NEWS & EVENTS

Gwenessa Lam will be attending the following residencies:

Banff Centre (Jan – Feb 2010) http://www.banffcentre.ca/

MacDowell Colony (April – May 2010) http://www.macdowellcolony.org/

Past Exhibitions

Windows
June 12 to July 25, 2009

Photo: Blaine Campbell, Republic Gallery, Vancouver, BC

In the series Windows, Gwenessa Lam explores the notion of absence through paintings of vacant windows and walls. The windowed wall is a liminal space between the interior and exterior. It suggests a potential to see, to visualize the other side without physically entering into the space beyond the shutters or glass pane. This tension – between vision and knowledge, disclosure and concealment – is central to the work. Their opacity inverts the transparent, revelatory function of windows, operating more as empty screens and portals, a means of surveillance or escape. The setting of the interior situates notions of alienation and estrangement within the familiar and banal. Representations of the void, in the guise of the blank window or the shadowed wall, play upon the viewer’s desire to fill the void, whilst never completely satisfying it.

———–   Windows is showing June 12 through July 25 with an opening reception on Thursday, June 11, 7-9 pm. Regular gallery hours are 11 am – 4 pm, Thursday through Saturday, and by appointment.   ———–

REPUBLIC GALLERY
732 Richards St, 3rd Floor | Thurs-Sat, 11am-4pm & by appointment
www.republicgallery.com | 604.632.1590

Salon 08

VINEspace gallery, Vyner Street,

London, UK, E2 9DG

December 5 – 21, 2008

Fri- Sat, 12-6pm

Selected Artists: Adriette Myburgh, Aidan Doherty, Alastair Levy, Alexander Heaton, Amy Stephens, Bartosz Kolata, Benjamin Senior, Carolina Ambida, Caroline De Lannoy, Celine Sheridan, Charlotte Bracegirdle, Chris Daniels, Colin Crotty, Corinne Felgate, Craig M Edwards, Daisy Richardson, Daniel Bell, Dave Hanger, David Ben White, Eleanor Moreton, Emma Roche, Eva Rudlinger, Florin Ungureanu, G. L Brierley, Gesche Würfel, Gill Capewell, Georgina McNamara, Giulia Ricci, Gordon Shrigley, Gwenessa Lam, Hania Stella-Sawicka, Hayley Goodsell, Hideko Inoue, Hugh Gillan, James Ryan, Jan Imberi, Jandi Kim, Jarik Jongman, Jochen Klein, Julie Cockburn, Karen Moore, Louise Winter, Lydia Polzer, Nathan Jones, Nick Smith, Petros Chrisostomou, Pippa Gatty, Ralph Dunne, Risa Tsunegi, Ross Jones, Rosalind Davis, Sabine Tholen, Sean Fader, Sharon McPhee, Sonia Uddin & Leah Elsey, Sophio Medoidze, Sue Morgan, Suzanne Moxhay, Tim Phillips, Tom Butler, William Wright, Yuki Aruga

About Salon 08:

Salon⁰⁸ is an annual contemporary art exhibition produced by Matt Robert Arts in collaboration with London’s most exciting venues. This year, working in partnership with VINEspace gallery, located at the heart of the thriving East London art scene, Salon⁰⁸ features 62 artists, handpicked from over 900 applications by a panel of prominent art experts.

This year’s selection panel consisted of Kate Jones, art collector and patron, Cath Ferguson, artist, lecturer, writer and curator, and Andrea Tarsia, Head of Exhibitions and Projects at the Whitechapel Gallery.

Matt Roberts Arts is a not-for-profit organisation based in South London, dedicated to supporting the professional development of artists, and creative practitioners. The annual Salon show creates a platform for artists to develop new work to be seen by an audience of their peers as well, as invited collectors and curators.

The Private View for Salon⁰⁸will take place on Thursday 4th of December with the exhibition remaining open until Sunday 21st December.

For images of work, and further information on the selection panel please visit www.mattroberts.org.uk/curatorial.html or email: press@mattroberts.org.uk

SHOWROOM – Past Exhibition

EXHIBITIONS

SHOWROOM

Centre A, 2 West Hastings St.
Vancouver, BC, Canada, V6B 1G8

www.centrea.org

Tel: 604.683.8326

Hours: Tue – Sat, 11am – 6pm

Centre A is pleased to present Showroom, a project conceptualized and organized by Kristina Lee Podesva and Inge Roecker in collaboration with Michelle Allard, Marianne Bos, Patrick Chan, Paul de Guzman, Vanessa Kwan, Gwenessa Lam, Heidi Nagtegaal, Alex Pensato, Ryan Peter, and Jordan Strom.

Showroom is a platform for addressing the relationship between art and public space through the framework of a condominium showroom/construction site. As a collaborative effort undertaken by artists, architects, curators, and the public, the project engages with urgent themes of contemporary culture, spatial practice, and artistic production through an installation, symposium, and series of public forums. Showroom facilitates discussion and analysis between cultural institutions, artists, interdisciplinary groups, and individuals involved in looking at the impact of urban redevelopment in Vancouver and beyond.

