WINTER SPRING 2015
Hello!
Installation view of Zineb Sedira’s exhibition The Voyage, or Three Years at Sea Part V, 2013 Photo: Scott Massey
The Charles H. Scott Gallery is a non-profit public art gallery situated within the Emily Carr University of Art + Design. The Gallery contributes to the cultural life of Vancouver through its ongoing program of exhibitions, research, publishing and public events that investigate and promote contemporary creative production. Its curatorial program emphasizes critically engaged, thematic group exhibitions and solo exhibitions that offer in-depth analysis of an artist’s production.
Exhibitions
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The magazine featured a diverse and impressive array of contributors, from such key artists, musicians, authors and theorists as Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning, Ian Hamilton Finlay, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Allan Kaprow, Ed Ruscha, J.G. Ballard, Bill Evans, Philip Glass, the Velvet Underground and Yoko Ono. Known as “the magazine in a box,” Aspen was made up of unbound contents that included texts, flexi-discs, reels of film and other objects. It struck a chord in the 1960s artists’ publishing culture—which included publications by Marcel Duchamp, Seth Siegelaub and members of the
Aspen Magazine was a multimedia magazine conceived of, edited and published by Phyllis Johnson in New York from 1965 to 1971. Aspen broke new ground in terms of its editorial concept, design approach and distribution strategy, which continues to be resonant and influential today.
GALLERY TALK: TRISH KELLY WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 4 AT 6:00PM
LECTURE: GWEN ALLEN THURSDAY, JANUARY 22 AT 6:00PM ECU THEATRE
EXHIBITION CONTINUES TO FEBRUARY 8, 2015
ASPEN MAGAZINE: 1965–1971
Aspen, no. 5+6 (Fall 1967), 2012 © Aspen Magazine/the authors, edited and designed by Brian O’Doherty, art direction by David Dalton and Lynn Letterman Courtesy of the Victoria and Albert Museum and Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA)
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The exhibition is on loan from the Whitechapel Gallery in London.
The exhibition features complete sets of all issues, with a focus on the combined edition of issues five and six from 1967, which was guest-edited by Brian O’Doherty and is referred to as The Conceptual Issue. Contributors to this issue include Marcel Duchamp, Samuel Beckett, John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Hans Richter, Sol LeWitt, Mel Bochner, Naum Gabo, László Moholy-Nagy, Dan Graham, George Kubler, Robert Morris, William S. Burroughs, Roland Barthes, Susan Sontag, Alain RobbeGrillet, Morton Feldman, Michel Butor, Tony Smith and Merce Cunningham. Barthes first published his influential and important essay The Death of the Author in this issue.
Fluxus movement—and embraced the idea of presenting travelling exhibitions in a book (or a box, for that matter) in order to provide alternative spaces and economies for art.
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In his film work Horror Vacui, for example, the artist looks at the relationship between Afro-Cuban music and the rituals
Zink Yi’s multi-faceted art practice comprises sculpture, film and photography. His investigations, centred on the body, explore concepts of identity and the processes whereby the individual becomes part of the collective through a variety of actions such as music making, dancing or physical labour. Through displays and installations his work allows for a shift in meaning, reconfiguring contexts and angles to imagine a transformation of the body—which acts as a medium and interpreter of form, not just a bearer of cultural form.
The Charles H. Scott Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Peruvian-born, Berlin-based artist David Zink Yi. The exhibition comes out of the artist’s time at Emily Carr University as the Fall 2014 Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence.
FEBRUARY 25 TO APRIL 19, 2015 OPENING RECEPTION: TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 24 AT 7:30PM
DAVID ZINK YI
David Zink Yi, Why am I here and not somewhere else – Independencia II, 2013 Courtesy of the artist and Hauser & Wirth, Zurich
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Zink Yi has recently participated in the 8th Berlin Biennale, the 55th Venice Biennale in the Latin American Pavilion and the 10th Havana Biennale. He has exhibited at Hauser & Wirth in Zurich and Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany. He has also taken part in group exhibitions at the Tate Modern, London; Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros, Mexico City; Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst, Aachen, Germany; and the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design, Oslo. His work is included in collections at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Mudam Luxembourg; and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne.
of the Palo Monte and Yoruba religions. In making his recent video installation The Strangers, Zink Yi spent two months in the southern Andes of his homeland Peru documenting the country’s gold and silver mines. He captures both the workers deep in the mines as well as the harshly compelling terrain in and around the worksites. The photographs that accompany the film depict the scars and markings of this landscape, and Zink Yi’s attention to its forms and textures also speaks of his continuing sculptural practice and his critically acclaimed works such as Architeuthis, a 660-pound depiction of a giant squid.
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The annual Masters of Applied Arts Degree Exhibition showcases the work of Emily Carr University’s graduate students. The work on display represents a culmination of the students’ time at the university, their theses and their studio practices.
