CAG and artist Harrell Fletcher launch a satellite gallery at Lord Strathcona Elementary School in Vancouver

×

Expand

Image: Harrell Fletcher, photograph from KSMoCA, 2017. Courtesy of the artist

Project: A New Path to the Waterfall

Dates: September 11, 2017 - June 29, 2018

Location: Strathcona Elementary School, Vancouver

This autumn we begin an ambitious public project with US artist Harrell Fletcher, working with a broad range of Vancouver school students, residents and artists to develop a series of participatory projects reflecting the artist’s interest in bringing art and life together.

Underlining CAG’s philosophy in establishing integrated programming as a way to question the role of the public cultural institution, Fletcher will work collaboratively with teachers, school staff and students to transform teacher, Maryann Persoon’s grade 6/7 classroom at Lord Strathcona Elementary School into a satellite space, playing host to a number of collaborative projects with Vancouver based artists Justine A. Chambers, Elisa Ferrari, Carmen Papalia, Hannah Jickling, Helen Reed and T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss. As the school year unfolds, artists and students will engage in the creation of projects and interventions inspired by school curriculum presented throughout the building and local neighbourhood.

Fletcher has chosen to acknowledge the collaborative nature of his practice by creating a hybrid context that brings together a constellation of students, teachers, artists, gallery staff and community in the production of culture offering a breadth of types of work and critical thinking. By adopting the same title as Raymond Carver’s final book, A New Path to the Waterfall, a collection of more than sixty poems connected with the work of writers that inspired the author, Fletcher suggests this project as a similar endeavour of love, life, work and engagement with everyday life.

A New Path to the Waterfall will be presented to the public through exhibitions, interventions, performances and public programming at six week intervals throughout the school year. The public are welcome to attend these events and programs during set hours provided on the project website. Please see www.anewpathtothewaterfall.ca for further announcements.

About the Artists

Harrell Fletcher has produced a variety of socially engaged collaborative and interdisciplinary projects since the early 1990s. His work has been shown at SFMoMA, de Young Museum, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, Yerba Buena Center, all in San Francisco; Berkeley Art Museum; The Drawing Center, Socrates Sculpture Park, and The Sculpture Center, all in New York; PICA, Portland; The Seattle Art Museum; Signal, Malmö, Sweden; Domain de Kerguehennec, France; Tate Modern, London and the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia. In 2017 Fletcher was awarded as a Hallie Ford Fellow. His work was included in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and was the 2005 recipient of the Alpert Award in Visual Arts. From 2002 to 2009 Fletcher co-produced Learning To Love You More, a participatory website with Miranda July. His 2005 exhibition The American War originated at ArtPace in San Antonio, travelling to Solvent Space, Richmond, VA; White Columns, NYC; The Center For Advanced Visual Studies, MIT, Boston; PICA, Portland and LAXART, Los Angeles among other locations. Fletcher is Professor of Art and Social Practice at Portland State University, Oregon.

Justine A. Chambers’ interests lie in collaborative creation and re-imagining dance performance. She is drawn to the movement of all bodies, and focuses on the dances that are already there - the social choreographies present in the everyday. Chambers is a founding member of project bk, associate artist to The Dance Centre and in the winter of 2017 was an artist-in-residence at artist-run centre 221a in Vancouver.

Elisa Ferrari is an artist and curator living on unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver). She works with archival fragments of text, image and videography to consider the act and implication of retrieval in projects that manifest through installation, performances, artist books, sound walks and photography.

Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling have been collaborating since 2006. Their projects take shape as public installations, social situations and events that circulate as photographs, videos, printed matter and artist’ multiples. Since 2015, the artists have developed their ongoing public art project Big Rock Candy Mountain, a candy factory at Queen Alexandra Elementary School, curated by Vanessa Kwan and commissioned by Other Sights for Artists’ Projects.

Carmen Papalia is a social practice artist and non-visual learner who uses organizing strategies and improvisation to navigate his access to public space, the art institution and visual culture. His work has been featured as part of exhibitions and engagements at, amongst others, Tate Liverpool, UK; the Museum of Modern Art in New York and Gallery Gachet in Vancouver.

T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss is an interdisciplinary artist who works with new media as well as community-engaged and public art. She is a Coast Salish ethnobotanist and recently has returned to working with textiles through learning Coast Salish weaving techniques in wool and cedar. She is a member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and lives in East Vancouver.

About Burrard Marina Field House Studio

CAG uses the Burrard Marina Field House as a studio for socially-engaged participatory projects in Vancouver. From this site, we develop multi-year community-focused residency initiatives, many of which evolve into off-site projects. This program moves beyond conventional exhibition making, echoing the founding origins of the gallery in 1971 where artists were offered support toward the production of new work offering new ways for individuals to encounter, participate and connect with art and artists.

The Field House Studio Residency Program is generously supported by Vancouver Park Board and the City of Vancouver, along with many private and individual donors. Please visit our website for a full list of supporters. For further details about the program, all forthcoming residencies and associated events visit our website at www.contemporaryartgallery.ca and follow the blog at www.burrardmarinafieldhouse.blog

Source: Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver