Michelle Normoyle

Kevin Schmidt

Peter Lojewski

Alex Morrison

Althea Thauberger

*Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* brings together a variety of works by five Vancouver-based artists whose creative methods "show" violence, implicate danger or threaten retribution.

In the entrance foyer, Althea Thauberger's large photo-laminate poster depicts a young woman. This woman is the subject of Thauberger's *not afraid to die*, a single-channel video at the entrance to the B.C. Binning Gallery. The video was shot in front of a diorama inside BC's Provincial Museum in Victoria, and the soundtrack includes a song sung by the artist. Also in the B.C. Binning Gallery, Michelle Normoyle's ongoing series of photographs, *After Play*, document the chaos of her child's room after play with her toys. Peter Lojewski's occupation as a licensed practical nurse provides subjects for a series of roughly drawn but eloquent paintings depicting hospital wards. Other works invoke revenge fantasies against disparate mythic and historic figures, personal portraits and ruminations on environmental issues.

Pasted to the exterior of the gallery's windows, as well as on hoardings and poster boards around the city, are posters by Alex Morrison. *Patterer's Diary* is a two -part work that features a selection of short autobiographical incidents recalled in the first person past tense, accompanied by a third-person gloss on the events narrated in the poster, which can be seen in the B.C. Binning Gallery.

In the Alvin Balkind Gallery Kevin Schmidt's *Long Beach Led Zep* is a ten minute video featuring the artist playing the song "Stairway to Heaven” on an electric guitar while standing on Vancouver Island's Long Beach. As the palindromic title suggests, *Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas* draws parallels between depictions and suggestions of violence, and the impulses of mastery and aesthetic delight with which they often coexist or stem from. By expanding on these themes, the exhibition focuses on aestheticizing depictions in acts of control, catharsis and elegy.

A series of framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind the sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing. 

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Twelve framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall behind a sculpture. The sculpture depicts a white apartment building, on which a blue helicopter is landing.  

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Texts printed on sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

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Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. Some papers are much larger than the others. They are pink, yellow, blue, green, or white.

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Ten coloured photographs are mounted on the gallery wall. Many of those images depict colourful objects piled up in a room. This room has a white floor and a pink wall.

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Many sheets of colourful paper cover the entire windows on CAG’s first floor. They are illuminated at night. Blue, yellow, and green colours are visible from afar. 

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A CRT TV is placed on a pedestal installed in the middle of the gallery space. The video played on the TV shows abstract shapes. Some paintings mounted on the wall are visible behind the TV.

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This photograph shows a facade of a building that stands by a street. The building is orange and many fliers are attached to the surface of this building. A bear tree stands in front of the building. 

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A single-channel video is projected on the wall inside a darkened gallery space. The video depicts a person playing a guitar on a seashore. The blue ocean is visible behind the person. 

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This photograph documents the entrance of the exhibition titled Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas. A photograph of a woman standing in a forest is installed below the exhibition title. 

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Althea Thauberger, Kevin Schmidt, Michelle Normoyle, Peter Lojewski, Alex Morrison

Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas

Stan Douglas

Stan Douglas’ most recent (2001) video work takes its name from two movies, one a 1974 remake starring Vincent Price which was filmed in Vancouver. Douglas’ work stages an antagonistic exchange between a woman and a man in a cyclical, ever maturing loop, a formal device characteristic of Douglas’ recent practice. Set on a container ship, the work examines the 1970s as a historical moment of flux between internationalism and globalism, to which the ship acts as a stage and metaphor. The DVD is accompanied by a suite of photographs of Vancouver set locations, including Douglas’ sixteen foot long depiction of a building on 100 West Hastings. This work, *Every Building on 100 West Hastings*, will be the subject of a monographic publication that will examine this image of the most derelict corner of downtown Vancouver through the frameworks of social history and urban geography. 

The exhibition was realized with the generous cooperation of the Vancouver Art Gallery.