MAY 3 TO 17, 2015 OPENING RECEPTION: SATURDAY, MAY 2 AT 5:00PM
MAA DEGREE EXHIBITION
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Lê was born in Saigon and moved to the United States as a political refugee when she was fifteen. She received her Bachelor of Applied Science and Master of Science degrees in biology from Stanford University and her Master of Fine Arts in photography from Yale University. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally. Lê has had solo exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Museum ann de Stroom, Antwerp; Dia:Beacon, New York; Henry Art
Lê’s work explores the American military. She presents photographs of landscapes transformed by war or other military activities, blurring the boundaries between Hollywood portrayals and photojournalistic documentation. Much of her work is inspired by her own experiences of war and dislocation.
Beginning this March, New York–based artist An-My Lê joins the Emily Carr community as the Spring 2015 Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence.
AUDAIN DISTINGUISHED ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE PROGRAM
AN-MY LÊ
An-My Lê Courtesy of the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
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The residency program is generously funded by Michael Audain and is administered by the Faculty of Visual Art + Material Culture in the Audain School of Visual Arts and the Charles H. Scott Gallery.
The Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence Program has a mandate to bring internationally renowned contemporary artists to Vancouver, create curriculum specific to each individual visiting artist and support the creation of new works.
Lê is the recipient of numerous awards including fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation. She is a Professor of Photography at Bard College. Lê is represented by Murray Guy Gallery in New York.
Gallery, Seattle; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago; and MoMA PS1, New York.
Public Programs
Triple Canopy Editor Sarah Resnick’s lecture at READ, March 2014 Photo: Lyndsay Pomerantz
The Charles H. Scott Gallery presents artist’s talks, lectures, screenings, readings and book launches throughout the year. Please check the Gallery’s website or follow us on Facebook to stay up-to-date on our latest events.
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BAUHAUS WEAVING THEORY BOOK LAUNCH JANUARY 24, 2015 AT 2:00PM, READ BOOKS Please join READ Books for the launch of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design, published by University of Minnesota Press (2014). In Bauhaus Weaving Theory, T’ai Smith deftly reframes the Bauhaus weaving workshop as central to theoretical inquiry at the school, uncovering new significance in the work the weavers did as writers. Exploring questions of establishing value and legitimacy in the art world along with the limits of Modernism, this book confronts the belief that the crafts are manual and technical, but never intellectual arts. Smith is Assistant Professor of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at the University of British Columbia.
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AUDAIN DISTINGUISHED ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE ARTIST’S TALK MARCH 16, 2015 AT 6:00PM, ECU THEATRE We are pleased to present an artist’s talk by An-My Lê, the Spring 2015 Audain Distinguished Artist-in-Residence. Please see page 13 for more information about Lê and the residency program.
AN-MY LÊ
GALLERY TALK FEBRUARY 4, 2015 AT 6:00PM Please join us in the Charles H. Scott Gallery for a talk by Trish Kelly on the exhibition Aspen Magazine: 1965–1971. Kelly is an Associate Professor of Critical + Cultural Studies and Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Culture + Community at Emily Carr. She has published numerous articles in Art Journal, American Art and The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, on a range of topics including Minimal Art, art and politics in Chicago in the 1960s, US print culture of the early 19th century, and mapping strategies in contemporary art. Currently she is working on a book project titled On-Site: Art, Politics, and Viewers (New York, circa 1970), which explores the possibilities of critical engagement initiated through new models of exhibition and display.
LECTURE JANUARY 22, 2015 AT 6:00PM, ECU THEATRE In conjunction with the exhibition Aspen Magazine: 1965– 1971, Gwen Allen discusses Aspen within the context of art history, exploring its important function as an alternative exhibition space in the 1960s and 70s. She also explores the history of artists’ magazines more generally, both during this earlier period and today. Allen is the author of Artists’ Magazines: An Alternative Space for Art (MIT, 2011) and is a Professor of Art History at San Francisco State University.
T’AI SMITH
TRISH KELLY
GWEN ALLEN
Events
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New from Charles H. Scott Gallery Publications
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The West Coast Modern House chronicles the development of Vancouver residential architecture from 1940 to the mid-1960s and the continued influence of “West Coast Style� on contemporary practice. The book examines the work of seminal figures such as B.C. Binning, Ned Pratt, Ron Thom, Fred Hollingsworth, Douglas Simpson, Barry Downs and Arthur Erickson. It is illustrated with photographs by noted architectural photographers Graham Warrington, Selwyn Pullan and John Fulker, and includes essays by Greg Bellerby, Jana Tyner and Chris Macdonald.
