Theo Sims, Carpark, 2014.
27.06.2014 | 31.12.2014
INTO THE STREETS: AVENUES FOR ART | THEO SIMS, MATTHEW WALKER, MEGAN MORMAN, JUSTIN LANGLOIS, COLLIN ZIPP
SAAG is pleased to be offering Into the Streets: Avenues for Art in collaboration with Musagetes, an international organization devoted to making art more central in our lives, and Cities for People, an initiative launched by the McConnell Foundation to explore the role of arts and culture in advancing urban resilience and livability.
ARCHIVED SCHEDULE OF EVENTS: October 17, 2014
Earlier this year we opened the 2nd edition of Into the Streets: Avenues for Art with various projects from Theo Sims, Matthew Walker and TRUCK Gallery. The public was invited to participate in the opening of three new components:
5 PM at SAAG: Presentation from artist Justin Langlois about 10 Things You Will Always Need to Know about This City - a series of community based time capsules that will be embedded throughout Lethbridge for periods of time ranging from next year to 1000 years from now.
5:30 to 6:30 PM: Megan Morman lead a tour of "Downtown Lethbridge" - installed into the walls of significant buildings in Lethbridge's downtown core, these commas, asterisks and more make their location's history and style legible in a playful way.
7 PM: We met at 298 7 Ave. S. for ONE NIGHT STAND curated by Collin Zipp. The exhibition entitled No Vacancy was a showcase of six Canadian artists, each offering an interpretation on the theme of a domestic environment.
For more information on these artists please see below:
CarPark | Theo Sims
Galt Gardens, Lethbridge
Opens June 27, 2014
Multi-disciplinary artist Theo Sims has garnered a reputation for an art practice that sites sculptural projects in social contexts often outside of the gallery. Wielding a sharp sense of humor, his objects include a working simulation of an Irish pub - The Candahar - which almost effortlessly prompted occasions for debate and dialogue. For Into the Streets: Avenues for Art, Sims looks beyond the gallery to the park surrounding it, installing a solitary asphalt parking stall (complete with a ticket booth and wooden barricade) upon the grassy lawns of Lethbridge’s Galt Gardens. The startling displacement of such common urban vernacular, the parking stall, asks us to reconsider our relationship to natural lands versus manufactured landscapes, disrupts our expectations of public art, and serves as a literal platform for planned and spontaneous events and interventions.
Theo Sims lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba and is a multi-disciplinary artist who creates site and context specific work. He received his B.F.A. from Brighton Polytechnic, England in 1992 and his M.A.(Fine Art) from the University Of Ulster, Belfast, N.Ireland in 1994. Sims previously served as Co-Managing Editor at BlackFlash Magazine (Saskatoon), Program Coordinator at Ace Art Inc. (Winnipeg), and Director at The Context Gallery in Derry (N.Ire). His most recent curatorial experiment, The Lewyc Institute of Contemporary Art (LICA) is a gallery specializing in context and site-specific works produced in (and sometimes on) Sims’s own home.
Sims has exhibited across Canada with solo exhibitions at The Tom Thomson Gallery in Owen Sound, The Rooms Provincial Museum and Art Gallery in Newfoundland, Presentation House Gallery in Vancouver, PlugIn ICA in Winnipeg, and the Illingworth Kerr Gallery in Calgary. He was featured as part of the Montreal Biennale in 2007, Calgary’s inaugural Nuit Blanche in 2012 and in Ghost Dance curated by Steve Loft at the Ryerson Image Centre in 2013. Sims has also exhibited in numerous exhibitions internationally in Poland, Denmark, Mexico, Australia, U.S.A., UK and Ireland. His work is featured in reviews and publications such as Abridged, C Magazine, Circa, The Irish Times, The Sunday Times, The Globe & Mail, Beijing Today, Border Crossings, BlackFlash, The New York Times and Macleans Magazine.