Ground Zero Redux

The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC
March 8 – April 5, 2008
Opening Reception: Friday, March 7 at 8:00 pm

www.helenpittgallery.org

102-148 Alexander St., Vancouver, BC, (604) 681-6740

Hours: Tues-Sat, 12-5pm

Artists:
Julie Andreyev
Martha González Palacios
Nick Lakowski
Gwenessa Lam
Jeremy Isao Speier
Marlene Yuen

curated by Jeremy Todd

PRESS RELEASE

CATALOGUE ESSAY

Ground Zero Redux – Press Release

“You won’t say that I hold the present too high, and if I do not despair of it, it is only because its desperate situation fills me with hope.” — Karl Marx in a letter to Arnold Ruge, May, 1843

Ground Zero Redux brings together new and recent work by six unique Vancouver artists to explore the complex conceptual, narrative and material trajectories of the term “Ground Zero.” This exhibition—featuring photography, drawing, digital video projection, text and bookwork, assemblage, painting and kinetic sculpture—looks across a diverse range of artistic practice to explore the creative efficacy of Ground Zero, reevaluating the enduring legacy of this term as it relates to our current moment.

Ground Zero was first used as a name for the areas directly below atomic explosions (beginning with the Trinity Test Site, Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945), later signifying reinvention or rebirth through acts of leveling, collapse, total destruction or reduction to essences and tabula rasa-like states. While the violent creative/destructive essentialism of these scenarios has been critically derided across a variety of fields, Ground Zero mythologies continue to influence both the nebulous terrain of political policy, environmental discourse and philosophical inquiry, and the often urgent, definitive nature of our global socio-economic realities and ecological situation. The ongoing spectre of 9-11—its place in our present narratives of protection, justification and preemption, and the resulting fallout of the actualization of these ideas—is a grave example of this. As this exhibition suggests, notions of Ground Zero can also persist in what philosopher Giorgio Agamben has called “bare life”—the reduction of people to Ground Zero-like states through incarceration, expulsion from political community, denial of rights and resources, torture and extreme poverty.

With these complications in mind, artists in this exhibition enact a variety of experiments with ideas of Ground Zero that are not strictly deconstructive, archeological or ironic. Instead, the works choose to critically engage the possibilities of starting over, and restoring points of departure to consciousness.

Julie Andreyev is a Vancouver-based multidisciplinary artist whose practice explores the social/ spatial character of the city and ideas of animal consciousness. Her work has been shown in Canada, the US, Europe and Japan. Andreyev’s work is supported by The Canada Council for the Arts, The British Columbia Arts Council, Foreign Affairs Canada, and The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. She is an Associate Professor of at the Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver, and co-curator of Interactive Futures Conference, Victoria, Canada. Website: www.fourwheeldrift.com

Martha González Palacios is originally from Mexico, where she obtained an architecture degree in 1995 and worked as an architect. She received her BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in 2001 and her MLIS from the University of British Columbia in 2007. Her work has been shown in Vancouver, Bellingham, and Washington DC.

Jeremy Isao Speier is a Japanese-Canadian interdisciplinary artist who graduated from the Emily Carr Institute in 1992. He works in film/video, kinetic sculpture and sound, and installation and has shown extensively across Canada in solo and group exhibitions. In 2008, he will be exhibiting at Elissa Cristall Gallery and Blim.

Nick Lakowski is a Vancouver artist primarily working with paint. He received a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute in 2004 and was a founding and active member of the counterpublics collective from 2003-6.

Gwenessa Lam received a BFA from the University of British Columbia and an MFA from New York University. She has taught at New York University, Emily Carr Institute, University of British Columbia, and the Art Institute of Vancouver. Her work has been shown in Canada and the USA, including the Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Queens Museum of Art. She has also been awarded residencies at Skowhegan and MacDowell.

Marlene Yuen received her Bachelor’s in Studio Art in 1998 from the University of British Columbia. Marlene has exhibited at galleries, artist-run centres, and cultural events in Canada and Japan. Although she is a multidisciplinary artist, her current focus is on handmade books. She is an active member of the Canadian Bookbinders & Book Artist Guild and the Alcuin Society. Marlene is currently preparing for her forthcoming artist residency at the Klondike Institute of Art & Culture in Dawson City, Yukon. Please send her cookies.

Jeremy Todd is an interdisciplinary artist, teacher, curator and musician whose work has been shown, published and screened in Vancouver and beyond. He was the Director/Curator for the Helen Pitt Gallery from 2003-05, and in 2007 acted as the interim Director/Curator of the Richmond Art Gallery. He is currently teaching at UBC while developing a second feature-length experimental film.

INSIDE OUT

Richmond Art Gallery Sep 21 – Nov 4, 2007

Window no. 6, 2007, oil on canvas

Installation View, Richmond Art Gallery, 2007

http://www.richmondartgallery.org/archive_2007/lamandwang.php