New Director/Curators Kim Nguyen & Shaun Dacey

Field Work

Diane Borsato, Roy Caussy, Brendan Fernandes, Hannah Jickling, Will Kwan

Guest curated by Shaun Dacey

26 June – 24 July 2010

Opening Reception: Friday 25 June 2010 8pm

Artist Talk by Brendan Fernandes: Saturday 26 June 2010 2pm

MFA in Paper Maché event hosted by Hannah Jickling with Vincent Trasov: Thursday 15 July 2010 6 pm

Field Work presents projects by Canadian artists which foster collaboration and exchange beyond studios or exhibition spaces. In search of skills, expertise, and conversation outside of the artistic field, the artists in this exhibition venture into specific locales developing dialogue with amateur scientists, speech coaches, students, and passersby on the street. Presented though various media within the exhibition, each project offers traces of artists’ experiences in the field.

The exhibition will feature three new projects: Diane Borsato organizes a series of field trips between the Vancouver Chapter of Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and the Vancouver Mycology Society; Roy Caussy works with a horse to perform a meaningful action; and Hannah Jickling offers a Vancouver installment of her MFA in Paper Maché project. For his 2009 video performances Foe and Performing Foe, Brendan Fernandes hired a speech coach to teach him to speak English with Swahili, Indian, and Canadian accents, and practiced these intonations with a group of university students.  Will Kwan’s 2004 Learning From Chinatown is a large-scale map of Chinatown in New York City based on maps he had asked people in the neighborhood to draw.

Join us for the following public events occurring throughout the exhibition. Fernandes will discuss his two video works within the frame of his practice Saturday 26 June 2010 at 2pm. Hannah Jickling will develop an installation throughout the duration of the exhibition as part of her MFA in Paper Maché project. Her project will culminate in an evening of paper maché workshops and conversation with Vincent Trasov Thursday July 15, 2010 at 6pm.

This exhibition is curated by Shaun Dacey, a candidate to the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

For more information, please visit www.accessgallery.ca, or contact:

Shaun Dacey

Guest Curator

shaun.dacey@gmail.com

Diane Borsato, The Chinatown Foray, 2009

Terrestrial/Celestial: Artist Talk by Diane Borsato

Sunday May 9th, 2pm
Western Front Lux
303 E8th Avenue, Vancouver, BC

Access Gallery presents an artist talk by Sobey award nominated artist Diane Borsato at the Western Front Lux, 2pm Sunday May 9th. In Vancouver to complete a new project for Access Gallery’s summer exhibition, Field Work (June 25 – July 24), Diane Borsato will discuss her recent relational and interventionist projects. In works such as The Chinatown Foray (2009-10) and Terrestrial/Celestial, the artist collaborated on events with groups of amateur mycologists (mushroom enthusiasts) and astronomers. In the ongoing work Italian Lessons, the artist has been establishing unorthodox language instruction tutorials with physics students, ambulance paramedics, and salsa dancers. Other recent projects include Snakebus, where the artist hired a reptile educator (with live reptiles) to substitute for herself in a performance on a school bus. Borsato’s current practice explores multi-sensory, affective, and relational ways of knowing. Several recent works involve amateur naturalists, plants, fungi and animals. For examples of her work visit: www.dianeborsato.net

Bio:
Diane Borsato completed a BFA at York University (1997), an MFA at Concordia University (2001), and an MA in Performance Studies from the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. (2003). She has exhibited sculpture, video, photography, performance and public interventions at various galleries and museums in Canada and internationally. Recent exhibitions include Nuit Blanche Toronto (2006), ARTEFACT  Montreal Sculpture Triennial (2007), L’Oeil de Poisson in Quebec City (2008), The Power Plant in Toronto (2008), the AGYU in Toronto (2009), The National Museum of Fine Arts of Quebec and the Museum of Contemporary Art of the Val-de-Marne in Paris, Mercer Union in Toronto, and the Umami Festival of Performance Art in New York City. Borsato’s works have been studied and reviewed in many publications including The Globe and Mail, C Magazine, Prefix Photo, Esse, and Canadian Art. She is currently Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studio at the University of Guelph, and lives in Toronto. For examples of past work and information about upcoming projects visit www.dianeborsato.net

The exhibition Field Work is curated by Shaun Dacey, a candidate in the Masters Degree in Critical Curatorial Studies at The University of British Columbia, with support from the Killy Foundation and the Audain Endowment for Curatorial Studies through the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory in collaboration with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

Access opens its new space on Friday 16 April at 8 PM with the launch of Raymond Boisjoly’s first solo exhibition The Ever-Changing Light!

