Gareth Moore

The Contemporary Art Gallery has worked with Vancouver artist Gareth Moore to co-commission a project comprising seven new films and a series of related posters.

For *Children’s Films*, Moore approached a number of international artists to produce short films for children, each person free to focus on any particular topic, shaping the content and form of their respective piece. Artists invited consist of some from Europe as well as other Vancouver based practitioners familiar to our local audiences. Moore then collated the two to five minute pieces into one longer work, providing it with open and closing credits, each section acting as a discrete but interconnected episode. One point of reference for this project alongside the artist’s own fascination with the formats of popular children’s television is *Children’s Tapes* (1974) by American artist Terry Fox.

By focusing on children, Moore seeks to engage visitors in a very different way to the conventional gallery goer, purposely taking work out into the city and challenging perceived conventions of whom the audience might be and where art may be apprehended. Distinctions are blurred between exhibition display and more usual educational activities. Furthermore his resort to a collaborative method of production questions the role of the artist as singular author, a more generous and outgoing approach that chimes with the underlying ethos of the gallery.

The exhibition format developed for *Children’s Films* deliberately moved between children’s cinema, pedagogical film and wandering circus. Akin to the early days of cinema with travelling magic lantern shows, weekly screenings of the 16mm films will take place in different locations throughout the city of Vancouver such as community centres, schools and a tent in open parkland, places including the Roundhouse, Trout Lake, Emery Barnes Park and the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre amongst others. The place and time will be announced via posters in our windows as well those fly-posted throughout Vancouver, in addition to the internet via the project’s own website and that of the gallery.

With an audience comprising exclusively children — adults are only allowed if essential to accompany a child — Moore subverts, with charm and characteristic humour, not just the usual form of communication and presentation of exhibitions in an institution but also the notional audience itself. He debunks the idea that museums and galleries are merely places for adults, bypassing the conventional mediation with which children engage in contemporary art and involving them on their own terms while investing the work with a clear and significant social dynamic.

Moore’s work has long conflated performance, documentation, installation, and sculpture, as well as everyday activities normally considered peripheral to contemporary visual art, projects often involving communities external to the typical sphere of interest. As such this newly commissioned body of work is consistent with his broader practice: notional spaces and groups outside of the usual art audience become the key ingredient and participant.

*Children’s Films* highlights Moore’s enduring interests in ideas around museology, display, social engagement, and economic exchange. By using materials collected from his previous travels to create new objects that he will take with him on future journeys — or in this case the network of shared ideas within his broader artistic community and friendships — Moore’s inventions create a continuously evolving story of his pilgrimage where past narratives can be manipulated and transformed into new tales of exploration and ingenuity.

This expanded version of Children’s Films is presented by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. The project is commissioned with Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany; IPS, Birmingham and the Whitstable Biennale. Venues in collaboration with Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.

The exhibition was generously supported by The Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts.

### Biography

Gareth Moore was born in Matsqui, British Columbia. He currently lives and works in Kassel, Germany. Solo exhibitions include *Children’s Films*, Bielefelder Kunstverein (2011); *Passengers 1.9: Gareth Moore*, CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2008); *As a Wild Boar Passes Water*, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008). He has also participated in the group exhibitions: *Elements of Chance*, La Biennale de Montréal (2011); *It Is What It Is*, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2010); *Right Right Now Now*, Arthur BoskampStiung M.1, Hohenlockstedt, Germany (2010); *The Chained Lady, the Microscope and the Southern Fish*, SOFA Gallery, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (2010); *Nothing to Declare*, The Power Plant, Toronto (2009); *Every Version Belongs to the Myth*, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2009). Currently he is exhibiting in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany and has been nominated for the Sobey Art Award 2012. Moore is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.


ProgramGuideFall2012.pdf

A child, wearing a mask and dipping a brush into an ink bottle, sits in front of an open book with photos of statues. A print hangs on the wall in the background. The entire image has a magenta hue.

