In Conversation: Minahil Bukhari

Burrard Arts—July 26, 2023

“Land & Marks” by Minahil Bukhari featured a suite of new sculptural works made from developed mixtures of paper pulp and earth pigments, forming throughlines between the material footings of the artist’s longstanding research topics, including archive, language, interior spaces and architecture. Often incorporating investigations into her own patrilineal archival documents, Bukhari’s work explores concepts of displacement, trauma, loss and systematic infractions through the lens of political minimalism.

Read on to learn more about the makeup and material play of Bukhari’s recent works.

In Conversation: Keeyan Suazo

Burrard Arts—June 11, 2023

Keeyan Suazo’s “Bamboo Flowers” used a smooth gradient of found objects to represent the colour transitions observed throughout the life cycle of a bamboo plant. Beginning with a verdant green, it moved to muted yellows, and concluded with various hues of tawny brown, much like bamboo soon after flowering. Through its objects, the installation also became a physical representation of the artist’s daily life and mental landscape—an organized accumulation of clutter referencing monumental events, everyday rituals, past works and future projects.

Read on to learn more about Suazo’s process and inspiration for his installation.

In Conversation: Long Gao

Burrard Arts—December 7, 2022

An evolving installation for the BAF Garage, “a meditation” saw the artist adopt a regular ritual of pinning fresh flower petals to the exhibition walls. Vibrant on each day of installation, the assemblages withered in the summer heat, cumulatively filling the garage space with dried remnants over the course of the exhibition. The work was an ongoing meditation on nature and natural elements, on fleeting beauty and ephemerality. Its performance extended beyond the garage space, with each bundle of flowers sourced or donated from local gardens or vendors, requiring unseen negotiation or exchange.

Read on to learn more about Gao’s process and inspiration for his installation.

In Conversation: Michelle Sound

Burrard Arts—November 23, 2022

“Aunties Holding It Together” by Michelle Sound featured sculptural and photographic works from two ongoing series. The exhibition explored personal and familial narratives through a deep consideration of Indigenous artistic processes. Sound’s works contemplate cultural identities and histories, engaging traditional materials and concepts within a contemporary context. She stitches and adorns torn images, ripped to show the colonial violence that her family, and other Indigenous families, have experienced. Her works highlight acts of care and joy rooted within family and community.

Read on to learn more about Sound’s process and inspiration for her exhibition at BAF.

In Conversation: Rebecca Bair

Burrard Arts—November 18, 2022

“The Sun Found Me Amongst the Clouds” by Rebecca Bair featured cyanotype works created with hair monotype processes and with brushes made from hair extensions. An interdisciplinary artist, Bair’s research explores the possibilities of specific representation and identity through abstraction and non-figuration. She uses multimedia approaches to illustrate her exploration of identity and intersectionality, through the lens of her own experience as a Black Woman on Turtle Island. 

Read on to learn more about Bair’s process and motivation for these works.

In Conversation: Karl Hipol

Burrard Arts—June 20, 2022

A constellated exploration of the artist’s Filipino heritage, Karl Hipol’s “Tagpi-tagpi” installation combines handwritten Baybayin, pasted manila paper and a centralized painting of an abstracted bahay kubo, a type of pre-colonial Filipino architecture. Baybayin is a pre-colonial script, widely used in Luzon and other parts of the Philippines before being replaced by the Latin alphabet during Spanish colonization.

Read on to learn more about Hipol’s process and motivation for this work.

In Conversation: Jack Kenna

Burrard Arts—June 8, 2022

Jack Kenna’s “Tumbling Blocks” presents a collection of sculptures that combine found milk crates with ornate stained glass panels. By arranging most of the works like stacks of delicate blocks on the floor and installing some against the wall like colourful lamps, Kenna has created a space that asks others to walk around his sculptures. This exhibition reveals the artist’s ambition to create geometric patterns and features his memories and personal experience with materials.

Read on to learn more about Kenna’s observations and discoveries for his exhibition.

In Conversation: Sara Gulamali

Burrard Arts—

💚 by Sara Gulamali presents a series of photographs with which she explores her relocation from London to Vancouver. Continuing practicing with green screen technology and the colour green in this new environment, Gulamali finds a new meaning for these motifs. With an interest in creating an inclusive space, this exhibition walks its audience through the artist’s observations and discoveries within this new space.