Essay: "Introduction," Reid Shier

A CTR TV is placed on a white table in a darkened gallery space. A single-channel video is played on the TV. The video shows the head of a person talking directly to the camera. 

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Four framed photographs are mounted on the gallery walls. One of them is the aerial view of a parking lot surrounded by autumn leaves. Others show the architecture in a city. 

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Two photographs are mounted on the gallery walls. The one mounted on the right-hand side wall is a panorama view of a street taken at night. The other one depicts an aerial view of a port city. 

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Several photographs are mounted on the gallery walls. The one mounted on the left-hand side wall is a panorama view of a street taken at night. Two smaller photographs are mounted on the other wall.

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Journey into Fear

Geoffrey Farmer

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Vancouver based artist Geoffrey Farmer titled *The Blacking Factory*. Farmer's cross-disciplinary practice utilizes a wide variety of materials to investigate the place of art within a social context. Like artists Gabriel Orozco and Thomas Hirschhorn, Farmer's work often intersects and develops in dialogue with a specific location. Most recently, Farmer's work has been the subject of a solo exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, and he is included in upcoming group exhibitions at Gasworks Gallery, London, UK and at the Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, UK. He is represented in Vancouver by the Catriona Jeffries Gallery.

*The Blacking Factory* is comprised of three interrelated works: a sculptural installation in the form of a large truck trailer, a film work depicting the windows of the Contemporary Art Gallery shattering from an explosive concussion and a set prop of a generic newspaper box
installed at the exterior of the Gallery entrance. All three works utilize the technological expertise of the film industry to provoke analogies between mechanisms of display and the artifice behind the creation of meaning and value. The truck trailer is fabricated in mimicry of those used by movie production companies — an increasingly common sight on the streets of Vancouver — and alludes to the transportation of such illusionist necessities as props, lighting systems and costumes. Farmer's film work rehearses a set piece found in a wide spectrum of Hollywood movies — from action-adventure to thriller — and uses the unexpectedness of this violent genre staple within and about the gallery to prompt questions about the context of perception. 

Essay: "Everything Counts," Reid Shier

A metal made newspaper dispenser sits outside of the CAG’s front entrance. This silver coloured machine looks worn and contains a yellowed paper called Daily Times.

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This aerial shot of the installation shows the four walls of the semi truck trailer installed in the gallery space. The trailer is white, and its ceiling is missing. 

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This is a side view of a white semi truck trailer installed in a gallery space. Two beams support the structure where the trailer attaches to a truck.

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This is a video work projected on a screen installed in a darkened gallery. The screen shows the illuminated exterior of the CAG building during the night. 

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This is the installation shot of Geoffrey Farmer’s exhibition at CAG. A large white semi truck trailer is installed in a gallery space. The trailer is placed to face its back to the gallery entrance.

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A metal made newspaper vending machine sits outside of the CAG’s glass entrance. This silver coloured machine looks old. It sells Daily Times.

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This is a close-up view of the sculptural installation by Geoffrey Farmer. A large white semi truck trailer sits in a gallery space. This image shows the front of the trailer.

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The Blacking Factory

Renée Van Halm

The subject of *Dream Home* is real estate, particularly how the idea of domesticity and “home” is constructed in the public imagination. On a given date last year, Renée Van Halm selected the largest and smallest properties for sale on Vancouver's West Side. She utilized their floor plans, procured from Vancouver's Multiple Listing Service, as the basis for imagining how two properties at the extreme ends of affordability might be configured. The result is two sculptural  installations in which over forty rooms of the Big House and two small rooms of The Apartment have been modeled in scale and displayed in an architecturally “exploded” format on the gallery's floor. On the left hand side of the B.C. Binning Gallery sits the upper and lower floor of the larger dwelling, to the right sits a small apartment. In the artist's words, "The range of property size reflects how we define suitable habitation. The two sites represent opposing attitudes to the project of home — the larger revivalist structure is steeped in nostalgia, isolated and bunker-like; the smaller a bottom-line, efficient machine where the living space fits like an article of clothing." Emphasizing how individuated these ideas can be, Van Halm has painted each room of the two sculptures using one of the thousands of varieties of white that can be found in any paint store, and which are usually employed in private, interior spaces.

