Repo

Repo, an exhibition of mixed-media works by Georgiana Chappell, Wendy Dobreiner, Michelle Normoyie, Margot Butler, and Ellen Ramsey will be on view at the Contemporary Art Gallery until July 30th. While these five Vancouver artists explore diverse media and production techniques, each of them works with a critical awareness of her role as a woman artist. This exhibition features new works which employ photography, text, painting, drawing, and found objects.

Since first brought together for an exhibition which could not proceed, these women have been meeting regularly as a discussion and study group. The decision to form a cohesive work group after their initial meeting is reflective of the interests they share in collectivities and the reorganization of hierarchical social and artistic structures — the group itself consists of women of varying ages and stages of professional development. In their efforts to find new systems of art-making and new structures within which to work, they have adopted a strategy of “repossession” which forms the basis of the show. Their new works endeavor to repossess mass culture and media imagery through appropriation and manipulation with the intention of disrupting and reorganizing meaning.

Repo is reflective of the vital feminist art community in Vancouver, continuing an important tradition of group shows by local women artists such as Voice Over at the Contemporary Art Gallery in 1985 and Unromantic as Monday Morning at the Surrey Art Gallery in 1987.