What does it take to open a non-profit artist run centre in Chinatown? 221A Gallery is just about ready – the walls are up, the lights are installed and the space is ready to host its first show. However, a space is just a space and galleries need money to open, so our first show is credited to Keefer Bakery and its famous Moon Cakes.

This exhibition juxtaposes the works of two local emerging artists, Erin Perry and Amy Thompson. Their works are not antinomies of one another; rather, they represent two nodes among many insights of how we are to coexist with each other, and with otherness.

Dreams and reveries are access points for much of Perry’s work. While the 3-dimensional sculptures and installations address animals only indirectly, her subconscious delivers a version of surreality that is perhaps driven by our collective animus. Perry whimsically mixes together organic materials – both human and animal (e.g. eye covers made of shark meat, pillows with fins and tails made of cartilage). These become cathected objects that act as material entry point into her unfamiliar and uncanny subconscious. We recognize the objects, yet we do not readily recognize the relations between the objects. We
are forced to reckon, or to re-cognize their/our relations.

As a volunteer for local wildlife organizations, Thompson uses her contacts as an opportunity to create photographs of birds in convalescence. The photographs are not, however, warm and fuzzy. The frontal composition and the direct gazing-back of the avian subjects unnerve the viewer’s well-conditioned gaze, and asks challenging questions of how we are to look at these subjects, while avoiding simplistic “nature vs. culture” binary readings. While her photographs are rooted in reality, their material presence leads us to a surreal place, which forces us to look at this inter-species relationship in its uncanny truths that perhaps seem closer to a Hitchcockian cinematic fantasy or the stuff of our subconscious dreamscapes.

This representation of war concentrates on the motivations that fuel ongoing military and economic conflicts within the ever-changing alliances of international politics. Hand-processed, speed-manipulated 16 mm film loops of a guard dog lapping water, a nuclear blast and an oil-filled nodding donkey blended with appropriated imagery from the movies Wall Street and MacArthur are projected on to a rotating screen. Audio of motors blends with the noise of the projectors to create a feeling of confusion and chaos.

Faith Moosang and Christoph Runne are based in Vancouver. Moosang holds a Master's degree in Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University. Runne is a video and installation artist and a graduate of Simon Fraser University. They have exhibited locally and internationally at venues including the InterUrban Gallery in Vancouver and the Prague Contemporary Art Festival in Czechoslovakia.

Susan Brandoli holds a BA and a BFA from the University of Regina. She was executive director/curator of the Vernon Public Art Gallery for 12 years. Counterv(e)il is her graduating thesis exhibition for an interdisciplinary MFA in studio art and critical theory UBC Okanagan.

Christian Kliegel’s ONSITE transforms Artspeak’s functionality and aesthetic in response to the shift to devote Artspeak’s onsite space to publication, edition and archival projects. At once an art and architecture project, Kliegel has worked with Artspeak to create a dynamic, multi-layered and multi-functional environment that will be used as a bookstore, display space and event venue. Kliegel has interwoven the imagined uses of the space into a malleable series of grids and surfaces that will adapt to the rotating projects and events occupying the space over the next two years.

Christian Kliegel is a Vancouver based artist currently completing a degree in architecture at the University of British Columbia. Recent exhibitions of Kliegel’s work include PPPPFFFFFHHHHHHHHHHHHGGG at Helen Pitt Gallery, Vancouver and Production Postings, Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver.

Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter features a selection of Printed Matter's archives of artist books and editions from 1976 to the present, curated by AA Bronson. The archive features work by John Baldessari, Liam Gillick, Rodney Graham, Martin Kippenberger, Rita McBride, Yoko Ono, Martha Rosler, Lawrence Weiner and numerous others.

Printed Matter, based in New York, is the largest non-profit organization dedicated to the examination and interrogation of the changing role of artists' publications in the landscape of contemporary art. Founded in 1976 by a collective of artists and art workers, it is recognized as an essential voice in the increasingly diversified art world conversations and debates.

Like Printed Matter, Artspeak was founded by artists and writers, and has a 22-year history of its own artist publications and editions. Learn to Read Art: A History of Printed Matter is an opportunity to cohort with an important like-minded organization, furthering the dialogue around artists' publications and editions in Vancouver and beyond.