Edited by Greg Bellerby Co-published by Charles H. Scott Gallery and Figure 1 Publishing
THE WEST COAST MODERN HOUSE
READ Books
Young readers like art! Photo: Lyndsay Pomerantz
Visit READ Books online at readbooks.ecuad.ca to explore our entire list of current stock and to stay up-to-date on READ’s events and new releases.
READ Books is the Charles H. Scott Gallery’s bookshop. It is a social space for contemporary art publication and plays an active role in the ecology of artists’ publishing in Vancouver. READ stocks an array of artists’ books, monographs, exhibition catalogues, critical theory books, artists’ editions and magazines.
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Anna Dezeuze examines Deleuze Monument (2010) and looks at the way the production and maintenance of the work negotiated politics, aesthetics and community participation within the public space of Cite Champfleury, Avignon. Dezeuze looks at how this work was shaped by Hirschhorn’s previous monument works dedicated to four philosophers (Baruch Spinoza in Amsterdam in 1999, Georges Bataille in Kassel in 2002 and Antonio Gramsci in the South Bronx in 2013). Afterall magazine’s One Work series takes a single work of art and considers its significance within the artists’ practice and how it has shaped our wider understanding of art.
THOMAS HIRSCHHORN: DELEUZE MONUMENT By Anna Dezeuze, Afterall Books, 2014 In past interviews Thomas Hirschhorn has stated: “I want... my work to fight…for its own existence, for its survival,” and that he needed “to make work that must fight to exist no matter where.” What does it mean to create work that must fight for its own survival?
is a writer based in Vancouver. She is the Co-founder and Editor of livedspace, a research and publishing organization that investigates the social production of space in relation to contemporary cultural production through publishing and curatorial projects.
BOPHA CHHAY
READ Picks
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TEXTE ZUR KUNST: SPECULATION ISSUE NO. 93, MARCH, 2014 Issue 93 of Texte Zur Kunst examines what seems to be the word of the moment: speculation. What does it mean in the field of contemporary art? Contributors offer different interpretations of speculation in this moment of relevance and discuss the impact it has made on the art market in generating value in the field of contemporary art, the nature of collections and the production of “things,” as well as the role it plays as a philosophical model for discussing and grasping the uncertain. Contributors include Arman Avanessian, Suhail Malik, Alexander Kluge, Sophie Cras and Rainald Goetz, among others.
CINEMA OF THE PRESENT By Lisa Robertson, Coach House Books, 2014 Cinema of the Present takes the form of a series of questions and statements, a book-length poem. The cumulative effect of these questions, statements and observations develops a rhythm of alternating textures. The tone can switch from a philosophical query to a mundane observation to a statement that possibly provides an answer. If you’re looking for one that is, you might find one. Cinema of the Present allows you to draw your own free associations by intertwining them with your own personal narratives.
I, LITTLE ASYLUM By Emmanuelle Guattari, translated by E.C. Belli, Semiotext(e), 2014 Emmanuelle Guattari spent her childhood at La Borde clinic with her family. It was where her father Felix Guattari, the psychoanalyst and philosopher, worked on developing an innovative model encouraging patients to partake in the daily running of the program and facility. I, Little Asylum is a series of vignettes that offers an alternative to what we might expect from life in an internment clinic for the mentally ill. Guattari’s prose counters this idea of confinement with her light and spacious prose.
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GONDA By Maria Fusco and Ursula Mayer, Sternberg Press, 2012 This ciné-roman of Ursula Mayer’s enigmatic film Gonda (2012) is as visually entrancing as the film it accompanies. The book features shots of transgendered Dutch fashion model Valentijn de Hingh traversing volcanic terrain dressed in a gold-plated shift dress, among other fashionably staged tableaus. The screenplay, written by Maria Fusco as a workshopping of Ayn Rand’s 1934 play Ideal, extracts the personal pronoun, creating a
I should also mention that I was pretty excited when I got home and tore the wrapper off to find a gorgeous pre-war map of Berlin folded into the book jacket. It is now taped to my bedroom wall.
BERLIN CHILDHOOD CIRCA 1900 By Walter Benjamin, translated by Carl Skoggard, Publication Studio Portland, 2010 Warning: shelving books at READ is very dangerous. Lately I’ve been coming home with stacks of books picked out of the “to be shelved” pile. This happened to me the other day when some new books from Publication Studio Portland came in, one of which was Berlin Childhood Circa 1900 by Walter Benjamin. The text was never published in Benjamin’s time; he wrote this series of childhood sketches around the time of his departure from his beloved Berlin in 1932 during the Nazi regime, and it wasn’t until 1950 that Theodor W. Adorno oversaw the first publication of Berlin Childhood. The PS version includes detailed commentary by Carl Skoggard, and you can either flip between the text and commentary as you’re reading— like I did—or wait to delve into Skoggard’s well-researched notes after finishing Benjamin’s touching prose.
is a fourth-year student in Critical and Cultural Practices. She is an avid reader and writer. She works at READ.