Read on to hear more about the ideas, challenges, and aspirations behind Gulamali’s work.

In Conversation: Eric Tkaczyk

Burrard Arts—March 25, 2022

Eric Tkaczyk’s video installation /ˈsent(ə)nəl/ explored issues of alienation, privacy, and surveillance in the Information Age. The project used projection-mapping and privacy film to display flickering eyes on the street-facing windowpanes of the BAF Garage. The installation mimicked the screen-mediated nature of online communication, creating a similar partitioned interaction between audience and projector.

Read on to learn about Tkaczyk’s practice and the motivations behind his engaging installation.

In Conversation: Sara Khan

Burrard Arts—March 22, 2022

The Urdu title Sara Khan’s “Sanda Rd Key Dhund” translates to Mists of Sanda Rd, referring to an area the artist frequented while a resident of Lahore, Pakistan, before moving to Vancouver in 2014. Reflecting on here and there, past and future, her works combine memory and fantasy, creating other worlds where loved ones and mythical beings converge within a shared landscape. Architecture shifts in and out of focus, fading into persistently green colour schemes that lend each scene an anxious feeling of being not quite day or night.

Read on to learn about the observations and discoveries that motivated Khan’s exhibition and how they continue to inform her artistic practice.

In Conversation: Karin Jones

Burrard Arts—March 17, 2022

“The Golden Section” by Karin Jones features geometric arrangements made from human hair extensions. Borrowing from traditional wig making methods, Jones knotted the strands of hair onto mesh substrates, resulting in intricately arranged hair compositions. Through this materially inventive series, Jones has continued her longstanding exploration of identity and race through fine craft.

Read on to learn about the insights Jones has gained through her practice and through creating these works.

In Conversation: Maria-Margaretta

Burrard Arts—November 3, 2021

“Resistance in the front yard with spitz, cigs, and coffee” by Maria-Margaretta posits the front yard as a site of great cultural significance. Margaretta asks whether the front yard, as an everyday space instilled with lived experiences, can be a site of cultural learning and communication. With a quiet humour, her works challenge the colonial systems that house cultural objects in sterile archives, often distant from vital community contexts.

Read on to learn more about the ideas that motivate Margaretta’s artistic practice.

In Conversation: Parvin Peivandi

Burrard Arts—October 27, 2021

Parvin Peivandi’s “Returning Tenderly Triumphant” consists of a suite of sculptures that combine seemingly opposed materials, fusing worn found textiles with sharp metal sheeting and brightly pigmented beeswax. The ambitious exhibition has showcased Peivandi’s personal investment in her practice, with each work representing a measurable triumph.

Read on to learn more about Peivandi’s processes, motivations and aspirations.

In Conversation: Malina Sintnicolaas

Burrard Arts—October 26, 2021

With the installation “Always Growing, Never Healing,” Malina Sintnicolaas attempts to give visual form to the raw, often unseen wounds of post-traumatic stress. The ongoing project combines a twisting formation of double-stitched wool with cradled ceramic forms. The weblike installation evokes fibrous bodily tissues and rounded bones—a deep red display rendered sinister with its sprawling scale.

Read on to learn more about Sintnicolaas’ motivations and process.

 

In Conversation: Kriss Munsya

Burrard Arts—June 13, 2021

Kriss Munsya’s BAF exhibition, “Monolithic Introspection,” presents the first photographs from an ongoing project created in collaboration with local environmental justice activists. For this series, Munsya applies his use of vivid imagery to draw the viewer into critical reflections of humanity and to engage audiences with questions about peoples, lands, resources and power.

Read on to learn more about Munsya’s motivation and intentions behind the works.

In Conversation: Rydel Cerezo

Burrard Arts—June 10, 2021

Rydel Cerezo’s BAF exhibition, “New Ending,” is an intuitive mixing of various modes of imagery, encompassing family portraiture and cinematic landscape, fashion photography and sculptural documentation. Deeply personal, the photographs are infused with Cerezo’s perspective as a queer Catholic Filipino man navigating desire, cultural conditioning and shame. Through the work, he processes his own entanglement with colonial mentality, religion, and racialized identity.

