artists: Weakhand and Christopher Donnelly. See Photos from Week Two of Stone Soup in the Vantage Art Projects Flickr Collections:

Monday, June 15, 2009

Stone Soup Exhibition Information on ECAUD Alumni News

Emily Carr Alums Lisa Birke (98), Christopher Donnelly (07) and Sascha Yamashita (00) , and Rebecca Donald (sessional faculty) are participating in this collaborative exhibition and particpating in Stone Soup, a progressive and collaborative art exhibition at Grace-Gallery, June 2009.

Link to the listing on the Alumni Page: http://www.ecuad.ca/node/3296

Saturday, June 13, 2009

SUPPORT SYSTEM SCULPTURAL INSTALLATION - SASCHA YAMASHITA

Sascha Yamashita –FAILED DRAWINGS

Sascha appears courtesy of Gallery Atsui, where he is both a co-founder and a director.

His installation FAILED DRAWINGS (working title) suspends slightly over-scaled, crumpled drawings from an upper corner of the gallery wall. The crumpled forms seem to have been collected from either an oversized toddlers playroom floor, or from a writers typewriter-side wastepaper basket – evidence of the effort to try over and over again to get the opening lines just right. This illusion to writing, literature and therefore narrative plays off of the highly narrative content in Lisa's work. Furthermore, the crumpled paper forms suspended from the wall seem as if they have floated over on the billowing clouds from the mural, connecting the two works in both a conceptual and a formal manner. Ironically, given the illusion in this artwork to artistic failure, Sascha is known by his peers for (amongst other things) having very good drawing skills.

This work is in keeping with Sascha's minimal aesthetic and his work with repetition, everyday materials and the accumulation of simple materials. In this installation, the 2-dimensional discarded drawings have been given second life, repurposed and re-contextualized as a sculptural installation - the forms elevated from the floor or the wastepaper basket to floating ephemeral clouds of inspiration.

Sascha's work in it's current form will be on view until Monday, June 15th, 7:00 p.m. The next artist to work on the installation is Christopher Donnelly who will be working over top of and around Sascha's work.

For more information on Gallery Atsui go to: www.galleryatsui.com.

STONE SOUP WALL MURAL - LISA BIRKE


Lisa Birke – BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

Lisa appears courtesy of Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver.

Lisa works in painting, installation and performance. The content of her work involves narrative about current social issues, and previous series of work have included animal/technology hybrids and musings on Canadian national identity. Her mural for our Stone Soup installation references Pieter Bruegel's “The Parable of the Blind Leading the Blind” and shows a line of people (mostly men in business suits) being led towards a large, prone figure who functions as a cornucopia. The cornucopia man has a large open toothed-mouth andwith a large hand is shovelling a pile to stone vegetables into his mouth. The pile of vegetables are literally made from stones – Lisa spent several days painting onions, bunches of carrots, cucumbers and mushrooms on stones taken from a nearby garden.

In the line of the condemned, a credit card (actually a cut-up Mastercard) is tucked into the right hand of the man at the front of the line. Mr. Credit Risk is miming a gun with his hands and “shooting” the person in front of him. To add to the element of pending doom, the characters wear cooking pots on their heads obscuring their vision and are holding onto a rope to find this futile path forward. Onimously, a costume for the next member of the chain gang awaits to the left of the mural - a business costume (shirt, tie and pants with long, turned-out empty pockets).

A cityscape with billowing smog and clouds looms about cornucopia setting the urban stage for the entire scene. One small element of hope remains – a bright red zeppelin emerges from the coiling clouds as perhaps an escape vehicle, or carrying a super hero with the 10,000 foot perspective, a vision of some potential solution.

The work on this mural was completed in 5 days and a stop-motion video of her progress can be found online on the Stone Soup Facebook event page. The video will also be posted to the Vantage Art Projects Blog.

Lisa's work in current form will be on view until Monday, June 15th 7:00 p.m. The next artist to work on the mural is Weakhand who will be working over top of and around Lisa's work.

For more information about Lisa please see her personal website at www.lisabirke.com or Bau-Xi Gallery.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Stone Soup Interview on "Things of Desire"

Stone Soup Interview with Jennifer Mawby on "Thing of Desire" by Mike Landry.

When Jennifer Mawby turned on the television last winter she was horrified. She had been without cable since moving into her studio a couple years ago, and apparently life as she knew it was coming to an end thanks to an economic crisis of epic proportions.

Overwhelmed by the onslaught of doom in the media, Mawby quickly came up with three ideas under the banner of “recession proof thinking.” The first project, Stone Soup is based on the stone soup fable where travelers trick a town into pooling its food into a giant soup. Six artists will be working together to pool their talents into two shifting works of art.

“Rather than curating shows where you just go around collecting things from the inventory various artists have and coming up with some statement to how philosophically it fits together, I’m actually interested in something that’s a little more performative where the work is created within the gallery so it’s something new and special,” says Mawby. “It’s in keeping with this overwhelming concern about how the current economic crisis is being sold to us almost as a form of theatre through the media.”

Mawby guest curated the show with the Rachel Zottenberg, director of Grace-Gallery, and co-produced it with her Vantage Art Projects partner Sherri Kajiwara. Running for the eight months now Vantage functions like a film production house, to create opportunities for artists and bring together the people who make art with the people who love art.

Drawing on her background in project management and theatre/dance, Mawby is drawn to collaboration and community. She put forward the Stone Soup as a sort of challenge. A chicken and the egg proposal, Mawby first had to find a gallery to host the on-site project before she had artists.

“It was really interesting when we launched vantage we were treated by some people as being really radical…[We're] pushing the business model of the traditional art world, because I find some things incredibly antiquated and backwards.”

Her build-it-and-they-will-come pitch worked, and the right artists came to the table. Three artists—Lisa Birke, Weakhand, Christian Nicolay—will create a mural in the gallery, while the others— Sascha Yamashita, Christopher Donnelly, Rebecca Donald—will work on a sculpture. It turned out the muralists were all friends, and the three sculptors were partial to using everyday, domestic materials—the kind being affected by the economy.

Mawby feels by having the work re-worked and eventually torn down she sets up an interesting challenge for the artists—one that speaks to the solutions to our economic woes. She hopes to show the sum is more important than the whole, the impermanence of things and the notion that this too will pass.

“Just as this work will come into being, exist in a certain format and then pass on to be re-worked, we will get through this current economic crisis and we will have affluent years once again. These very, very rich layers became apparent as I put the concept together.”

And while Mawby compares most exhibitions to a sort of Wizard of Oz theatre, she’s excited to have the art-making process revealed.

“In some ways maybe revealing the process is about revealing the vulnerability—the human aspect, the everyday. If you reveal the process of art-making, it isn’t a mystery. It’s something that happens everyday.”

Stone Soup will be on display from Fri June 12 - Mon June 29 at Grace Gallery in Vancouver. There will be three opening reception on consecutive Fridays during the show’s run: Sascha Yamashita & Lisa Birke June 12 with viewing June 13 - 15; Christopher Donnelly & Weakhand June 19 with viewing June 20 - 22; Rebecca Donald & Christian Nicolay June 26 with viewing June 27 - 29. Keep an eye for future Stone Soup exhibitions near you.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Stone Soup at Grace-Gallery, First Week Evite for June 12th, 2009























Featured Artists: Lisa Birke and Sascha Yamashita. See Photos from Week One of Stone Soup in the Vantage Art Projects Flickr Collections:

Monday, June 8, 2009

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Stone Soup Exhibition at Grace-Gallery - First Opening Friday, June 12/09

Grace-Gallery is the blank canvas for the upcoming Stone Soup Exhibition. (Grace-Gallery @ 2nd and Main, Vancouver, BC). Two Progressive, Site Specific Artworks will be made in the Gallery over the course of the exhibition and reworked each week by a new set of artists.

Lisa Birke (mural) and Sascha Yamashita (installation) - Friday, June 12th (8pm til late)

Weakhand (mural) and Christopher Donnelly (installation) - Friday, June 19th (8pm til late)

Christian Nicolay (mural) and Rebecca Donald (installation) - Friday, June 26th (8pm til late)

Curated by Jennifer Mawby with Grace-Gallery Rachel Zottenberg and co-produced with Sherri Kajiwara.

The folk legend of the STONE SOUP has direct application for our current economic times. In the story, famine has hit a small village. Each villager believes that there is no food to eat in their own cupboards. Then, a savvy stranger rolls into town with a story that he will make a meal for them all from just a magic stone that he carries with him. By encouraging the villagers to each bring a little something to add to the stone soup (such as a carrot or a potato) the stranger is able to create a nurturing meal for all to share.

News media is announcing to viewers on a daily basis about how tough the current economic climate is for us. Stock values have plummeted, and companies are in a no-growth and down-sizing period. People are losing their jobs and it appears to be famine season. To combat the belief that times are too tough, the stone soup fable can be applied to create recession-proof thinking in both art-making and the general public zeitgeist.

The STONE SOUP exhibition is a model for socially interactive, sustainable, and fiscally responsible art production using a group of artists to collaboratively and incrementally create an exhibition that nourishes all. The transient nature of the artwork as it evolves also reminds us that nothing truly is permanent, and that “this too will pass”.

Click for Full Curatorial Proposal

Click for Exhibition Schedule