Accompanying *Dream Home* is *Listings* — gouache paintings depicting a variety of houses whose images Van Halm also took from the real estate listing service. They are intimate depictions of ostentatious houses, and point to one of Van Halm's recurring themes: how the private home is implicated in systems of public display. Large homes are often meant to advertise bourgeois attributes of wealth, respectability and leisure, but also to indicate retreat, privacy and a removal from the social ills of the contemporary urban world. Van Halm's gouaches exhibit how these often contradictory desires are elaborated in a variety of architectural realizations.


A watercolour painting of a large house surrounded by trees and other foliage, which are painted with loose brushstrokes. The painting is made with muted tones of green, brown, grey, and black. 

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Many sculptures are installed on a gallery floor.  They are square shaped and low in height. Those cube-shaped sculptures are pale coloured; some of them are pale pink, yellow, blue, or green.  

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This is an aerial view of the sculptural installation in a gallery space. Pale coloured square sculptures are placed on the floor. They are divided into three groups. 

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In a gallery space, many pale-coloured cube sculptures are placed on the floor. They are placed to mimic a city landscape. Eight photographs are mounted on the wall near the entrance.

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This is a low-angle shot of the installation in a gallery space. Many pale-coloured cube sculptures are placed on the floor. A shape of a house front is carved on one of the  sculptures’ facade.  

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Dream Home

Pae White

New and recent work by Los Angeles artist Pae White will be on view at the Contemporary Art Gallery from April 12 to June 2, 2002. *a grotto, some nightfish and a second city* includes three of White's highly stylized sculptures, one of them created specifically for CAG.

White refers to this body of work as "hanging colourfields." They are composed of multiple small coloured pieces of paper arranged on strings and hung from the ceiling. Her attraction to this form arises from an interest in "the frozen, the still, the dissolve." Recently she has said "I am more interested in how these pieces stop time, or are perhaps a half-tone of an image or an idea. The way graphics have a tendency to stylize as a way to get to the core, I hope that in some way this happens in these pieces."

White's work gives us the opportunity to consider how the idealized abstractions of "high-art" concepts of the 1960s have been transformed by popular culture and the strictures of "good taste." At the same time, their evanescent and ephemeral character points to the very thin line between what is superficial and what is deeply emblematic in our visual culture.

### Biography

A Los Angeles native, Pae White studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Since 1990 her work has been seen in solo exhibitions internationally. This will be the first solo exhibition of her work in Canada. White's design projects are an integral part of her artistic practice and have included a number of exhibition catalogues for Jorge Pardo, ads in frieze magazine for galerie neugerriemschneider and a children's reading room at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art among many others.

Essay: “Pae White: a grotto, some nightfish and a second city,” Christina Ritchie

This is a close-up view of a sculptural installation by Pae White. A countless number of small leaf-shaped blue and orange papers are hanging from the ceiling through black threads. 

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Many colourful pieces of paper are hanging from the gallery ceiling through threads. Those papers collectively create sculptural installations that look like waterfalls or clouds. 

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This is a close-up view of one of the sculptural installations by Pae White. A countless number of hexagon-shaped coloured papers are tied to the threads that are hanging from the ceiling. 

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A number of colourful paper pieces are hanging from the gallery ceiling through threads. Those papers collectively create sculptural installations that look like waterfalls or clouds. 

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This is a close-up view of one of the sculptural installations by Pae White. Many half-cut boiled egg-shaped colourful paper pieces are tied to the threads hanging from the ceiling.

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This is an installation shot of Pae White’s solo exhibition. A number of colourful paper pieces are hanging from the gallery ceiling. Those sculptural installations look like waterfalls.

