Burrard Arts Foundation is a non-profit organisation that promotes innovative art projects and installations throughout the city. You may have already seen the fruits of their labour as they launched a project earlier this year at Canada Place: a brilliantly hypnotic large-scale interactive sculpture installation by Janet Echelman and Aaron Koblin.
Artist Hot Tea a.k.a. Eric Reiger has been working as an artist in residence at BAF Studios this summer. In addition to a couple of outdoor site specific works around the city, Hot Tea has also created two pieces at BAF studios. The first piece is a two foot wide plank that leans from floor all the way up to ceiling beam. It is completely covered in yarn, each thread wrapped in perfect order delineating impeccable bound rows of colour stacked upon each other. The plank is a rainbow monolith, a solid force of geometry, angles and lines. It is in high contrast to the second more ephemeral work.
A larger than life cube of hundreds of neatly gridded yarn strings hang down, hovering just above the base of the floor. As one walks around the cube, in the narrow alleyway that encases it, they notice that the strands of yarn shift and flutter as the air from their movement creates a subtle impact. Again, Hot Tea has employed the colours of the rainbow but the effect the cube has on the mind and body shifts a greatly when comparing it to Rieger's monolith. If the panel spoke to concreteness and stability, the cube evokes notions of ebb and flow, movement, diffusion, diffraction and lightness of being. As one walks around the cube, the rows of colour flutter and flicker; one becomes absorbed in the variety of shades and gradations as they move. It is easy to see all the way through the cube, yet, the focus is always drawn into the ever-changing push and pull of the colours and lines. Gently swaying string, constant colour shifts and the vast amount of space between each of these rows of thread create an ethereal experience.
Hot Tea predominantly works on outdoor yarn based installations, the artist intended to create an expansive sense of space within an interior space through his residency at the BAF Studios. The experiment proved successful as the work is highly affective. The two works shift viewer perception; the space in which these works exist is actively reconsidered and re-imagined - potentiality at its finest.
As BAF Studios is a large space, there are also two other sets of works that are also currently on exhibit.
The West Gallery at BAF Studios features and exhibition entitled How To Make Good Movies. Artists Kate Henderson and Erin Siddal discovered a film manual for amateur filmmakers that was written circa 1950. The artists used this manual as the basis for this project which incorporates photography, video and installation. The work explores a myriad of elements connected to filmmaking, from physical objects and cinematic techniques to gendered labour and outdated technology. There are many conversations going on just under the surface of this body of work.
An interesting element that exists throughout these photographs, video and ready-made objects: the artist's use of the copy stand view, also known as god's eye view or bird's eye view. This is a cinematic device that is used in countless films. From the West Side Story and Citizen Kane to Trainspotting. Let's not forget every film in Wes Anderson's repertoire. This familiar trope takes on new meaning in this presentation. Henderson and Siddall seem to be forcing a detached observational perspective onto the viewer. From their careful and very technical film dissection of the projector, to the obsessive compulsive way that the objects from the projector have been arranged on a presentation plinth, there is something very scientific, sterile and logical to it all. The forced perspective of 'observer' upon the viewer could be seen as a way to encourage weighing, measuring and critical contemplation.
Closer inspection soon also reveals the slippages of the artists' seemingly detached approach; the tender caresses of the projector by the four hands carefully dismantling it, the bright red nail polish manicured female hands featured in the photographs - these elements open up new narratives suggesting alternative dialogues and trajectories in the cinematic realm.
In the Main Gallery at BAF artists James Knight and Stephen Quong have created a series of paintings that metaphorically explore Kintsukuroi. This term is of Japanese origin, it literally means 'to mend with gold'. Kintsukuroi is an ancient art of fixing broken pottery using gold or silver filling allowing the breakage and repair of the object to become an obvious element of its own history. Knight and Quong have created a series of glossy resin coated paintings that employ the rotary phone as their Kintsukuroi. The telephone is an item that connects the many different components of each individual's world in reality and in these paintings. Each composition reveals isolated individuals hovering within fractured foregrounds and backgrounds. Each character deeply engrossed in the conversation they are having, the telephone line tethering them all to a common line: some sort of connection.
At BAF good things really do come in three.
Visit to the BAF studio space at 108 East Broadway and check out these three exhibitions, they are open Tuesday - Saturday 12 - 5pm.
To learn more about the Burrard Arts Foundation, visit: http://burrardarts.org/index.html
Hot Tea's Residency Exhibit - on until September 27 - Learn more about Hot Tea - Eric Rieger
KINTSUKUROI - on until September 27 -Learn more about James Knight & Steffen Quong
How To Make Good Movies - on until September 27 - Learn more about Erin Siddal & Kate Henderson