Read on to learn more about Cerezo’s process, interests and curatorial choices.

In Conversation: Pippa Lattey

Burrard Arts—May 26, 2021

In Pippa Lattey’s BAF Garage installation, ‘String Together,’ two motorized lengths of wood maneuver a span of black line, strung with plastic detritus. As each end rises and falls, the strung elements shift from side to side. The structure is reminiscent of a string of beads, manipulated between two unseen hands. Watching the objects slide back and forth, the viewer may be reminded of counting, tallying, wishing, planning, calculating.

Read on to learn more about Lattey’s recent projects, her process and inspirations.

In Conversation: Annie Briard

Burrard Arts—March 4, 2021

Annie Briard brought her fascinations with the natural world and visual perception into an immersive new format with ‘Within the Eclipse.’ With light, colour and sculptural installation, the works create a contemplative space for transcendent experience. 

Keep reading to learn more about Annie’s process and inspirations.

In Conversation: Josephine Lee

Burrard Arts—February 25, 2021

Josephine Lee engages with history, process, and material in her public installation ‘/born ignorant in an abyss of light.’ Born from research into nuclear history, Lee progresses into interrogating nuclear weapons testing’s interaction with notions of contamination, violence, and dispossession enacted by the nation state. From these heavy themes, the final work creates an atmosphere of surprising lightness and beauty. 

In this interview, we spoke to Lee about her research, her plans for the future, and the materials she used for the installation, from plasma to ceramics to handblown glass.

In Conversation: Sandeep Johal

Burrard Arts—February 18, 2021

With ‘Beast of Burden,’ Sandeep Johal brings the little-discussed dark side of motherhood front and centre. She also ventured into a new medium by working with textiles, many of which originally belonged to her own mother. In the process, she adapted her practice, which was previously focused on large-scale mural paintings, into a show suited to a more intimate gallery context. 

In this interview, we asked Johal a few questions about the exhibition, the challenges of creating it, and her plans for the future. 

In Conversation: Eli Muro

Burrard Arts—December 3, 2020

It’s tempting to understand computation as immaterial. Terms like ‘cyberspace,’ ‘the cloud,’ and ‘virtual reality’ sound ethereal and otherworldly, as if there were a dreamy, idealized space just beyond our collective screens. 

But the digital realm is not a realm at all. It’s just our world, in all its corruption and complexity. In ‘Genuine Fakes,’ Eli Muro explores this contradiction, questioning whether the digital landscape can ever be neutral or intangible, and asking who benefits from our perceiving it as such.

 Keep reading to hear about the ideas, processes, and challenges behind Muro’s current show.

In Conversation: Michael Edward Miller

Burrard Arts—November 27, 2020

Interactivity, physical touch, and the confluence of virtuality and meatspace are central themes of Michael Edward Miller’s practice: ones he hoped to explore in his residency at Burrard Arts Foundation.

But then, COVID-19 radically reshaped the way we experience the world, and Miller had to revisit his planned exhibition, too. 

In this interview, we talk to Miller about his materials, reacting to a changed reality, and existing in virtual space.

In Conversation: Haley Bassett

Burrard Arts—November 19, 2020

Haley Bassett’s practice draws from many different mediums: drawing, ceramics, social practice, and installation. While she has worked with natural materials before, her public project for BAF’s Garage was the first time she’s done so on such a large scale. 

In this interview, we spoke with Bassett about trauma, invasive species, working as an artist of mixed Indigenous and non-Indigenous ancestry, and what’s next for her practice.

In Conversation: Cara Guri

Burrard Arts—October 1, 2020

Perception, entropy, subjectivity and the history of Western figurative painting are some of the themes that propel Cara Guri’s practice. Her concealed portraits exist in a careful tension; between what is hidden and what is revealed, between stillness, growth and decay; and between artist, subject and viewer.

Keep reading to learn more about Guri’s artwork in her own words.

In Conversation: Russna Kaur

Burrard Arts—September 25, 2020

Through her unique mode of abstract painting, Russna Kaur synthesizes her equally unique life experience. Her vibrant, modular and large-scale way of working speaks to her background in design and biology as well as her identity as a woman of colour – initiating an open dialogue with her viewer while remaining completely true to herself. 

