This catalogue, produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2008, was the first to be published on the work of Canadian collaborative team FASTWÜRMS, and accompanied their exhibition *DONKY@NINJA@WITCH* at The Contemporary Art Gallery, January 25 – March 22, 2008. This colour catalogue features a text by Jenifer Papararo and an interview by Jennifer Fisher and Jim Drobnick.

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DONKY@NINJA@WITCH

FASTWÜRMS

*DONKY@NINJA@WITCH* is a visual cacophony of cliches and colour coated icons related to Witchcraft and run through popular culture. The legendary Canadian collaborative art Witches, FASTWÜRMS take ancient symbols like the pentagram, and apply a punk do-it-yourself sensibility to them, treating them more as ephemera than ritual objects. In their last video, they pit Witches and Ninjas against each other in the dark and abandoned night streets of Venice. There is a chase and final stand-off between two powerful cultural cliches of midnight evil. In the end, they come together as black collar workers of the night. The mix of styles, genres, subcultures, and identities is common in all of FASTWÜRMS’ installations. They specialize in brewing very particular concoctions, conflating aesthetics and symbols, colourfully mixing metaphors, awkwardly clashin stereotypes, and jumbling iconographies. 

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present FASTWÜRMS’ first solo exhibition in Vancouver *DONKY@NINJA@WITCH*, which is an assortment of several of FASTWÜRMS’ installations, dating back from the late 1990s to 2005. The show includes a new video installation, give-away posters, wall murals, mirror paintings, and over a hundred other new details. This particular mixture includes a collection of elements from *Swag & Shag*, 1995; *Unisex: House of Bangs*, 1999; *Blook & Swash*, 2002; *Denim Pox*, 2002; Pirate Head, 2004; and Blood Clock, 2005. For their re-articulation of *DONKY@NINJA@WITCH* at CAG, FASTWÜRMS will continue refining their aesthetic and conceptual blend by further blurring separate installations, collapsing timelines and overlapping formal elements. 

### Biography

For over thirty years, FASTWÜRMS have moved from film to sculpture to installation, producing large public commissions, and recently participating in the 2006 São Paulo Biennial. They have produced solo projects at the Art Gallery of York University, North York (2007); Paul Petro Contemporary Art, Toronto (2006); the late Zsa Zsa Gallery (2004); and they have exhibited internationally at Southern Exposure Gallery, San Francisco (1998) and Osaka 90 (1990).  Recent group exhibitions include *Anthem*, Carleton University, Ottawa (2007) and *Flag*, poster intervention, Venice (2007). 

Essay: "FASTWÜRMS: Webs and Icons," Jenifer Papararo

Two coloured photographs are mounted on the walls besides a gallery entrance. A pair of animal horns and a sign that reads NO HUNTING are installed above the entrance. 

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Flags, large posters, and handwritten signs cover the gallery walls. Red, black, and white are prominently used in those images. Two black cooking pots are hanging from the ceiling.

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Many artworks are installed in a gallery space. A series of mirror sculptures on the wall shows the moon cycle. Other drawings and collage pieces share witch motifs including spiders’ webs.

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Various sculptures are installed in a gallery space. Large black web-shaped sculptures cover the gallery walls behind a TV monitor. A red tube-shaped sculpture is hanging from the ceiling.   

FASTWÜRMS

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