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A group of young children sit in a darkened room in front of a screen watching a projected video. The video depicts a shadow puppet-like, human figure tip-toeing across the screen carrying a large sack.

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Primary school age children sit on the floor in a gym and watch a video screening. On the screen, a boy wearing a black mask is dipping a brush into ink with a thick photo book in front of him.

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Image still from a video. A black cat sits in the middle of a window frame, its back facing the camera. Black text across the image reads, “Meow,” just to the right of the cat.

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Image still from a video of shadow puppets. A figure of a man stands before a wild boar in a forest, their arm raised as if in conversation with the boar.

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Presented by Gareth Moore with Ulla Von Brandenburg, Keren Cytter, Geoffrey Farmer, Julia Feyrer, Harrell Fletcher, Mike Marshall, and Sylvain Sailly

Children's Films

The Contemporary Art Gallery opened a unique group exhibition that brought together six British Colombia artists who use the journey as a way to engage with landscape traditions. In *Sentimental Journey*, all the artists went on expeditions, traversing the landscape to collect inspiration and gather materials to document their experiences. The works in Sentimental Journey were both real and fictive representations of often undetermined treks. Many of the works had an optimism that was tied to the landscape, the desire to be outside and the character of the artist/wanderer.

The art works in this context brought forward the tight relation between the journey and its presentation, embracing the romance of the journey while also recontextualizing and privileging the terms of storytelling in order to question sentimentality. *Sentimental Journey* captured sentiments of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism.  Most of the artists in the exhibition kept true to this tradition, using the journey as their primary source of inspiration, translating their journeys materially to create a new experience in its own right. As many of the works in the exhibition showed us, our visual fields are saturated with representations of landscapes, but here the artist’s to reinvigorate our perception of nature through their distinctive working methods.

### Essay by Jenifer Papararo

Romanticism developed across Europe as a movement in visual art, literature and music; it was defined as a return to nature and a search for true understanding of the self. The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was identified as a pioneer of Romanticism, crossed the Alps alone on foot, expressing his experience in his autobiography, *Confessions*, published in 1782. The purpose of his long and isolated journeys, Rousseau states, was “to show to my fellow-men a portrait in every way true to nature, and this man I shall portray will be myself.” This desire to find an authentic self is defined by the attempt to break with societal constraints that limit choices and actions and, accordingly, limit the ability to understand and convey the experience of the true self.

This notion of the Romantic thinker—focused on finding and defining the true inner self—reaches across place, time and disciplines. We can easily point to this figure again and again in the visual arts. The romantic artist lingers and is now an identifiable character and at times a caricature of the artist in general. Common to much contemporary art discourse since the mid-twentieth century is a suspicion of this romantic figure and what it represents. Romanticism has always had its critics. Terms such as *sentimental*, *idealistic*, *spiritual*, *individualistic* and *emotional* have commonly been used to undermine the political gestures of Romanticism. Romance is a distraction, interfering with realism and its revolutionary intent. In relation to contemporary art the term is often used derogatorily, disassociated from the political and defined by self-interest; as a movement for the individual. This is characterized by Rousseau’s statement, “Myself alone. I feel my heart and I know men. I am not made like any that I have seen; I venture to believe that I was not made like any that exist.”

*The Wanderer* (1818) by the German painter Casper David Friederich represents a paradigm of this physical and spiritual journey. A lone figure, his back to the picture plane, stands on a mountainous peak above the clouds, observing the vast valley below. Is this isolated figure in a landscape, shown within nature’s awesomeness, enough to convey the experience? Do Friederich’s intentions move beyond evoking the individualistic nature of these transcendental moments and our isolation as humans? Or does he simply intend the work to replicate the experience of awe for the viewer, hoping the representation itself elicits this feeling? A primary question for many artists in this exhibition might have been: Is the pictorial portrayal of the journey enough to capture the interests of a viewer? This led to other questions, such as: Should what is displayed replicate the journey? Does it even need to? Does it represent the experience, or is it a thing unto itself? Are process and presentation so intertwined that they become one, or do they function so differently that there will always be a huge gap between them?