In this interview, Kaur discusses her poetic approach to titles, how drawing holds her paintings together, and what abstraction means to her as a contemporary South Asian artist.

In Conversation: Olivia di Liberto

Burrard Arts—September 18, 2020

‘An Extraterrestrial Picnic’ transforms BAF’s Garage into an explosion of colour, energy, and retro-futuristic nostalgia. Olivia di Liberto brought dozens of unique cut paper elements into the space to create a playful environment saturated with countercultural symbols.

For this instalment of our In Conversation series, we spoke to di Liberto about taking inspiration from the past, moving into three-dimensionality, and how starting out as an artist means getting creative with limited resources.

In Conversation: Katie So

Burrard Arts—July 21, 2020

In recent years, self care has become an increasingly prominent and commercialized concept alongside growing awareness of mental illness. Katie So has always used her practice to talk about personal topics like depression and anxiety, and during her BAF artist residency, she explored the complex – and not always Instagram-worthy – reality of caring for oneself.

In this interview, we speak to Katie So about moving from tattoo to painting, creating an environment within her exhibition, and how the COVID-19 pandemic affected her perspective on the work.

In Conversation: Caitlin Almond

Burrard Arts—July 15, 2020

With Crosshatch, Caitlin Almond explores the relationship between form, object, and ornamentation with her use of elements pulled from painting, sculpture, textile and domestic craft.

In this interview, Almond speaks about her creative influences, working with BAF’s public Garage exhibition space, and how this installation brought together her writing, research, and visual art practices. 

In Conversation: Jackie Dives

Burrard Arts—July 7, 2020

Through photography and installation, Jackie Dives’ ‘Becoming Not a Mother’ invites the viewer into the highly personal process of coming to terms with a life-altering choice. 

In this interview, we speak to Dives about how art-making interacts with her experience of the world, experimenting with different mediums, and how the BAF residency influenced the final work.

In Conversation: Candice Okada

Burrard Arts—February 19, 2020

Candice Okada’s ‘Emergency Situation’ speaks to the urgency and tension saturating the present day sociopolitical climate.

In this interview, we take a closer look into how Okada arrived upon the oxygen mask as symbolic object, the political connotations of her chosen materials, and her experience working with  BAF’s Garage – a unique, street-facing exhibition space. 

In Conversation: Howie Tsui

Burrard Arts—February 18, 2020

Howie Tsui’s ‘Parallax Chambers’ conflates the anarchic universe of martial arts fiction (wuxia*), with the ungoverned community that formed the Kowloon Walled City. We interviewed him to find out more and learn about his technical masteries for this new body of work.

In Conversation: Cindy Mochizuki

Burrard Arts—February 5, 2020

With ‘The Sakaki Tree, A Jewel and The Mirror’, Cindy Mochizuki creates a theatrical environment rich with magic and storytelling. We sat down with Cindy Mochizuki to discuss her experience in the BAF artist residency program, how her installation came together, and the narrative she seeks to tell. 

In Conversation: Ryan Quast

Burrard Arts—December 6, 2019

In ‘Eleven Minutes Late’, Ryan Quast creates a paradox, producing replicas of consumer goods through painstaking hand labour. The show is a departure from his previous works in that this time he shows objects that are useless rather functional, although they’re still as mundane as ever. In this interview, we talk to Quast about British TV, his unique paint-sculpting process, and how he stays motivated when his pieces take years to complete.

In Conversation: Kate Metten

Burrard Arts—November 29, 2019

With ‘The Thinking Eye’, Kate Metten brings her deep engagement with theory and modernism to a show of exclusively paintings – a bold departure for an emerging artist known primarily for ceramics. For this interview, we asked Metten a few questions about the works, her process, and her experience in the Burrard Arts Foundation Residency Program.

In Conversation: Laura Piasta

Burrard Arts—November 21, 2019

From skateboarding, to exploring the European art scene, to what she’s working on now – Laura Piasta spoke with us about her life as a Vancouver artist and her current residency at BAF.

In Conversation: Shawn Hunt

Burrard Arts—

We spoke with Shawn Hunt, B.C. based Heiltsuk artist, on his upcoming series of paintings, entitled Line as Language.