AA Bronson is a New York based artist, curator, healer and writer. He is currently Executive Director of Printed Matter and the NY Art Book Fair. In 1969 he founded General Idea with Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal; they lived and worked together for 25 years, founding FILE Magazine and Art Metropole, and exhibiting internationally. Since 1994 AA has had a solo practice, including solo exhibitions at Vienna Secession; The Power Plant, Toronto; Whitney and Montreal Biennials; MCA Chicago, and The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver.

Talk: AA Bronson, curator of Learn to Read Art

Saturday, September 6th, 2008

3pm at Artspeak

Stay tuned for this exciting location

TBA

Responding to the question, "Who Will Give Up Their Distinctions?" Clint Enns, mathematician, and Debashis Sinha, musician, offer video replies to Cineworks Independent Filmmakers Society. In "skin", Sinha proposes a sensitive and subtle dance with our distinctions. Acknowledging that the social and political realities of our individual and collective cultures are too complex to be either "embraced" or "given up," Sinha advocates the cultivation of nuanced relationships that allow for a reaching beyond the bounds that our distinctions supposedly impose. In "Prepare to Qualify", Enns turns the question of whether or not common distinctions around identity can be a fruitful creative medium on its head. Instead, Enns offers a more relevant 21st century problematic: How can common distinctions around medium create fruitful identities? Discussion begins when the medium starts to question itself and so Enns wonders about his own piece, "Does breaking video game systems and playing with lo-fi electronics at the age of 28 really constitute art making?"

The Green Collection originates from a larger assemblage of more than 300 canned food items accumulated since 2002. The collection is both practical as well as decorative, which is reflected in the breadth of items displayed. Label design appeals to both the collector and the consumer and is the main means for categorization.

The predominate colour in food packaging is often related to the contents, but most importantly is used to deliver a message to the consumer. Green for example, was once perceived as somewhat of a putrid colour, but is now linked closely to nature. Green packaging tends to contain food that has fewer calories, is higher in protein, and that which is marketed to be "healthier". Red, on the other hand, is an appetite stimulant and is used with more savory foods, most notably the Campbell's brand.

Colours popular in packaging currently in North America, however, may not work well overseas. While green is popular here as well in the Middle East, it does not work well in France or China. It would be a particular mistake to use such a shade in Egypt where the national colour is green. Colours outside of the normative red, green and blue packaging are used to catch the eye of the consumer in the competitive market that is the supermarket. This, however, can be risky and unlikely to draw more traditional buyers. Thus, it is imperative that a package is coloured correctly for the product to be successful in its niche market.

Aside from the fascination with the psychology used in the production of food packing, the notion of collection is also central to the project. Collection can quickly turn into obsession, and with a food product, it could certainly be considered hoarding. Perhaps, the retention of food products is justified through the classification of art and the appreciation of design. The collection also works to negate the stereotype of the "starving artist". Assurance that one will be nourished allow for confident production of art.

Charlotte Matthews is a Vancouver based artist and curator. She typically undertakes research based and collaborative projects. The artist plans to continue the collection with further acquisitions and improved levels of consumption.

Mobile Swarm will engage residents and visitors alike in creating architectures for communication and furthered dialogue around artistic and cultural showcases in the DTES. Mobile Swarm will tour to galleries on night 2 of SWARM with a mobile display unit that will receive and publish SMS messages, allowing the public to comment upon the artworks
and environments of various galleries.

Drawings from all three artists and a collaborative piece displayed on the front display window.

The Vancouver and Vienna based artists, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber present "We Declare": Spaces of Housing, an exhibition that addresses the sites and institutions where decisions and declarations regarding housing are made (ranging from local communities, to the provincial capital, and up to the United Nations).

The site-specific installation brings these spaces of symbolic and real power into the gallery through large-scale photo-based images mounted directly onto the walls. As part of their practice investigating the dynamics of cities and the potentials of architecture, Bitter/Weber have realized photo and videoworks, such as Caracas Hecho en Venezuela and Differentiated Neighborhoods of New Belgrade, across Europe and the Americas.

"We Declare" launches the platform Vancouver Flying University initiated by independent journalist Am Johal in collaboration with writer Jeff Derksen and Urban Subjects.

Based on the concept of mobile seminars and talks that Hungarian and Polish dissidents used to skirt state authorities, the talks consider the current context of gentrification and economic distortion of Vancouver's inner city in the lead up to the Olympics. The program includes a lecture by urbanist Neil Smith; a talk and workshop by
Berlin-based critic and curator Jochen Becker; a lecture by Omid Memarian, an Iranian journalist and blogger based in the USA.