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a grotto, some nightfish and a second city

Judy Radul

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by Vancouver based artist Judy Radul. *Vancouver Costume* will utilize the Gallery's street front windows as a display space.

Exploring the concept of the theatrical, Radul's practice has undergone a shift from a performance base to one in which aspects of public interaction are documented and displayed. She is interested in the peripheral and supplementary aspects of theatre: the sets, props and costumes used to stage a play. The concept of the rehearsal is of particular interest, as an activity that is and is not a performance.

For her exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery Radul will display a number of costumes based on her research into styles of contemporary dress the artist has witnessed in and around Vancouver. Using thrift and secondhand stores as an archive of found clothing, Radul has assembled a number of outfits that will be displayed in the Gallery's street front vitrines. Radul composes these costumes based on a suggestive ambiguity, and therefore theatrical potential.

### Biography

Radul studied at Simon Fraser University and completed her MFA at Bard College, New York. She has staged performance works at the ICA, London and Elba Guest Atelier, Holland, and has been included in recent exhibitions at The Vancouver Art Gallery and Presentation House Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions have been held at the Or Gallery, Vancouver and Truck Gallery, Calgary. She is a widely published critical writer, and in 1999 was a recipient of a VIVA award. She teaches at Simon Fraser University.

Various outfits are displayed in CAG’s window spaces. Above the installation of a dark-coloured outfit, there is a red text that says “The Gerardo 36, 4 minutes, A city in Austria.” 

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In CAG’s window spaces, various outfits are displayed. The window that is closest to the entrance displays a piece of black gown-like shaped clothes, which has a yellow circular pattern on its chest.

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Various outfits are displayed in CAG’s window spaces. Some of those displayed outfits include a mustard yellow jacket, wine-red dress, and black gown-like shaped clothes.

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A pink robe is installed in one of CAG’s window spaces. The red text above the installation reads, “Tatyana, 28, 1.5 minutes, A garden.”

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Various outfits are displayed in CAG’s window spaces. The window which is closest to the camera displays a pair of grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt. 

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Various outfits are displayed in CAG’s window spaces. Some of those displayed outfits include a mustard yellow jacket, a pair of grey sweatpants and a sweatshirt. 

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Vancouver Costume

Vivan Sundaram

Sheela Gowda

Atul Dodiya

The work of Atul Dodiya, Sheela Gowda and Vivan Sundaram is presented as part of *Secular Practice: Recent Art from India*, an exhibition taking place at three Vancouver galleries in addition to the Contemporary Art Gallery and including the work of nine contemporary artists from India. Responding to the reality of living in a rapidly modernizing society, the work of the artists in the exhibition addresses issues ranging from freedom of expression, social justice, growing religious fundamentalism and widespread communal violence to sexuality, women's rights, the inequities of entrenched class and caste systems, the processes of history and memory, and the nature of art itself in these circumstances.

The other artists in the exhibition are Jayashree Chakravarty, Rummana Hussain, Bhupen Khakhar, Nalini Malani, Anand Patwardhan, and Pushpamala N. Participating galleries are the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Presentation House Gallery and the Vancouver Art Gallery.

*Secular Practice: Recent Art from India* itself is one of a number of components of the project *Moving Ideas: A Contemporary Cultural Dialogue with India* organized by Hoopoe Curatorial. The project also includes the exhibition *Dust on the Road: Canadian Artists in Dialogue with SAHMAT* at the Roundhouse Community Centre, film presentations, lectures, performance, and literary events.

Supplanting a legacy of modernism and characterized by interdisciplinary cultural projects including performance, installation and video, *Moving Ideas* examines what many participants and observers of contemporary Indian culture describe as a powerful shift in the form and content of representation over the past dozen years. It is part of a four-year initiative of art and cultural exchange intended to create an awareness of issues shared, in particular, by artists in Canada and India organized by Hoopoe Curatorial.

*Secular Practice: Recent Art from India* is generously supported by the Samuel and Saidye Bronfman Family Foundation.