Year-long speaker series and curators’ talks at the Vancouver Art Gallery reflect on art, exhibition-making and nationhood

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Vancouver Art Gallery speakers and curators

The Vancouver Art Gallery has announced two public programming streams—Marking Place and Work in Progress—a year-long series of engaging talks by artists, curators, cultural historians and Canadian thought-leaders. These talks will delve into the world of exhibition-making, Indigenous art practices, the design history of Canada and how art practices in British Columbia fit within the larger global arts community, among other topics.

2017 serves as a starting point for complex conversations as the country takes the time to examine our understanding of nationhood during Canada’s 150th anniversary. The Marking Place speaker series will look at visual art, design and art institutions in relation to ideas concerning Indigeneity, colonialism, immigration and national identity. Four prominent Canadians will share their thoughts on these connections and our evolving sense of place. And at this important moment of public national reflection, Work in Progress curators’ talks will take the opportunity to consider the Vancouver Art Gallery’s own institutional history by assessing exhibition-making, past and present. In this series, five of the Gallery’s curators will each discuss an exhibition they have organized this year in relationship to a project from the Gallery’s history, highlighting some of the ways that visual art has developed in Western Canada.

For more information, please visit: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/events_and_programs/speaker_series.html#mp

Marking Place Speaker Series

Speaker: Wanda Nanibush

When: Tuesday, March 7, 2017, 7:00 p.m.

About: In this talk, Wanda Nanibush, Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior and Assistant Curator of Indigenous and Canadian art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, discusses the power and place of Indigenous artists and art in shaping the country now called Canada within a long history of ongoing resistance and resurgence.

Speaker: Jin-me Yoon

When: Friday, May 19, 12:00 p.m.

About: Artist Jin-me Yoon speculates on significant shifts in her art practice to consider ideas such as nationalism and transnationalism, the local and global and the self and other in order to imagine possibilities for relational transformation.

Speaker: Michael Prokopow

When: October

About: Cultural historian and curator Dr. Michael Prokopow will offer his thoughts on the design history of Canada as it relates to the cultural and material effects of immigration. He will discuss how design—a category of human made objects under the umbrella of material culture—has long been seen as an effective mechanism in the construction of national identity. Dr. Prokopow will also consider how contemporary design practice in Canada presents an opportunity to consider and question the values of nationhood and nationality.

Speaker: Michelle Jacques

When: November

About: With an interest in identity, the construction of gender and our social fabric, curator Michelle Jacques gives her reading of place and how art in British Columbia fits within national and global art communities. Her lecture will also reflect on how institutions must think critically about their role in constructing national identity through exhibitions and public programs.

Work in Progress Curators’ Talks

Speaker: Ian Thom

Exhibitions: Susan Point: Spindle Whorl (2017) & Arts of the Raven (1967)

When: Tuesday March 21, 7:00 p.m.

Where: In the Gallery, Room 4East

About: Ian Thom, Senior Curator – Historical, will discuss the exhibition Susan Point: Spindle Whorl (2017) in relation to the exhibition Arts of the Raven (1967), an exhibition that honoured the one hundredth anniversary of Canadian Confederation, which included Tsimshian, Tlingit, Haida and Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw art.

Speaker: Daina Augaitis

Exhibitions: Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures (2016/2017) & Young Romantics (1985)

When: Tuesday, April 4, 7:00 p.m.

Where: In the Gallery, Room 4East

About: Daina Augaitis, Chief Curator/Associate Director, will trace the history of local survey exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This talk will look at the trajectory from the Gallery’s long history of BC Annual exhibitions, which gave many artists between 1932 and 1968 their first exposure to a broad public, to the Young Romantics (1985), featuring the work of eight Vancouver artists, to the current exhibition Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, the first in a series of triennials that reaffirms the institution’s commitment to the local.

Speaker: Diana Freundl

Exhibitions: Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver (2017) & Here Not There (1995)

When: Tuesday April 25, 7:00 p.m.

Where: In the Gallery, Annex Workshop

About: Associate Curator, Asian Art, Diana Freundl will discuss her exhibition Pacific Crossings: Hong Kong Artists in Vancouver (2017) in relation to the exhibition Here Not There (1995). Here Not There presented sculpture, stoneware and paintings by Vancouver-based Chinese artists Gu Xiong, Huang Yali, Sam Lam, Shi Guoliang and Zhang Qun that illuminated the problematic nature of cultural identity in unfamiliar territory and pointed to the impermanent character of “home” in the contemporary world.

Speaker: Grant Arnold

Exhibition: Pictures from Here (2017) & 13 Cameras (1978)

When: June

About: Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, will discuss the exhibition Pictures from Here (2017) in relation to 13 Cameras (1978), an exhibition of photographs by a group of individuals who use the photographic image as a means of visual expression, collectively curated by the artists. It included work by Marian Penner Bancroft, Iain Baxter, Taki Bluesinger, Chris Dahl, Michael de Courcy, Don Druick, Chris Gallagher, Barrie Jones, Roy Kiyooka, Dale Pickering, Dave Rimmer, Kazumi Tanaka and Paul Wong.

Speaker: Bruce Grenville

Exhibitions: Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting (2017) & weak thought (1998/1999)

When: November

About: Senior Curator Bruce Grenville will discuss the exhibition Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting (2017) co-curated with David MacWilliam and the exhibition weak thought (1998/1999) co-curated with Grant Arnold. Both exhibitions are examples of collaborative projects that offer diverse and sometimes contradictory models for examining the production of contemporary abstract art from Canada and Vancouver respectively. Drawing its title from Italian philosophy, weak thought featured painting, sculpture and mixed-media works by ten contemporary artists from Vancouver whose art encouraged the redressing of modernist art and ideas from within.

Dates and times are subject to change. Please check here for complete up-to-date listings: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/events_and_programs/speaker_series.html#mp