Artists' Talk, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber: Saturday, September 6th at 4:30.

Hill’s exhibit, comprised of installation and drawing, uses the cast shadow of a ping pong ball against a wall to create an instance of “artificial logic.” The exhibit provides an opportunity for the viewer’s “willful misreading of rational evidence” to produce an imaginary space, informed by a “new physics” of presence.

Jake Hill is a sculptor whose work investigates the construction of artificial relationalities. Graduating from the University of British Columbia’s Master of Architecture program in 2006, Hill’s practice is informed by considerations of the body and culture and interests itself, particularly, in questions of scale.

The Helen Pitt Gallery is pleased to present Michael Drebert's project, Styrofoam Huffer, as part of the 2008 SWARM festival. Drebert departs from his recent practice of “actions” and has returned to material based sculpture to create a large scale installation that challenges notions of usefulness and asks the viewer to question their participatory involvement in social concerns both on a local and global scale.

Drebert's practice frequently questions what constitutes usefulness. Does it matter that something looks useful, but in actuality it doesn't function at all? Does something need to function in a preconceived manner in order for it to be useful? As a way of dissecting this question, he often takes objects, and places, and attempts to change their function. Oftentimes this alteration renders the thing or place useless, in terms of intended use-value. His work is both playful but also melancholic, likened to laughter when directed at someone or something's misfortune.

Styrofoam Huffer will consist of a large scale sculpture that will operate as an object that could have potential communal use. Taking his inspiration from the film Darwin's Nightmare, which depicts children in Africa melting the toxic styrofoam substance for the purpose of numbing their bodies and minds in order to function in unbearable social and political circumstances, he draws upon this particular instance to describe our own collective numbness to the social issues that surround our everyday experience. This project's intention lies not in a place of judgement or blame-placing, instead it asks us all to question where it is that we fit into the fabric of society, what happens when we all choose to participate in seemingly insignificant actions, and how certain objects or materials can have a function after their usefulness appears to have been taken away.

MICHAEL DREBERT is a Vancouver based artist and graduate the Emily Carr Institute. His work has been shown at the Western Front, the Lobby, and Artspeak, among others. He will be attending the University of Victoria in the fall to begin his MFA degree

The Helen Pitt Gallery is pleased to present Adam Gandy's Random Standup Routine Generator as the second installment of our year-long series of web-based projects.

While we have long worried about the contentious relationship we have with our technology (do we control it, or is it the other way around?), this may not be the most interesting concern about the Internet. What might be the most interesting thing is our expectation that we are building the Internet, and that our contributions are original, insightful, important and desired by others. But is Wikipedia really a valuable resource if anyone can add to it? If uneducated enthusiasts can argue opinion on its pages with academic professionals, and the peer review system is just everyone, can we trust its content to be the best possible information? If Second Life is really an online Utopia™ where anything and everything can happen, then why do most Avatars conform to contemporary ideas about the ideal human body? Why does it have an economy based on capitalism? Why does it so closely resemble the world we already occupy?


Gandy's project has no aims to solve problems, but rather is an experiment in refuting or maybe somewhat redefining our expectations. Built into web development applications is the ability to randomly access words, sounds, files, and images. Button clicks or other forms of interaction by the user generally define these actions. The Random Standup Routine Generator utilizes this form of randomness to generate on-the-fly stand-up comedy routines based on happenstance and edited by topic. While we may want to learn from the Artist’s investigation into the commonness or homogeneity of new millennium comedy, the website will not allow it. There is no interactivity here, no buttons or sliders or pause buttons, and thus no control. The standup routines simply fold in on themselves, repeating and reassembling themselves into new forms in front of the helpless user. It is organized chaos, hard to tell whether we control it or vice versa, what better example of our zeitgeist?

ADAM GANDY is an Artist, Filmmaker and Curator who lives and works in Vancouver. He is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design.

Allison Tweedie recently graduated from Emily Carr and Shawna Mclellan is currently completing her fourth year. Their work emerges as a response to the vague and very specific references engendered by the organizing principle of the exhibition’s title: Space.