In Conversation: Andrew Maize

Burrard Arts—

In Conversation: Andrew Maize

Façade Festival Insider Series: Eric Metcalfe

Burrard Arts—

We spoke with Eric Metcalfe about his upcoming project for Façade Festival 2016.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Barry Doupé

Burrard Arts—

We spoke with artist Barry Doupé about his upcoming project for Façade Festival 2016.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Rebecca Chaperon

Burrard Arts—

We spoke to artist Rebecca Chaperon about her upcoming project for Façade Festival 2016

Façade Festival Insider Series: Renée Van Halm

Burrard Arts—

We spoke with Renée Van Halm about her upcoming project for Façade Festival 2016.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Chris Shier

Burrard Arts—

We spoke to artist Chris Shier about his upcoming project for Façade Festival 2016.

In Conversation: Kelly Lycan

Burrard Arts—

Kelly Lycan is a Canadian, Vancouver-based artist working primarily in photography and installation. Often, her work explores how we display and observe objects, place value upon them, and how they are produced and reproduced. We spoke with Kelly about her work, inspirations, and her BAF residency and upcoming show.

In Conversation: Lyndl Hall

Burrard Arts—

It is a basic human impulse to attempt to place oneself within the chaos of the world. For centuries, we have employed geometry, navigation and cartography to make sense of our physical environment, beginning with the simple act of drawing a line. Canadian artist Lyndl Hall works with these themes in drawing, sculpture and video for her current exhibition at the Burrard Arts Foundation, ‘Circle, Sphere, Horizon Line’.

In Conversation: Julia Dahee Hong, Katrina Niebergal, and Casey Wei

Burrard Arts—

For this iteration of our series In Conversation, we spoke to the three contemporary emerging artists selected by curator Gabi Dao to participate in Blood Love Trouble: Julia Dahee Hong, Katrina Niebergal, and Casey Wei.

In Conversation: Virginie Lamarche

Burrard Arts—

For this iteration of our series In Conversation, we spoke to Virginie Lamarche, curator and co-founder of the FotoFilmic travelling exhibition and photobook.

In Conversation: Richard Clements

Burrard Arts—

Perception. Chaos. Ritual. Language. These are some of the concerns explored by A Third Thing, Richard Clements’ upcoming show at BAF Gallery. The enigmatic sculptures, which the artist describes as being architectural without mimicking larger buildings, reference spiritual structures such as the altar, grave, or ziggurat. 

For this instalment of In Conversation, we spoke to Clements about the complex vision behind this new body of work. Originally from London, England, Clements holds a BFA in sculpture from the Alberta College of Art and Design and an MFA from Goldsmith’s College in his home city. Clements has exhibited throughout Europe and Canada. He works primarily in sculpture and is also an accomplished writer. 

In Conversation: Matthew Talbot-Kelly

Burrard Arts—

Many of your previous works incorporate an element of chance or serendipity. For example, your installation “Falling: Catching” was a brick wall held together by only twine, sticks, and gravity. What can you tell us about this recurring theme, and to what degree is it present in your current show at BAF Gallery?

Façade Festival Insider Series: Shawn Hunt

Burrard Arts—November 20, 2019

Shawn Hunt’s practice hinges on the traditional practice of formline, yet makes it uniquely his own. In a distinctive palette of rich blacks and blues against which grey and white seem to jump out at the viewer, providing depth, Hunt brings new subversion to this artform, exploring its narrative potential. Trained as a carver before branching out into painting, his creative background is evident in the relief-like dimensionality of his works, unusual in a style that’s typically more flat. We exhibited his work in ‘Line as Language’, a 2016 solo show, and his Façade 2017 presentation will expand on those works, enlarging and combining them to tell ancient stories at an unprecedented scale. 