Within the ideals of historical Romanticism, the artwork, like nature, should be experiential. Symbolically, according to the Romantics, nature carries a charge that elicits a transcendental response. This response corresponds, fundamentally, to a sense of awe. I have no doubt that the natural world still carries the power to inspire awe, but it is also hard to ignore how mediated our experiences are. Thus in a true Romantic sense, the goal of a work of art is to elicit emotional response. *Sentimental Journey* was a group exhibition of local artists whose working methods capture sentiments of eighteenth and nineteenth century Romanticism. Most of the artists in the exhibition kept true to this tradition using the journey as their primary source of inspiration, translating their journeys materially, to create a new experience in its own right. As many of the works in the exhibition showed us, our visual fields are saturated with representations of landscapes, and the artist/explorer character is now relegated to the role of day tripper, seeming more performative than earnest.

The Enlightenment’s ideas of reason and rationality are foils to the true Romantic. The precisely ordered ideals and experiences of the Age of Reason become caricatures, something to react against and resist with intuitive response. Who would rationally use a ball as reason enough to embark on a two-month journey from Canada’s west coast to northeast India? Who would enter the woods blindfolded or attempt to build an anti-gravity machine? While not all the artists in *Sentimental Journey* make nature their works’ primary subject, each begins a journey motivated by creative impulse. The work tended to be about their experiences and how those are exhibited, raising questions about the way the artist’s experience translates materially to the viewer through the objects or information presented. For some of these artists, their work must not only recount their travels but also be reenacted, yielding an impact that conveys their journey’s essence, while for others it is more of a slow burn—playing out over many objects and images, unfolding as narrative.

It is clear there is a new Romanticism in the air. It is being wholeheartedly embraced and not filtered tightly through reason or ordered precisely. Of course there are questions. The Romantic figure of the lonely artist who focuses on self-discovery is still a character seen, with some suspicion, as self-indulgent and self-aggrandizing. And nature’s ability to produce a transformative sense of awe that gives the individual a deeper understanding of the self has lost some of its edge. Yet, each work in the exhibition carries an optimism that was tied to Romantic notions of creativity.

Essay: "Sentimental Journey," Jenifer Papararo

A round glass jug sits on an iron support. Water fills one third of the bottle. 

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A dark room with a bench in front of a projection on a screen. It depicts tree tops and distant mountains. In the middle of the frame, a tree with a hole showing the mountains in the back.

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An image of a glass vase suspended in the air with string alongside another glass vase on a stand in a gallery. On the back wall, a framed illustration hangs. The frame is half gold, and half white. 

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Installation shot of the group show Sentimental journey. A pitched camouflage tent sits on the right side of a gallery. On the left, three images hang on the wall and a tv sits in a corner. 

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On the left corner wall, a salon style assortment of framed images, text, notes and objects hang on the wall of a gallery. On the right side, three images hang on the wall and a tv sits in the corner.

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A variety of objects are placed on top, inside, and underneath a display case in a gallery space. Along with that, rolled up fabric hangs off the bottom of the case while shoes sit at the bottom. 

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Michael Drebert, Owen Kydd, Mike McLean & Laura Trunkey, Gareth Moore, Kevin Schmidt, Kara Uzelman

Sentimental Journey

*LANDSCAPE* is the first in a series of three publications that used the petit genres of landscape, still life and portraiture to reflect programming at the Contemporary Art Gallery which framed tendencies in contemporary art.

Published by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2010, contributing writers include Michael Turner and Jenifer Papararo, as well as interviews between Tim Gardner and Stephen Waddell; and BGL and Adrian Blackwell. This publication includes the exhibitions; BGL, Tim Gardner and *Sentimental Journey*.

### Other publications from this series:

*STILL LIFE*

*PORTRAIT*

Purchase all three publications for $25 below.

Gareth Moore

Exhibitions

Publications & Editions