PaperCut is a limited edition folio curated by J.J Kegan McFadden featuring three Winnipeg-based visual artists who work in the medium of cut-paper: tamara rae biebrich, Doug Melnyk and Paul Robles. As cut paper is a process of reduction, this particular folio blurs the lines between original collage, varied editions and hand-embellished prints. The limited edition PaperCut folio comprises ten 20” x 20” silk-screened images on paper: three prints by each artist as well as a rare collaborative print produced by all three artists. PaperCut foregrounds matters as diverse as class, gender, sexual politics and issues of cultural diversity in the work of these three artists. PaperCut works from this sense of togetherness, this understanding of ‘the group’, and the resulting assimilation into the folio form.

J.J. Kegan McFadden will give a curators talk at 7pm on September 4, 2008 at Malaspina Printmakers, 1555 Duranleau Street, Granville Island

The Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of work by the 2008 graduates of UBC’s two-year Master of Fine Art program.

Raymond Boisjoly’s focus is the equivocal status of materiality in the active pursuit of meaning made manifest through cultural phenomena. The transposition of a seasonal object onto an indigenous form provides an opportunity to negotiate their cumulative connotative potential.

Melanie Bond explores the relationship between physical geography and personal memory. Her series of photographs portray artists from Vancouver, Canada, and Chongqing, China, at a place with which they feel a connection.

Natalie Doonan employs a range of strategies including performance, video, social networking and print media to playfully engage in productions of subjectivity. The work that she has prepared for this exhibition is an homage to the artist Veronika Martz, who recently disappeared in the midst of research into a creation myth for an upcoming film.

Jesse Gray engages in the act of collecting—scavenging, foraging, garbage-picking, alley-scrounging—and the practice of recombination, as an investigation into the hidden meanings and secret histories of discarded objects and things.

Josh Hite’s video work looks at how spaces and their arrangement are transformed by those who use them. Influenced by Michel de Certeau, Hite optimistically investigates potential and real confrontation between those who move through spaces, and the physical structures designed to make them move.

Ryan Peter’s paintings borrow from the history of photography—the daguerreotype, aspects of Pictorialism, and more recent phenomena such as x-ray and satellite photography. The techniques Peter employs in the application of paint, such as pouring, pooling, and spraying, create the potential for multiple readings of his work. This slippery representation undermines the apparent aspirations of the work to photographic distance and mimesis, re-situating the work in the sphere of bodily and lived experience.

Digital Chile_08 is an exhibition, which presents a wide spectrum of Chilean New Media works. This exhibit will be presented for the first time in Vancouver as part of the New Forms Festival 2008 that showcases the works of Isabel Aranda, Klaudia Kemper, Alberto Lagos, Roberto Larraguibel, Félix Lazo and Claudio Rivera-Seguel. This exhibition aims to show Chilean avanguard art in Canada, in order to generate a comparison, debate and analysis regarding the differences and similarities of the formal and thematic content between the artistic productions of both countries.

Active Pass to IR9 depicts the full length of the Sturdies Bay/ Porlier Pass Road on Galiano Island, from the ferry terminal at the south end to the Penelekut Indian Reserve #9 at the north end. Two fields of scrolling text on either side of the represent memories and associations that Kate Hennessy and Richard Wilson each have with this physical space and their individual understandings of place as they move through it together for the first time. This projection is juxtaposed with a selection of six multimedia representations from the Warumungu Communities, Doig River First Nation, Isuma Productions, Tangentyere Council and the First People's Cultural Foundation. Referencing the 2008 New Forms Festival's mosaics theme, the project engages basic hypermedia and blogging principles to juxtapose publicly available Canadian and international on-line media with a newly-created video work.

The Red Time of Three Gorges by Xiao Xuanan/Yao Hua (Hubei, China) is a production that reflects the legacy of the Cultural Revolution period of history culture and the concept of art, and also concerns about the ecological environment and the red text of Three Gorges bequeathed with the current language and conception. The focus of the piece is to reflect the disappearing and disappeared era culture, to express the artists' records about the harmonious existence of the Cultural Revolution and the modern environment. Watching iconic images fall to the background we see how a history, culture and identity can shift and change through manmade invention. Curated by Malcolm Levy.

roots + wires - created and performed by the memelab (Jesse Scott, Mirae Rosner) w/ Ross Birdwise.

