Coming Soon, Kathy Slade
Is Everything Going to be Alright?
June 9– September 21, 2010

In the Hastings Street window of the Audain Gallery, Vancouver artist and SFU alumna Kathy Slade asks the question, Is Everything Going to Be Alright? Slade's window project concludes the initial public art project entitled Coming Soon for the new Audain Gallery, located in the Woodward's development in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Four visual artists who are SFU Alumni have been commissioned to create new site-specific public art works. The works in this provocative series address the qualities of Vancouver's Downtown East Side, the neighbourhood and context of the new location of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. In January, the first work by Ken Lum, I said No, was shown in the Hastings Street windows of the Audain Gallery before the official opening of SFU Woodward's. As an extension of the window project into another medium, and as a public interface for the Audain Gallery, Lorna Brown and Jamie Hilder have created projects specifically designed for the internet on the Audain Gallery’s website. Coming Soon highlights the Audain Gallery's commitment to art in the public sphere that addresses the present and history of Vancouver.

>>  Visit the commissioned art projects, Coming Soon

Upcoming

Marjetica Potrč, Audain Artist-in-Residence

The Audain Artist-in-Residence Program will commence in the fall with an exhibition of works by Slovenian artist and architect, Marjetica Potrč.

Marjetica Potrč will be the first artist to be hosted by the Audain Artist in Residence Program and will begin her residency in October 2010. The Audain Artist-in-Residence will work closely with visual-art students within the School for the Contemporary Arts at SFU Woodward’s and the community in Vancouver. A schedule for a series of workshops hosted by the artist, as well as a public artist's talk, will be released in September 2010.

Marjetica Potrč is best known for her on-site projects using participatory design, her drawing series, and her architectural case studies. Her work focuses on new forms of social practices within urban changes, citizenship as well as community-based environmental projects. Potrč's work has been featured in exhibitions throughout Europe and the Americas, including the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil (1996 and 2006) and the Venice Biennial (1993, 2003, and 2009); and she has had solo shows at the Guggenheim Museum in New York (2001); the Max Protetch Gallery in New York (2002 and 2005); the Nordenhake Gallery in Berlin (2003 and 2007). Potrč has taught at numerous institutions in Europe and North America, including MIT (2005). In 2000 she received the prestigious Hugo Boss prize, and was awarded a fellowship at the Vera List Center for Arts and Politics at The New School in New York (2007).

Recent

First Nations / Second Nature
February 6–March 20, 2010

First Nations / Second Nature was the inaugural exhibition in the new Audain Project Gallery at SFU Woodward's. With its roots in the local history of Vancouver, First Nations / Second Nature is an exhibition built of works that mediate the politics of site and the shifting conceptions of territory. The works, from local, national as well as international artists, together offer divergent engagements with the politics of site from the national to the local as it is defined by First Nations' conceptions of place and territory. Artists included Rebecca Belmore, Matthew Buckingham, Greg Curnoe, Sam Durant, Jimmie Durham, Andrea Geyer, Cheryl L’Hirondelle and Andrew Lee, Brian Jungen and Patricia Reed.

Public Symposium
Coming Soon: The Expectations of Art
in the Public Sphere

As part of the Coming Soon project, a public symposium was held at the Audain Gallery on Saturday, January 23, 2010.The symposium's aim was to address questions regarding the different, and often competing, public and artistic expectations of art in the public sphere and art as a public discourse. Two panel discussions with artists, curators, and cultural critics opened these issues: Lorna Brown (CA), Jamie Hilder (CA), Am Johal (CA, moderator), Makiko Hara (CA), Ken Lum (CA), Bik Van Der Pol (NL), Jeff Derksen (CA, moderator) and others.