Presented in partnership with the Signal and Noise Festival, The Ever-Changing Light runs 17 April – 29 May 2010.

The Ever-Changing Light explores the conceptual and material understanding of communication. As Boisjoly articulates:

“Though there is always the possibility it could be something else, The Ever-Changing Light pairs deliberate constructions with incidental and self-generating forms to grasp the unarticulated middle beyond beginnings and the end. Live feed video projections of television static and video-based recursion stand as the visual surrogates for ill-defined and convoluted ideas concerning the situation we find ourselves in, what will never be and what is still to come–instantaneous and forever deferred.

Working from disparate sources bearing no established relation to one another, The Ever-Changing Light does not exist to redeem any mere concept. Instead, it provides a means to explore inchoate, expansive potential and existing, delimited phenomena.”

Accompanying the exhibition will be the launch of a text-based public art project by Boisjoly installed on the façade of Access Gallery’s new space.

Raymond Boisjoly is an Aboriginal artist living and working in Vancouver. He wishes to thank the First Peoples’ Heritage, Language & Culture Council for their support.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

Come celebrate Access Gallery’s big move!

We are pleased to announce that effective 1 April 2010, Access Gallery will
relocate to 437 West Hastings St in the heart of downtown Vancouver!

As moving is a major endeavor, we need all the help we can get. Don’t
worry, we aren’t going to ask you to lift boxes! Rather we would like to
sit down and enjoy a delicious meal with you and chat about the gallery’s
past and future. Our current next-door neighbour, the Irish Heather, is
kindly hosting a dinner in support of Access, and we would like to see you
there!

Please join us on Thursday March 25th at 8PM for a delicious meal and a
drink, a slide show of memorable moments at 206 Carrall St, and more
detailed announcements of the move!

For only $20 per person, as part of their long table dinner series, Irish
Heather offers a drink and a gourmet meal featuring sustainably harvested
freshwater fish or a vegetarian pasta. Proceeds help Access fund its
relocation and renovation of the new space.

The menu options are:

Trout Saffron Risotto with Almond Green Beans

or

Herb Gnocchi With White Onion Puree, Butternut Squash & Shaved Parmesan

Dining at a 40ft communal table, you will enjoy great conversations and
amazing food! Guaranteed!

To reserve your place, please email access@vaarc.ca with your name, phone
#, and meal choice. Seating is limited. We recommend early registration.

For more information of the Long Table Dinner Series please see
http://ltsmenu.blogspot.com/ and

http://www.vanmag.com/Restaurants/The_Next_Course

Also note: we will have Life After Doomsday drink coasters at the dinner!

Hope to see you there!

Curated by Charo Neville

Presented as part of Bright Light
www.bright-light.ca

by Access Gallery | www.vaarc.ca

Opening Reception:Friday 12 February 2010, 7 – 10 PM

13 February – 20 March, 2010

Access Gallery is pleased to present a new work by Osvaldo Yero as part of Bright Light: a temporary public art project commissioned by the City of Vancouver that involves fourteen local art organizations. Guest curated by Charo Neville, Passage is one of a series of cultural projects that will be on view through the months of February and March along the Carrall Street Greenway in the Downtown Eastside. Yero’s project will be visible from the street during the day through the window of Access Gallery.

Peering through a revealed slot in the otherwise darkened window the viewer will experience intense flashes of light, created by flickering LED lights which momentarily highlight knife blades set against a black backdrop in a completely darkened room. The brief beams of light on the spikes of metal suggest the reflection of light created from a lighthouse beacon, announcing a vast dark sea. Engaging the individual senses, yet disorientating the viewer and evoking the feeling of being alone in the middle of a dark ocean at night, the work offers a sense of solitude within the public space of the street. Its contrasting beauty and brutality also incites inevitable reflections about violence and self-preservation in the marginalized neighbourhood in which the work is situated.