Free Daily - created and performed by Amanda Sheather & Arliss Renwick

The windows will feature a photo mural size (160” X 80” ) photograph titled 92nd St. This is from a series in progress documenting abandoned homes in Surrey BC. Additional works will be on exhibit inside the gallery. Open during SWARM and by appointment. www.brianhowellphotography.com

Based in Vancouver Brian Howell is both an award winning editorial photographer and artist. His work has been exhibited nationally, internationally and widely published.

Two critically acclaimed collections were published by Arsenal Press: FAME US Celebrity Impersonators and the Cult(ure) of Fame (2008), One Ring Circus (2002) a narrative on the indie wrestling scene in Canada.

Recent photo-essays Throw Away The House is in the current issue of Geist Magazine #69, Life after Death in the July/August issue of Vancouver Magazine.

Works by three west coast artists using minimal geometric forms in relation to visual perception and mapping.

The body as a landscape, the landscape as a body.

Russell Gorden's show is a subtle commentary on contemporary society. His work is witty, subversive and questions our concerns around wealth and position. One experiences a sense of the found in what is often lost or overlooked, as we are encouraged to re-examine our notion of the everyday. Items as common as bank cards, business cards and pornography are manipulated into new meanings and elevated from the commonplace into a more personal experience. Mr. Gordon's work directly connects the artist with the consumer.

"The Dead" will be a painting show focused on the work of a group of current and graduated UBC students and professors. Our aim is to put together a painting show that will highlight the work of nine painters who currently live and or have lived in Vancouver.

The exhibition will be a student-run initiative showcasing the work of second year MFA candidates from the University of Victoria. We are five disparate artists who have been working in a focused and intimate environment for the past year. This project is an opportunity to create a dialogue between our individual practices as well as to explore the relationships and influences that have developed as a result of our proximity and exchange of ideas. The exhibit will be comprised of unifying themes and distinctive discussions pertaining to shelter, material exploration, abstraction and illusory narratives. The exhibition will include work by Allison Cake, Katie Lyle, Sara McIntosh-Robichaud, Shelley Penfold and Ethan Wills, each investigating a variety of mediums including sculpture, installation, mixed media, performance and painting.

We are interested in participating in Swarm because it will be a valuable opportunity to exhibit and participate in the artist-run culture in Vancouver and to align ourselves with a stimulating and exploratory art community in the city.

THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!

Admission Prices:

Adult: $19.50
Senior: (65+)$15
Student: (with valid ID)$14
Children: (5 - 12)$6.50
Children: (4 and under)Free
Family: (maximum 2 adults and 2 children) $49
Members: Free

PURCHASE ADVANCE TICKETS ONLINE AT www.vanartgallery.bc.ca - 24-hour Info 604.662.4719

Four artists mobilize wit to open thought, making room for creative ambiguity in public discourse.
When active citizens were barred from discussion, Allora + Calzadilla (San Juan) turned a table upside down to survey the damage. Inversion is just one tactic in P0L1T1C. Michael Drebert (Vancouver) ignores political boundaries for poetic territory; Siebren Versteeg (Brooklyn) feeds live news through the algorithm of Coca Cola; Bani Abidi (Karachi) addresses the staging of power with its own negation. Inversion, Mimesis, Collusion, Exodus — four strategies of movement are part of a broader survey which tackles the possibility that we are obsessed by the gestures of the past and that our new forms, if they exist, are indecipherable to us. P0L1T1C contributes to an inventory of contemporary political actions by conceptual formalists.

Artist Q + A facilitated by curator Kika Thorne, September 23 8PM VIVO Media Arts Centre

This exhibition brings together works by Nadia Myre, Allan Packer, Tania Willard and Suvinai Ashoona which look at the intersections between landscape, memory, and the built environment. In Suvinai Ashoona's intricate drawings, the Arctic landscape is rendered fictive. At a stasis between construction and deconstruction, Allan Packer's sculpture consists of nearly life size partially constructed igloo cast from clear plastic. A further mediation on history and temporality, in an animation by Nadia Myre a line drawing of a single canoe is continually erased and redrawn. Akin to Robert Raushenberg's 1953 Erased De Kooning Drawing, Myre's gesture, rather than an attempt to eradicate the past, re-imagines it. Willard's series of silkscreen prints appropriate mappings of North America from the 1500s, a time when much of the land was unknown to non-Native explorers. In Willard's work this "terra incognita" is rendered increasingly abstract, mimicking the hypothetical nature of the maps themselves.

