JImmy Robert: Wanna talk about reading?

Opening reception: Thursday, January 19th at 7pm

Performance: Tuesday, January 24th at 7pm

Bringing together recent works that span photography, video, drawing, sculpture and performance, Jimmy Robert's upcoming solo exhibition at Western Front centres on conversations – between image and text, text and movement, performance and objecthood. Through these works, Robert positions reading as the central gesture to move across language, image and material. A recent nominee for the AGO's AIMIA photography prize, Robert often creates photographic works on paper that oscillate between two and three dimensional. Images of the body are creased, folded, curled and crumpled, mimicking the body itself and speaking to ideas of durability and ephemerality. 

Wanna talk about reading? also places Robert's practice in conversation with the history of movement art practices at the Western Front through collaboration and dialogue with original Western Front member Jane Ellison. Arriving at the Western Front in 1975, Ellison has been active at the centre since its inception through various performances, projects and workshops. Ellison's ongoing improvisational movement class, which began in 1977, is now the Western Front's most enduring activity. Extending outwards both from conversations with Ellison and the material works in the exhibition, Jimmy Robert will develop a new performance set to take place in the gallery on Tuesday, January 24th.

Artist Biographies: Jimmy Robert was born in Guadeloupe in 1975 and currently lives and works in Bucharest. His multidisciplinary practice encompasses performance, photography, film, video and drawing. Robert typically uses photography as a starting point for his works on paper, breaking down the divisions between two and three dimensions, as well as image and object. In some works Robert uses found photographs that he tears, collages, tapes and crumples before digitally scanning them and pinning them to the wall. In other works, Robert takes new photographs in his studio and crams them into wooden boxes or arranges them on the gallery floor. His sculptures similarly give the illusion of paper forms and often play with notions of value and durability. Integrated within his photographic and sculpture practice, performance remains a central part of Robert's work. His dance and performance works also oscillate between image and objecthood as well as the personal and the political.  

Jane Ellison is a Vancouver-based dancer, teacher and artist focused in embodied anatomy and somatic practices. Since 1975 Ellison has participated in, organized and led numerous performances and workshops at the Western Front, with her ongoing improvisational movement class Boing situated at the centre of this practice. Ellison's cross-disciplinary work reflects and is influenced by the Western Front itself, a building that has acted as a studio space, gallery, dance studio and home to artists. Between 1990 and 2008 her position on faculty at Studio 58, Langara College's acclaimed theatre school, provided another platform for her research into the relationships between movement, art, performance and life.

Presented with the generous support of Le Consulat Général de France à Vancouver.