INGRID OLAUSON
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SCHIZO-CULTURE By Sylvère Lotringer and David Morris, Semiotext(e), 2013 The now canonical independent publisher of critical theory, fiction, philosophy and art criticism just celebrated its 40th anniversary at MoMA PS1 with performances and readings by the artists, intellectuals and writers involved with and influenced by Semiotext(e). The conference documented the chaotic creativity of an emerging downtown New York scene, producing a series of seminal papers by the likes of Gilles Deleuze, Jean-François Lyotard, Guy Hocquenghem, Michel Foucault, The Ramones, John Cage, Philip Glass and William S. Burroughs. “There can be no doubt that a cultural revolution of unprecedented dimensions has taken place in America during the last thirty years,” William S. Burroughs writes in his text, “The Limits of Control.” Here, you can read the transcripts from the legendary conference, as well as interviews with the artists, radicals, theorists, writers and musicians who were involved in the cultural revolution of this particular time and place.
CAMERA By Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Dalkey Archive Press, 1988 Camera is a short novel by Jean-Philippe Toussaint. He is often associated with a generation of writers that emerged after the Nouveau Roman, a French literary movement that diverged from realist traditions. It’s a curious little book that has been stocked solely for the students in Aaron Peck’s Written Projects class—of which I am in. Although only a few copies still remain on our shelves, I would recommend it to anyone who is in for a good laugh over the banality of everyday experiences such as getting a pedicure, learning to drive, shopping at the grocery store and taking holiday pics—all this is encompassed in the simple metaphor of politely piercing the lone olive on your plate with a fork.
“polyphonic monologue” of voices that echo words like: “arterial, venereal, immaterial, ethereal, sidereal, funereal.” Cool.
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DISPOSSESSION: THE PERFORMATIVE IN THE POLITICAL By Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou, Polity Press, 2013 There is an engaged clarity that rings with both conviction and openness that makes this extended dialogue between Judith Butler and Athena Athanasiou utterly compelling. These two feminist scholars give us a recognizable map of the current global political terrain; yet there is also a restless yearning for modes of being together, of plural performativity and of affective alliances that gives a sense of a world beyond (and against) neoliberalism. This dialogue thinks through the political possibilities of “apprehension, outrage, despair and occasionally hope,” and does so in a way where bodies do matter—and often those bodies amass on the street, in plazas and maybe even where you live. This is a great book to carry around
ANIMACIES: BIOPOLITICS, RACIAL MATTERING, AND QUEER AFFECT By Mel Y. Chen, Duke University Press, 2012 It’s rare that a book from an academic press crackles in the way that Mel Y. Chen’s Animacies does. Not only is this a book that is bold in its articulations—what it brings together—but it is also a book that strives for real innovation not only in terms of its thinking, but also in terms of how it approaches sexuality, race, the environment and affect. Expanding the notion of “animacy” beyond “the state of being animate,” Chen unreels new materialist readings of a super-engaging range of things, ideas and events. The chapters on lead, race, mercury toxicity and affect are really astounding reading.
is a poet and critic based in Vancouver and Vienna. He is the author of After Euphoria (ECU Press, 2014) and The Vestiges (Talonbooks, 2014) to name only two of his many books and publications.
JEFF DERKSEN
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POSH LUST By Louis Cabri, New Star Books, 2014 No poet in North America quite handles the word and the syllable as adroitly as Louis Cabri does. Following his totally great POETRYWORLD, this new book, Posh Lust, is a hilarious take down and toss up of the very political condition of living in our post-political world. This is the most intensely funny and smart book of poetry that I’ve read in a long while. It’s organized around a series of “nonsequitors” and “sequitors,” so that the whole book is a push and pull of how meaning and cultural logic are made. As the book blurts out at one point: “All these words go together!” / “Yes! All these words go together.”
OUT OF BEIRUT By Suzanne Cotter, Modern Art Oxford, 2006 For the exhibition The Militant Image that Urban Subjects (that’s Sabine Bitter, Helmut Weber and I) curated at Camera Austria in Graz, we ended up selecting several artists from Lebanon who had their politics and their aesthetics shaped during the so-called civil war and the years following. This catalogue of a show and symposium that was at Modern Art Oxford kept coming up in the reading I was doing around this remarkable group of artists—which include Paola Yacoub, Walid Sadek, Walid Raad, and Jalal Toufic—so I ran down to READ and sure enough they had it on the shelf. The book serves as a detailed introduction to these artists and their context— a context which, because of the break in art production the war caused, saw a group of younger artists emerge as postconceptualists who tackled the big concepts of history, place, the archives and the city in super smart ways.
and dip in and out of—it’s a book about collective precarity and the refusal to become disposable. And, who can resist a book with “dispossession” in the title? I know I can’t.
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