Façade Festival Insider Series: Evann Siebens

Burrard Arts—

‘Media with movement’ is how Evann Siebens describes her practice. A trained dancer, Siebens now works in photography and video art, with her first love of dance often playing a central role. In 2015, BAF Gallery exhibited her show ‘deConstruction’, which recorded the politically and socially charged process of building demolition, bringing to it surprising grace by juxtaposing the films with the delicate accompaniment of Chopin’s preludes. Her Façade Fest 2017 project, Orange Magpies, also deals with place, but includes the theme of dance much more overtly. Siebens collaborated with two dancers, James Gnam and Vanessa Goodman, and filmed their improvisational movements against a series of highly recognizable Vancouver backdrops. By projecting these images onto the Vancouver Art Gallery façade, complex conversations about history, place, and identity begin to unfold.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Diyan Achjadi

Burrard Arts—

Diyan Achjadi’s vibrant, intricately detailed works investigate the relationship between beings and the land they inhabit in an illustrative style that draws heavily on textile traditions such as toile and Javanese batik. The artist’s Indonesian heritage figures prominently in her work, and in the past she has drawn on diverse cultural practices to raise questions about complex issues related to the environment and colonialism. For Façade Festival 2017, she will explore the ocean-bound nature of her home archipelago through an animation of shifting islands and clouds.

In Conversation: Mollie Burke

Burrard Arts—November 19, 2019

In this interview, we learn about Mollie Burke’s spatial explorations via her installation in the BAF Garage, and the process of transitioning her practice away from a familiar 2D space of a canvas.

In Conversation: Chris Eugene Mills

Burrard Arts—July 24, 2019

Chris Eugene Mills’ display in the Garage, ‘a finely-tuned interference engine thwarted by a painting of an ouroboros (in thirty-six parts)’ presents a coded performance of data, that consumes and regenerates itself, as a beautiful array of digital ‘paintings’.

We sat down with the artist to discuss his experience of working in a site-specific space, and learn more about the becomings of this particular instillation.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Scott Billings

Burrard Arts—July 19, 2019

Scott Billings’ artistic practice is marked by a material ingenuity. An engineer and industrial designer as well as a visual artist, it’s clear that for Billings, these concerns exist symbiotically. Creating sculptures and video installations that centre around issues of animality, mobility and spectatorship, Billings often makes use of industrial techniques – in the past he’s employed rare earth magnets, laser pointers, IMAX film, and custom circuitry. For his Façade 2017 project, Billings will use 3D scanning and printing to create a scale model of the Vancouver Art Gallery, then record it being physically damaged and manipulated. Projecting this back onto the enormous structure will create an illusory material experiment on a monumental scale.

In Conversation: Scott Billings

Burrard Arts—July 11, 2019

With ‘Flat Moon’, Scott Billings deviates from his primarily video-based installation work to produce an abstract show. In this interview, we chat with the Vancouver-based artist about the new works created during his residency and the personal curiosities that drove them.

Read on to gain deeper insight into ‘Flat Moon’, and be sure to join us for his artist talk this Saturday, July 13th at 2pm in the gallery.

Façade Festival Insider Series: Luke Ramsey

Burrard Arts—June 29, 2019

Luke Ramsey brings a simple, almost childlike style to all of his illustration, collaborations, and murals. His works depart from the most basic elements of visual art: line, colour, and shape. Using a bright, likeable palette to depict friendly characters, scenes from nature, or doodle-inspired lines, his works are equally suited to small-scale drawings and large public installations. He has been featured in Booooooom, the New York Times, Vice, and more, and founded the Island Folds residency on Pender Island in 2005. His Façade Festival 2017 project epitomizes and yet simplifies his practice, covering the Vancouver Art Gallery in quickly evolving squiggles that reference the politically loaded gesture of graffiti-writing. 

 

Façade Festival Insider Series: Fiona Ackerman

Burrard Arts—

Beautifully chosen colour and proportion achieve a delicate balance in the works of Fiona Ackerman. Many of her works are completely abstract, but she has also brought representation into her works with series centred around artists’ studios and garden environments. Beyond the mesmerizing aesthetics of her paintings often lays a philosophical inspiration – her 2012 mirror series referenced Foucault, while her 2014 piece Dreams of Zhang Zhou alludes to the famous story of the 4th-century Chinese thinker dreaming that he is a butterfly. Her playful, yet masterfully rendered works exude a deep respect for the discipline of painting.  

Façade Festival Insider Series: Ben Skinner

Burrard Arts—

Blending the tangible and ephemeral to haunting effect, Ben Skinner’s practice is equally informed by curiosity about the nature of language and fascination with the varied materials he works in. His text works play humorously on the subjectivity inherent in communication; pictured below is a piece from his ‘Pangram’ series, which showed absurdist phrases that use every letter of the alphabet. He has made use of materials including mirror, holographic foil, plexiglass, and water marbling, carefully choosing colours including Klein blue and dusty pastels. His projection mapped project for Façade Festival explores the complexities of linguistic nuance with a string of synonyms that gradually digress in meaning. 

Façade Festival Insider Series: Annie Briard

Burrard Arts—

Annie Briard’s work explores the fragility of the real. Although the world we experience may give the illusion of being fixed, objective, impartial, it’s more fallible than that, an image painted impressionistically by the senses. It’s in this ambiguity that Briard finds inspiration – vision, perception, and where they diverge, in the form of hallucination or illusion. She works in video, photography, and installation to create works that explore how we construct our own reality, all with the hazy aura of a fading memory. 

Façade Festival Insider Series: Paul Wong

Burrard Arts—

With a career spanning four decades, Paul Wong has been an instrumental proponent to contemporary art in Canada. Often with an element of narrative, much of his work is site-specific or video-based. An award-winning artist and curator, Wong has led public arts policy, organized festivals and public interventions, and been a founding member of groups including VIVO Media Arts and the Mainstreeters collective. His works have been collected internationally, by institutions including the National Gallery of Canada and Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the recipient of major awards including the 2015 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Art and the 2016 Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts. His Façade Festival 2017 project will shine a light on a piece of recent Vancouver history many would prefer to forget: the 2011 Stanley Cup Riots. 

From Five Octave Range, a free public artwork designed by Paul Wong for the 2017 Vancouver Opera Festival.

In Conversation: Emily Neufeld

Burrard Arts—

Wandering though Emily Neufeld’s ‘Before Demolition’ conjures up the specific, almost uncomfortable feeling of finding oneself alone in a home that is not yours. Neufeld gained permission to explore houses set to be demolished, then created photographs, sculptures, and site-specific interventions using these intimate experiences as raw material. She displayed the photographs at life-size on the gallery walls, alongside interventions reminiscent of the ones she conducted in these homes, and vaguely humanlike structures created from materials gleaned from these sites. The final effect is an eerie, illusory immersive environment that explores how our bodies interact with space, and speaks to the loaded topic of the current Vancouver housing market. 

For this iteration of In Conversation, BAF spoke to Neufeld about this body of work and how it fits into her greater artistic practice.

In Conversation: Kim Kennedy Austin

Burrard Arts—

In ‘You, Only Better’, Kim Kennedy Austin examines vintage magazine illustrations and their message of self-improvement during the capitalist boom of the post WWII-era. Pulled from 1960s copies of Western Homes and Living magazine and a 1946 workout manual titled ‘Figure Fitness in Fifteen Days: Your Rx for Slenderness’, the characters in the clippings Austin has chosen cheerily model an affluent, heteronormative, patriarchal lifestyle; one that’s presented to the reader as not only desirable, but attainable in just a few simple steps. In this interview, we asked Austin about the inspiration, thematic ideas, and artistic processes behind this show. 

In Conversation: Charlene Vickers

Burrard Arts—May 16, 2019

Charlene Vickers allowed her work to grow intuitively and organically in her BAF Gallery show, ‘Chrysalis’. Coming into the Residency Program from a period of intense creative activity, Vickers chose to approach her time in the program as both a space of much-needed rest, and the chance to sow the seeds of a new body of work – one that clearly sits within the lineage of her vibrant, abstract paintings, but brings them into a looser, less structured mode of production. In this interview, BAF chats with the artist about these new works and her experience creating them.

In Conversation: Brendan Lee Satish Tang

Burrard Arts—May 1, 2019

With ‘meatspace’, BAF Artist Residency program participant Brendan Lee Satish Tang departs strikingly from previous work, creating a series of abstract, geometrical three-dimensional structures out of wood and foam core. The works are as open to interpretation as they are compelling, calling up biological, digital, and human-constructed forms. This ambiguity also presents exciting new territory for the artist.