As an immigrant to Canada from Cuba, Yero has consistently been concerned with themes that relate to his experience as part of the growing Cuban diaspora. Since living in Canada, Yero still frequently visits his homeland, where many of his family and friends continue to live with limited possibilities to leave. Like the paradoxical freedom and panic that swimming in a wide dark ocean may induce, Cubans are legally bound to their country, which is both home and prison. Many who try to escape across the ocean do not survive, or arrive on the other side only to be returned. The metaphor of death prevails in Yero’s practice. The title of the work, Passage, reflects these ideas – water is evoked as the dual possibility of freedom and death.

This new work also addresses myriad issues of integration and dislocation facing immigrants to a new country. Exhibited during a global event promoting nationalistic pride through marketing terms such as “dream,” “discover,” and “celebrate,” the installation in turn speaks to the underlying complexities of these utopic ideals.

This project will also include a forthcoming exhibition catalogue, to be published by Access Gallery, in collaboration with the artist and the curator.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, the 2010 Legacies Now’s program, Innovations, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

Presented by Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad

DEN

KATE SANSOM

Access Gallery Artist Residency

21 November 2009 – 23 January 2010

Closing Reception:

Saturday 23 January 2010 at 7PM

Since November 2009, Artist in Residence Kate Sansom has explored and assessed underground spaces in Vancouver that could serve as shelters in the event of a catastrophe. During her time as a resident, Sansom has hosted weekly screenings under the series Subterranean Movie Nights in visualization of what it might be like to live underground, and seminars on the theme of apocalyptic anxiety and cultural speculation.

On 23 January 2010, Access Gallery proudly hosts the closing reception for Den. The artist will present her findings, share her ideas, and further her appeal to enlist visitors’ underground spaces as communal shelters in the event of a great upheaval.

Kate Sansom is a conceptual artist, and occasional curator.  Her work portrays manifestations of anxiety and neuroses, focusing recently on speculative forms of anxiety; the anticipation of an apocalyptic future for human-kind.  Her work has been exhibited locally and across Canada, and has received mention in international online-publications such as Artforum and Canadian Art. In 2009 Kate received her Masters of Applied Arts in Visual Art from Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where her research was endowed by the Joseph M. Lombardier Masters Research Scholarship.

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers. Access is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres.

Come EAT!  Holiday Feast!

DRINK!   mulled wine, hot apple cider with rum, and other libations!

DANCE!   to Weekend Leisure Club’s karaoke performance!

BE MERRY!  hang out at Artist-in-Residence Kate Sansom’s post-apocalyptic cocktail lounge!

There will be music, Bad Santa, SURPRISE AUCTION, raffles for cool prizes!

This holiday event honours and celebrates hard working artists, curators, writers, and other cultural producers who have given so much to ACCESS, yet ask little in return. This event is made possible by the work of 100 volunteers.

Admission is free for ACCESS volunteers and members.

Or you can become a member at the door!

Door Opens at 7pm until 12 midnight Saturday, December 12th.

Bring your friends, and party with us!

Ellipsis

Roy Meuwissen

21 November 2009 – 23 January 2010

Opening Reception: 20 November 2009, 8 PM

Closed for the holidays from 15 December – 5 January 

Continuing with our body of programming that focuses on the lives of objects, ACCESS presents Ellipsis, Toronto-based artist Roy Meuwissen’s first exhibition in Vancouver. Ellipsis, a new, site-specific project created for ACCESS, begins with the familiar, our own tile flooring. The artist takes the motif and displaces it within the installation through photography, print, textile, video and a magic trick. Through this series of translations the artist directly engages the structures of the gallery by continuously reanimating the space.

The exhibition is accompanied by a limited-run print multiple featuring the essay “Carpets,” from Vilém Flusser’s 1999 book The Shape of Things, reprinted with thanks to Reaktion Books, UK.

Born in the Netherlands, Roy Meuwissen immigrated to Canada in the early 1980s. He studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design before receiving his MFA from the University of Windsor. He was recently invited to the Banff Centre for the Arts to participate in a residency led by German art critic Jan Verwoert. The artist would like to thank the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support through their exhibition assistance program. www.roymeuwissen.com

ACCESS gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, BC Arts Council, City of Vancouver, our members and volunteers for their ongoing assistance. ACCESS is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC).