Fall 2011

Kathleen Ritter
October 5, 2011
7:00pm
Room A122a

Artist and curator Kathleen Ritter gives an overview of the evolution of public art through the lens of her own practice. As curator of exhibitions such as Expect Delays (Artspeak Gallery, 2003), How Soon is Now (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2009) and WE: Vancouver (Vancouver Art Gallery, 2011), Ritter traces a course through contemporary public practice – from the gallery to the street.

Kathleen Ritter is an artist and a writer based in Vancouver. Her work has been exhibited at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre (2010), VIVO (2009), Prefix (2009), Modern Fuel (2008), the Robert McLaughlin Gallery (2008), Western Front (2004), Skol (2000), and Access (2000). Her writing has been published in the anthology Places and Non-Places of Contemporary Art (2005) and the journals ESSE, Fillip Magazine, Open Letter, and Prefix Photo. She has curated several exhibitions, including WE: Vancouver (2011) and How Soon Is Now (2009) at the Vancouver Art Gallery, and Expect Delays (2003), a series of artist’s interventions that took place throughout the City of Vancouver. As the Associate Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery, she coordinates Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite, an outdoor site for temporary public artworks where she curated Elspeth Pratt: Second Date (2011) and Heather and Ivan Morison: Plaza (2010).

Francisco Camacho 
October 11, 2011
7:00pm
Room A122a

In a discussion bridging art discourse with political dialogue and civic policy, Columbian artist Francisco Camacho will engage in a discussion with Jesse McKee, Exhibitions Curator at the Western Front and Spencer Chandra Herbert, BC Provincial MLA for Vancouver-West End and Official Opposition Critic for Tourism, Culture and the Arts. This discussion is framed within Camacho’ developing project Culture is a Common Purpose, which is starting with a research period at the Western Front and throughout Vancouver. Camacho’s work often inhabits systems of civic and political infrastructure, blurring the line between art practice, activism and entertainment.

The Columbian artist Francisco Camacho seeks ways in which his work can exist within official social channels. His projects are the results of long investigations and collaborations with a local context. Regular collaborators include politicians and lawyers, which allow his discourse to be examined by other structures of society, apart from the art scene. Camacho’s projects often leave the art world to become significant in other fields and can be viewed as a form of political activism or social discourse. His practice evolves around the possibility of art having practical effects on the broader culture and re-defines common concepts that can lead art to change the way in which we conceive society. Francisco Camacho’s previous projects have taken place in New Mexico, where he investigated the reasons behind the inhabitants of a village deciding to change its name to Truth or Consequences; in the Netherlands with his project Group Marriage, he continues to petition the Dutch parliament to open civil marriage to groups of citizens who would marry each other, and more recently Entkustung de l’art was presented at the Casino of Luxembourg and it featured collaborations with the Luxembourg Military School, local politicians from the Senate, the Minister of Culture, a strong man and a hip hop band.

Spencer Chandra Herbert is a member of the British Columbia Provincial Legislature for the West End and Coal Harbour. Spencer was first elected to the BC Legislature in October 2008 as the MLA for Vancouver-Burrard and re-elected to serve as the first MLA for Vancouver-West End in May 2009. Spencer served as a Vancouver Park Board Commissioner from 2005-2008 and his achievements include initiating the first of many fundraising drives to restore storm-damaged Stanley Park and helping improve environmental sustainability at parks throughout the city. He was instrumental in the improvements to Nelson Park in the West End, and Emery Barnes Park in Yaletown. Spencer was the associate producer of the United Nations World Urban Festival, and has worked professionally in the arts and culture industry for many years. He has been a facilitator and lecturer with Better Environmentally Sound Transportation, Qmunity and the B.C. Civil Liberties Association. In 2009, he played a lead role in organizing protests against a proposed 90% cut to provincial level cultural funding.

Jesse McKee is the outgoing exhibitions curator at the Western Front in Vancouver. There he developed commissions and organized solo exhibitions with artists such as Eli Bornowsky (Vancouver), Sophie Bélair Clément (Montreal), and Neïl Beloufa (Paris), among others. He is taking tenure at the Banff Centre as the curator of the Walter Phillips Gallery as of November 2011. Previously he was a public programs curator at the Barbican Art Gallery, London, where he developed education programs and live events for exhibitions such as, The Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art and Radical Nature - Art & Architecture for a Changing Planet 1969-2009. He was a guest curator at Gallery 101, Ottawa, in 2011, where he organized the exhibition Well Formed Data, which included work by Susan Hiller (UK/ USA), Patricia Esquivias (VE) and Falke Pisano (NL), among others. In autumn 2012 he will be curating a film program for the Cinémathèque québécoise in Montreal. He studied at the Royal College of Art, London, on the MA Curating Contemporary Art.

Samuel Roy-Bois: Interlocutor
November 8, 2011
7:00pm
Room A122a

Samuel Roy-Bois expands the notion of an artist talk and turns it into an anomalous context for the presentation of a performance, inviting audience members to consider the intertwined nature of identity and fabulation. This event is one part of the ongoing project Nothing blank forever, a new work created through the artist residency at Langara College Centre for Art in Public Spaces. Interlocutor is presented with the participation of Gilles Poulin- Denis.

Originally from Quebec City, Samuel Roy-Bois is currently residing in Vancouver. He acquired his BFA from Université Laval in Quebec (1996) and a Masters Degree in Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montreal (2001). His installations have been shown across Canada and internationally; his solo exhibitions include Polarizer, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, 2009, Let us, then, be up and doing..., Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver, 2008; Divertissements, Point éphémère, Paris, 2007; Improbable and ridiculous, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, 2006; J’ai entendu un bruit, je me suis sauvé, Or Gallery, Vancouver, 2003.

Claire Doherty
Tuesday, December 6
Rm. A122a

CANCELLED

Artist to curator, project to institution, studio to public square; these distinctions—and many more—have become muddied in contemporary cultural production. The open-ended, trans-disciplinary nature of artists and their practices has demanded a new vocabulary for their work—and new systems for dissemination and display. Claire Doherty, Director of Situations and Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at the University of West England, Bristol, UK will expand on the idea of situation as related to artistic production, and how institutions and curators must now navigate complex territories of social relations, historical context, artistic authorship, political activism and, now more than ever, emanating networks of cultural interaction.  Claire Doherty is a curator and writer who investigates new and unconventional models of curatorial practice. Doherty is the Founder and Director of Situations, a commissioning and research program based at the University of West England in Bristol. Situations commissions artists’ projects, often outside conventional gallery or museum settings, with an emphasis on new forms of public engagement which span international boundaries. In collaboration with the Litmus Research Initiative at Massey University and a vast network of curators and institutions, Doherty co-directed One Day Sculpture with David Cross, a diverse series of twenty commissioned, 24-hour temporary public artworks across New Zealand. Doherty is a Visiting Lecturer in Curating Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art in London and Senior Research Fellow at the University of West England in Bristol, UK. To learn more about Claire Doherty visit Other Sights.