In Conversation: Virginie Lamarche

Burrard Arts—

FOTOFILMIC17 marks the third consecutive year that BAF Gallery has hosted the Vancouver stop of this travelling group photographic exhibition. Based on Bowen Island, the organization has broadened their focus in that time to include multiple sub-exhibitions, their PULP Gallery location, and a printed photo-book. The exhibition will also be stopping in Paris, France; Thessaloniki, Greece; and New York City. 

In Conversation: Resident Artist Karen Zalamea

Burrard Arts—April 25, 2019

For this iteration of In Conversation, BAF speaks to Vancouver-based artist residency program participant Karen Zalamea. With a primarily photography-based practice, Zalamea’s intricate compositions explore the play of light and matter in space. To create her BAF Gallery show, ‘When the sun rises, we keep the fire aflame’, Zalamea worked from source material shot in a variety of locations across North America. She manipulated the photographs by printing on silk, canvas, and other unconventional materials, then experimented with cutting, folding, and collaging them. The finished show represents the development of exciting new directions in Zalamea’s practice. 

In Conversation: Colleen Brown

Burrard Arts—

With ‘That mountain is a good listener’, Colleen Brown expands her sculpturally-focused practice in unconventional new directions, drawing inspiration from such surprising sources as weather reports and hobbyist landscape painting to comment on the inevitable gap between representational art and the material experience to which it alludes. Extending the two-dimensional components of the works with gestural and sculptural elements, she seeks to achieve a balance of gesture, image, object, and symbol.

Read on to gain deeper insight into the show directly from the artist, and be sure to join us for the opening reception on Thursday, May 31st at 7PM.

In Conversation: Alex Tedlie Stursberg

Burrard Arts—

Alex Tedlie-Stursberg explores the constantly flowing streams of interactions and transactions that make up our society in a practice that combines sculpture, assemblage and collage. Interested in the “bottom end of the market”, Tedlie-Stursberg’s works tend to incorporate what might be bluntly referred to as garbage – not just waste and discarded objects, but actual earth and soil. The finished works exude an eccentric, fantastical energy, seeming to come neither from the future nor the past, but perhaps an alternate timeline or dimension. This humour and irreverence characterizes Tedlie-Stursberg’s practice; in the past, he has created video art from a Ron Perlman movie and a mock campfire from found objects. 

In Conversation: Resident Artist Tom Hsu

Burrard Arts—April 24, 2019

How did your time in the BAF Residency Program impact the creation of this show? In what directions did it lead your practice? 

In Conversation: Michael Batty

Burrard Arts—

‘Building’ incorporates both installation and photographic work. To you, how do these two mediums work together in the show?

In Conversation: Resident Artist Tyler Toews

Burrard Arts—April 23, 2019

Borrowing its title from a famous line from ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, Tyler Toews’ show ‘He who marches out of step hears another drum’ shares his remarkable journey. A survivor of mental illness, Toews is no stranger to oppression, and his dramatic, expressive large-scale works convey a message that is hopeful and positive without shying away from the darkness and struggle that’s integral to the human experience. In this interview, BAF spoke to Toews about the influence of memory on his practice, his recent experiments in screenprinting, and his visions for the future of his work. 

In Conversation: Rafael Soldi

Burrard Arts—

Identity, memory, and sexuality are just some of the overarching themes explored in Rafael Soldi’s current show at the Burrard Arts Foundation. The show comprises two new bodies of work: in one, ‘Cargamontón’, Soldi delved into the near-forgotten hazing rituals he experienced growing up in Peru; the other, ‘Imagined Futures’, he contemplates the paths his life could have taken had he not immigrated from that country. Below, we speak with Soldi about his practice, this show, and his future projects. 

In Conversation: Resident Artist Birthe Piontek

Burrard Arts—

Birthe Piontek’s Burrard Arts Foundation Residency, and the resulting exhibition, represented exciting ventures for the artist in scale, material, and form. In this interview, we spoke with Piontek about her artist residency at BAF’s Vancouver studio, progressing to object-based work while remaining engaged with photography, her fascinations with cloth and the body, and more.

In Conversation: Tom Hsu

Burrard Arts—April 12, 2019

How did your time in the BAF Residency Program impact the creation of this show? In what directions did it lead your practice?