Device for the Emancipation of the Landscape | Matthew Walker
July 14 to 26
Walker transforms the aural landscapes of urban and industrial sites by reintroducing an organic soundscape. Delivered from the mouth of an enormous cannon, and focused with the use of parabolic reflectors, this reintroduction of dislocated, natural sounds provokes an opportunity to reflect on both the human impact on the landscape and the layered history of that particular site.
Throughout the course of the exhibition Walker will be doing some performances:
• Friday, July 18 at 7 PM: The first sounding of Walker's Device for the Emancipation of the Landscape, sited in Popson Park, to coincide with the Strange Relations talk being hosted out of TRUCK's C.A.M.P.E.R. (Contemporary Art Mobile Public Exhibition Rig), in partnership with the SAAG.
• Thursday, July 24 at 8 PM: Alley Sounding (set up behind Catwalk Salon and Spa) - Fired from a distance, sound will rub against some of the oldest remaining buildings in Lethbridge's downtown in a gesture inspired by the geographical impression of bison wallows.
• Friday, July 25: Spite Ditch soundings, Milk River, AB. Matt Walker takes his Device for the Emancipation of the Landscape on the road, moving between historically resonant locations along the notorious Spite Ditch irrigation route.
Keep your ears peeled for a couple of other unannounced, mystery soundings and performances.
Strange Relations | TRUCK Gallery and SAAG
Popson Park, Lethbridge
July 18 at 7 PM
TRUCK & SAAG present Big Blocks of Ice & Why Bees Are Nice. Pairing Dr. Hester Jiskoot, Associate Professor of Physical Geography at the University of Lethbridge, who will give us the scoop on glaciers with Amber Yano, Calgary-based beekeeper, naturalist and artist talking about the importance of bees.
Strange Relations is an innovative program featuring a series of bilateral lectures on unrelated topics. Part intellectual battle royal & part anti-symposium, Strange Relations invites experts from different fields to speak about what they know best. Following the lectures, a participatory discussion will take place where audience members are tasked with finding connections between the two subjects through the questions they ask.
Downtown Lethbridge | Megan Morman
October 17, 2014
Laser-cut, stainless steel punctuation marks from commas to asterisks will be installed into the walls of significant buildings in Lethbridge's downtown core. In the same way a sentence uses punctuation to aid reading and interpretation, this project will use familiar typographic symbols to make a building's history and style legible in a playful way.
10 Things You Will Always Need to Know About This City | Justin Langlois
October 17, 2014
10 Things invites members of the community to contribute to a series of time capsules that will be embedded throughout the City of Lethbridge for periods of time ranging from next year to 1000 years from now. The project will create an opportunity to consider time through the lenses of legacy and burden as practices of everyday life, forms of resistance, and forward-looking records for the City of Lethbridge.
ONE NIGHT STAND | Curated by Collin Zipp
October 17 at 8 PM
On display for one night only, the exhibition, entitled No Vacancy, will showcase six Canadian artists each offering an interpretation on the theme of a domestic environment. The artists include Kristina Banera (Winnipeg), Irene Bindi and Aston Coles (Winnipeg), Kelly Mark (Toronto), Greg Moody (Lethbridge), and Lisa Stinner (Winnipeg) and will feature a range of media.
Project for the Reimagination of 3rd Ave. | A collaboration with the students of the Lethbridge Collegiate Institute, Urban Planner Ross Kilgour, and SAAG
December 1 to 31, 2014
With the intent to embed art, creativity, livability and social responsibility within public space, this project brings together the fertile minds of local students with urban planning professionals to re-envision one of Lethbridge's main thoroughfares. Students will work to generate an architectural model of 3rd Ave. replete with innovative green spaces, public forums, environmental initiatives and sites for artistic endeavours.
This exhibition program is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in conjunction with Musagetes and Cities for People and co-curated by Ryan Doherty and Christina Cuthbertson. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the City of Lethbridge.