Posters by Luis Jacob & Paul De Guzman, Will Kwan & Kristina Lee Podesva, and Fedora Romita & Sara Mameni
Curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland & Johan Lundh

Between Us – A Toronto/Vancouver Exchange is an experimental, curated group project that invited six artists to participate as key contributors to, and creators of a national dialogue between the cities of Toronto and Vancouver, Canada. The project is comprised of three double-sided posters. In each instance, two artists collaboratively conceptualized and crafted one poster in a long distance dialogue.

Luis Jacob is a Toronto-based artist, curator, educator, writer, organizer and activist whose practice challenges categorization. Jacob shares an interest in social spaces like his Vancouver collaborator Paul De Guzman. De Guzman is a self-taught artist, and his practice draws from his training as an engineer. Both have incorporated the image of a tower in their poster works, but notably, not the high-rise architecture conventionally used to visually represent their respective cities.

Toronto artist Will Kwan uses a range of approaches such as installation, performance, photo, text, video and editions in his practice. Like his Vancouver collaborator Kristina Lee Podesva, he addresses the politics of space, geographies, identity and globalization. Podesva is the founder of Colourschool, a free school within a school, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. The project is dedicated to the speculative study of five colours: white, black, red, yellow, and brown. Through their poster works, Kwan and Podesva have described the space that exists between the two of them and more broadly, the space between humans in a global context.

Toronto artist Fedora Romita's versatile practice encompasses performance, video, and drawing. Romita's process-based works are self-referential, as they both respond to and envelop their own methods of creation. Both Romita and her Vancouver collaborator Sara Mameni use text and transcribe information through painstaking labour. Sara Mameni's practice of drawing, design and text deals with language and translation. These artists' poster works are in direct conversation with one another, and act as a record of what communication took place between the artists up to the point of production. The posters describe the unpredictable dialogues and inevitable miscommunications that take place in any long distance relationship.

The antagonism between Toronto and Vancouver is undeniable. Like all renowned rivalries, the success of one party is measured in relation to the other. Identical glass condos erected by the same developer can be seen along the waterfronts of both cities. Today, Toronto is Canada's economic capital. Population density of Vancouver is expected to rise to the second highest on the continent just after New York City by 2021. Each location in turn is perceived as 'the other side'. Stories circulate in each city: Tales of Captain Vancouver and The Myth of Miss Toronto. And like all renowned rivalries, hot gossip about one's opponent spreads like wildfire.

There is equally a rich, unmined territory of conversation and creativity hanging in the air between the two cities. This project opens up channels of conversation between these disparate, yet critical spaces for Canadian culture, turning competition and hearsay into collaboration and dialogue.

Between Us – A Toronto/Vancouver Exchange taps into the competition between the art communities in Toronto and Vancouver through a complex, unprecedented strategy: a long distance exchange throughout the production stages of artistic creation. The project inspires an unpredictable, experimental space for all, and brings attention to the generosities and risks involved in collaboration. A critical part of the project has been the pairing of the artists, none of whom have met. Each was invited based on their own unique role in their respective communities. We considered this matchmaking to be a re-introduction filled with possibility:

"Toronto, meet Vancouver. Vancouver, Toronto."

A poster, displaced from an art context, can operate as simply as a message board. An everyday space for communicating with limited image and text, the poster is also a versatile, portable, distributable vehicle for art and ideas. Posters were chosen as the means for this project because they respond to theoretical questions about value, storytelling, happenstance, word of mouth, hype, nostalgia, and legacy.

This conceptual framework provides space for artists of two cities to exchange ideas in the creation of new work, and engineers a distribution mechanism for art between organizational partners and cities. By choosing the form of three double-sided posters, we distribute six new works to two major cities in a format that is challenging to artists and affordable to all.

The opportunities presented by Between Us – A Toronto/Vancouver Exchange over the long term are what we find most exciting of all. We imagine this project to be a point of departure for an increasingly dynamic relationship between the two cities, one that could catalyze future exchanges between Toronto and Vancouver-based artists.

"wherethepunks?" is a continuation of González's recent explorations into demolition and construction in Vancouver. WherethePunks? is a show of photographs of houses that have been cut from Vancouver's fabric as "progress" makes its way through the city. The photos are of houses where a group of punks had been living for years and they were removed.