Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley)

For our first installment of CAG Reads, we’re pleased to welcome Leisure, the collaborative art practice of Susannah Wesley and Meredith Carruthers, who were recently featured in the *The Artist’s Studio is her Bedroom*. Since 2004, Carruthers and Wesley have engaged with social and historical narratives surrounding women artists in the 20th century, as well as creativity and its relationship to pedagogy. Leisure has produced exhibitions and special projects in collaboration with venues across Canada and abroad, and participated in residencies in Banff, Dawson City, Haliburton, and Vienna. 

For the inaugural CAG Reads title, Leisure has selected Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s *Herland* (1915). The second novella in Gilman’s utopian trilogy, *Herland* is the story of an isolated all-female society that is thrown into disorder by three male explorers. Delivered with wry humour, this work of early feminist science-fiction explores questions of gender roles, privacy, motherhood and individuality. 


### Getting the book

*Herland* can be legally downloaded [here](https://www.gutenberg.org/files/32/32-h/32-h.htm) free of charge. For those of you who prefer to hold an actual book in your hands, *Herland* can also be ordered from your local bookseller. Here in Vancouver, both [Massy Books](https://www.massybooks.com/) and [Pulp Fiction Books](http://pulpfictionbooksvancouver.com/) are continuing to receive orders and offer delivery and pick-up services. If ordering from Pulp Fiction, mention that you’re ordering for CAG Reads and they will give you a 30% discount on the publication. We also encourage participants to explore the ebook and audiobook catalogues available through their local libraries.


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Leisure presents Charlotte Perkins Gilman

CAG Reads

A detail of various-shaped white ceramic vases sparsely placed on a white plinth. 

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Join all ten exhibiting artists in an informal conversation about how artistic practices can be carved out of unlikely times and spaces, and how generative questions arise from constraints.

The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom

Artist’s Roundtable

On select Saturday afternoons throughout the exhibition season, participants are invited to drop in to activate artist duo Leisure’s installation, *Conversations with Magic Forms*. Using plaster and other materials provided, children and visitors will make cast objects in sand, exploring the relationship between negative and positive space. Children are encouraged to create as active participants in the work, both through their making and, if they choose to leave their objects on the artwork plinths, as exhibiting artists.

These activities are free and open to participants of all ages. Drop in anytime between 12pm and 3pm. Children are encouraged to participate.

All materials are provided. No experience is necessary.


Sand is piled against a V-shaped plinth on a gallery floor. Lining the top of the plinth are small colourful sculptures. Behind a large black & white vinyl print of a photo collage hangs on the wall. 

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Leisure: Conversations with Magic Forms

Workshop

*The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom* is a group exhibition that challenges assumptions shaped by our patriarchal, capitalist society about where and by what means “serious” artwork gets produced. The exhibition shares the perspectives of ten Canada-based artists whose practices are attentive to these assumptions, and to the very real temporal, spatial and monetary constraints that bind and shape their work.

Their contributions to the show address a multitude of labours — whether physical, emotional, reproductive or otherwise — that are often inextricable from artistic production. Some question myths of the studio and the “magical” labour of the artist. Others explore unconventional models of authorship, including the entanglement of childcare and creative work. Each, in different ways, asks how we navigate (or resist) our artistic and political inheritances, and how we might seek out alternate role models and alliances through which to better strengthen our creative communities.

Together, the works in *The Artist’s Studio is Her Bedroom* assert the generative potential of these other spaces and cadences of creation, addressing artists’ feelings of distraction and constraints, and call for acknowledgement of and solidarity in different ways of being —a nd making art — in the world.

Curated by Kimberly Phillips, with assistance from Julia Lamare

CAG acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts towards artists' travel.

ProgramGuideWinter2020.pdf

ExhibitionGuideTheArtistsStudio.pdf

BibliographyTheArtistsStudio.pdf

An image of a stage set framed by theatre curtains with brown curtains in the background. On stage is a set of a bedroom containing a bed, carpets, a small table, a room divider, and lounge chair. 

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A stack of prints on pink paper sits on top of a white plinth. The prints are of handwritten notes scrawled across the page. 

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Ten ceramic sculptures of various shaped bottles sit on top of a long rectangular plinth. Behind the plinth, a large black and white painting hangs and another sculpture on a tall plinth to the right.

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Two framed drawings on paper hanging on a gallery wall. The one to the right side is larger with blue markings, and the one on the right side is smaller with pink markings.

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Three woven, rectangular artworks hang horizontally on the wall. The weavings are made of white paper printed with black marks. 

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A ceramic bowl, wooden sculpture and two colourful glass lampshades sit on a three tier plinth made out of light wood.

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Large blue text on the wall of a gallery space that reads “I’M WORKING BUT I’M NOT WORKING FOR YOU.”

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A TV monitor hangs on the wall with a pair of headphones hanging beside it to the left. There is a wooden stool in front of the monitor. The video  on the screen shows four hands holding each other.  

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In the center of a gallery are mattresses piled with pillows. Behind a curtain with a printed photo of a bedroom stage set hangs from the ceiling and a large stuffed animal bunny lies on the floor. 

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Steven Brekelmans, Justine A. Chambers, Brady Cranfield, Maura Doyle, Claire Greenshaw, Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley), Annie MacDonell, Erica Stocking, Damla Tamer

Leisure (Meredith Carruthers & Susannah Wesley)

Exhibitions

Talks & Events