Alison Yip

Join CAG’s Acting Associate Curator Julia Lamare for a guided tour of the current exhibitions, including *Alison Yip: Soma Topika*.

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with Julia Lamare

Curatorial Tour

Alex Morrison

For more than twenty years, the practice of Vancouver-based artist Alex Morrison has explored the aesthetics of utopian thought, whether as embedded in activism and counterculture or architecture and design. Highlighting the persistent ways radical ideals and impulses are historicized, distorted and repurposed over time, Morrison’s work traces the means by which even the most persuasive of vernaculars cycle from avant-garde to kitsch and commodity.

In *Nooks and Corners*, Morrison presents a suite of new and recent works in painting and sculpture that extend his ongoing investigation into cultural identification and the ways identity and politics are fashioned aesthetically, particularly in the domestic sphere. Whether reflecting on the migration of once-revolutionary abstractions into the decorative and ornamental, the house- plant as an object of status and signification, or architectural revivalisms emptied of their styles’ foundational integrities and optimisms, Morrison foregrounds the inevitable divergences between the original intent of a given aesthetic and its continuous, often contradictory adaptation to new social and political ends.

### Biography 

Alex Morrison was born in Redruth, UK and currently lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. His work has been exhibited at White Columns, New York; La Plage, Paris; Vancouver Art Gallery; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; and Artspeak, Vancouver, amongst other venues. His work is held by the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal; Museum Abteiberg; Germany; Zabludowicz Collection, London, and numerous other public and private collections.

ProgramGuideWinter2022.pdf

CAG_AlexMorrison_ExhibitionGuide.pdf

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Nooks and Corners

Across her work in painting, wall treatments, writing, and sculpture, artist Alison Yip moves between the observational and the speculative. Known for an ongoing concern with the ambiguities and ambivalences of figuration and perception, Yip’s works often evoke transitional states, mystical forms and psychic or spiritual phenomena to consider the disconnected ways humans experience time, space, self, and relationships.

Reflecting on the radical systems failures and temporal shifts of the current moment, Yip’s most recent body of work, *Soma Topika*, led her to look for ways to envision alternative futures. Undertaking parallel divinatory processes, Yip engaged both a neo-shaman and a psychic, posing to each an identical set of questions about her life, relationships and desires. From this, she produced two sets of intimate oil paintings, depicting herself in each as a poseable mannequin in scenes that interpret the concurrent yet contradictory predictions delivered to her. Rendered on unconventional substrates — scraps of metal for the psychic’s predictions and laminate floor tiles for the neo-shaman’s — Yip presents these works at CAG amidst a gallery under renovation, offering a scene that is as provisional and unfixed as the futures she seeks.

### Biography

Alison Yip‘s multidisciplinary practice finds ways of speaking to the dispersed nature of our cognitive apparatus, often working from the psycho-phenomenal origins of figuration. Ambivalent tensions are evoked through a mix of withholding expressions, over-used or popular imagery and various pictorial modes. Yip holds a BFA from the Alberta College of Art and Design, Calgary, Canada. She continued her studies at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany and in 2016 received an MFA from the Hochschule für bildende Künste in Hamburg, Germany. Recent solo, collaborative and group exhibitions include Galerie Noah Klink, Berlin; Mauer, Cologne; Mécènes du Sud, Montpellier; Dortmunder Kunstverein, Dortmund; Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver; ACUD, Berlin; and Lady Helen, London.

ExhibitionGuideAlisonYip.pdf

AlisonYipEssayTizianaLaMelia.pdf

A close up view of a painting depicting three seated figures, the central one is a life-size wooden doll, surrounded by two humans with crossed legs holding paper notes.

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An unfinished wooden wall structure in a gallery space on which hangs a wooden panel with black text, translucent plastic sheets and a small painting.  More paintings and a sculpture are visible through the wall.

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Three small paintings hang on a gallery wall draped with plastic sheetings. To the left is an unfinished wooden wall structure. A sculpture made of yellow textiles, plastic and rope sits on the floor. 

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Four small paintings on faux-marble tiles hang along a gallery wall draped with translucent plastic sheets.

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 Small paintings hang on gallery walls draped with plastic sheets. An angled view of an unfinished wall structure intersects the view. A sculpture made of textiles, plastic and rope sits on the floor. 

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An unfinished wooden wall structure in a gallery space, on which hangs a painting on faux-marble tile. More paintings hanging on the gallery walls and a sculpture are visible through the wall structure. 

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Two small paintings hang stacked on a gallery wall draped with translucent plastic sheets. The painting on the top is painted on a faux-marble tile, the one on the bottom on a vertical sheet of metal.

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A view through an unfinished wooden wall structure of two small paintings hanging on a gallery wall draped with translucent plastic sheets and a sculpture sitting on the floor made with yellow textiles. 

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Four small paintings on faux-marble tiles or metal sheets hang on gallery walls draped with translucent plastic sheets. A sculpture made of yellow textiles, plastic and rope sits on the floor. 

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 Four small paintings hang on gallery walls draped with translucent plastic sheets. A stack of pink paper and a sculpture made of yellow textiles, plastic and rope sits on the floor. 

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A small painting on a textured metal sheet hangs on a gallery wall draped with translucent plastic sheets.

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A corner view of two small paintings on metal sheets hanging on gallery walls draped in translucent plastic. A stack of bright pink papers sits on the floor at the base of the wall. 

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A small copper painting hangs on a white gallery wall draped in translucent plastic sheets. To the left a small blue painting on a metal sheer hangs on an unfinished wooden wall structure.

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Small paintings hang on gallery walls draped with plastic sheets. At the entrance is an unfinished wall structure, paintings hang on either side of it. A sculpture made of textiles, plastic and rope sits on the floor. 

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 A low-lying sculpture sits on a gallery floor. The sculpture is made of yellow and black scarves, brown rope and scraps of plastic packaging tied in knots and draped over a metal seat like structure. 

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A close view of a sculpture made of yellow and black scarves, brown rope and scraps of plastic packaging tied in knots and draped over a metal seat-like structure. 

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A security camera is surrounded by sheets of translucent plastic sheeting taped to the walls and ceiling in the corner of a gallery. 

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Soma Topika

Michelle Bui

Bringing both a painterly and sculptural approach to her photographic practice, Montreal-based artist Michelle Bui operates within the visual language of the still life. Working with an array of everyday, seemingly unremarkable materials, Bui creates assemblages for the camera, building alluring scenes through processes of accumulating, merging, manipulating, and resituating. 
 
In *Mutable Materialism*, an exhibition presented on the CAG façade and at Yaletown-Roundhouse Station, Bui offers two new suites of images, each a reflection on the relationships between sense, sensation and desire. Whether referencing the seductive language of advertising, the tactility of the touch-screen, or the conventions of commercial packaging and display, Bui’s works engage and confuse, coaxing incongruous forms into conversation with one another to invite reflection on the ways we connect with and consume objects and images alike.
 
### Biography
Michelle Bui is a Montreal-based artist working in photography and sculpture. Her research revolves around the inseparable conjuncture between material culture and identity, opening it to a shifted place where sensory identity can unfold. Recent solo exhibitions include *Objects for an Audience*, Galerie Rad Hourani, Montreal (2020); *Spilled Plenitude*, Franz Kaka, Toronto (2020); *Centerfold*, Parisian Laundry, Montreal (2019); *Plein Soleil*, Circa, Montreal (2019); *Pool of Plenty*, Galerie de l'UQAM, Montreal (2018). Her work was also included in group shows at Maison de la culture Claude-Léveillée, Montreal; Paul Robeson Galleries at Rutgers University, Newark; Projet Pangée, Montreal; and Vu Photo, Quebec City. Bui completed her MA at Université du Québec à Montréal and at Beaux-arts de Paris, and her BFA at Concordia University.

CAG_MichelleBui_ExhibitionGuide_Mobile_P1.pdf

CAG_MichelleBui_ExhibitionGuide_LargePrint.pdf

A photographic work by Michelle Bui. Diffuse colours and indecipherable plant matter appear beneath a layer of wrinkled plastic film. Sparse flowers and petals are sprinkled across the picture plane.

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A view of the Contemporary Art Gallery building from across the street. The windows are  covered with vinyl photographs depicting diffuse colour,  indecipherable plant matter and wrinkled plastics. 

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An askance view of the outside of CAG. Vinyl photographs, depicting diffuse colours and indecipherable plant matter appearing beneath a layer of wrinkled plastic film cover the windows. 

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An exterior view of three of CAG’s windows covered with vinyl photographs depicting diffuse colours and indecipherable plant matter, which appear beneath a layer of wrinkled plastic film. 

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An exterior view of two of CAG’s windows covered with vinyl photographs depicting diffuse colours and indecipherable plant matter, which appear beneath a layer of wrinkled plastic film. 

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A corner view of Yaletown-Roundhouse train station covered entirely in seven large-scale, colourful still-life photographs. The images depict a variety of singular flowers with various objects. 

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Two large-scale still life photographs printed in vinyl cover an entire side of Yaletown-Roundhouse station. The images depict singular flowers with various objects on pink and brown backgrounds. 

Curatorial Tour

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