A Public Art Space ((2006 ~ 2010)k The Window is now closed. Thank you for your support in the past 5 years.

WINDOW PROJECT nnn1407 Government St., Downtown Victoria BC, Canada

 

Robert Easton

"SEVENZEROTWOSEVENTHREE"

May 25 to June 25, 2010

 

 

SEVENZEROTWOSEVENTHREE is a visual tapestry to the forgotten. The piece is an intricate geometric pattern comprised of 70,273 black and white crutches. Each crutch represents one of the disabled infants, children and adults labeled "life unworthy of life" and given a systematic "mercy-death" as part of the Aktion T4 in World War II.

 

Robert Easton is an artist/writer who currently resides in Victoria, British Columbia. Easton was a wheelchair athlete and held and improved on every World Record for track & field events in his class for the period from 1982 to 1988. Easton retired from competition in 1988 following his triple gold model performances at the Seoul Paralympics. SEVENZEROTWOSEVENTHREE is a companion piece to his recently completed play "T4".

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Victoria ! Victoria ! A collaborative series of exhibitions with Contemporary Art Research Centre (CARC), Hong Kong

( October 2009 to March 2010 ) Co-curated by Dr. Tang Ying-chi Stella & Tam Isabella   (http://www.contemporaryartresearch.org)

In search of a dialogue between Victoria and Hong Kong (once also named Victoria in honour of the British queen), this collaborative series looks at the intrinsic quality of art as a provider of innovative visions at a time when societies are under the pressure of globalization, that interdependence seems inevitable. The mounting pressure and the unsteadiness of such a change is pressing one to readjust its position in a global scene, allowing contemporary art grows into a grandeur visionary form to streamline more effective and efficient communications in between different cultures.

Poki Chin "Victoria" March 1 to 31, 2010

Looking at the two uniquely different yet similar colonial states, Hong Kong and Victoria, Poki Chin's Victoria depicts a doubled anatomy of the Queen mirroring the images upon one another. Juxtaposing the two figures, Chin draws the viewers' attention to iconic monuments that are arranged like a treasure-hunt map, through which the artist poses the question of memories and legacies in both cities of Hong Kong and Victoria since the reign of the Queen. By placing the images of Hong Kong and Canadian coins like two pendulums, Chin's Victoria touches the viewers' heart -- swinging between the modes of past and present, and those of the lost and remains.

Poki Chin graduated with a B.A. (Fine Arts) from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2006. Chin creates works that records daily happenings around her. She participated in various group exhibitions including Hello London (2004), Find_He_Arts (2006), Pastry (2006) and Alumni Art Exhibition of CUHK (2007, 2008). Her solo exhibition, Kidult was held in 2006.

 

ELE +EBE "Dirty Laundry" January 20 to February 20, 2010

Dirty Laundry is ELE+EBE’s new work which interrogates ‘branding’ in global contemporary art scene. The work is set with the backdrop of a common public housing estate where residents literally flaunting their clothes air-dried outside the balconies. Like a brand this is a symbol responding to the high-density of the city with limited personal space. With their signature colour yellow and a selected sets of branded globally used everyday objects, ELE+EBE sets the installation as a double pun about the branding of cities and the anxiety of contemporary culture dedicated to consumerism.

ELE+EBE is an art group formed in London in 2003 with a vision to challenge new conventions of contemporary art. As the members of ELE+EBE come from backgrounds of advertising and fine art, their artworks tend to open-up discussions on art’s relations to other creative fields, especially of those in the grey zones. Using yellow as their signature colour, ELE+EBE explores various media in belief that each medium can extract some powerful emotion from the subject dissected.

 

 

Tang Ying-mui Grace "A map for a day - 18th April 2009" December 2 to 31, 2009

A map for a day - 18th April 2009 reveals a theft committed by a family of three in a day in Hong Kong. To many of us, this news is the type of news that you can read in the newspaper everyday. Yet, to the artist, the news has left the mark of the presence of this family in the city. Tang questions our being in the city where 'sediments' from the external flux quietly precipitate in our life in which how we are seen is being manipulated unconsciously. With Fluffy black fur and scattered newspaper strips, A map for a day takes on the footprints of one's life in the journey of a day.

Tang Ying-mui Grace graduated with a BA degree in Fine Art from the Goldsmith College later with a MSc from the University of Westminster, UK. She is the awardee of the Arts Education Award of the Hong Kong Arts Development Council in 2008. Further information and works of the artist is available on respective website www.tangyingmui.com

 

Lee Mei-kuen Carol "Queen Victoria" October 22 to November 29, 2009

Queen Victoria is the artist's ongoing experiment with the sun as her paintbrush. Lee pre-treats the light sensitive newsprint by covering part of the Queen Victoria's image, which will then be placed under long time exposure of the sun. Resultantly, this leaves some luscious shades of golden siennas on the newsprint and juxtaposes with the off-white area on the image of Queen Victoria. As Lee says, " Both Hong Kong and the city of Victoria were once a British colony. As time passes, what they have left behind are only texts about the colonial history."

Lee Mei-kuen Carol graduated with a MFA degree from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She belongs to numerous art organizations in Hong Kong, such as MIA (Mere Independent Artists), Art Container Project and Too Art gallery. Her works have been widely exhibited, including the Hong Kong Art Biennial, Corning Museum of Glass (New York) and Macau Art Museum. More information about the artist can be found at www.carolleemk.com

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Fred Worden "1859" October 9 to 17, 2009

"The political or cultural aspects of history are the mere surface of history; that in preference to, and deeper than these, the reality of history lies in biological power, in pure vitality, in what is in man of cosmic energy, not identical with, but related to, the energy which agitates the sea, fecundates the beast, causes the tree to flower and the star to shine." Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses, 1930"Built from a thirty frame clip of a lens flare. LSD is legal, 1859 is not." - FW

Fred Worden has been making experimental film since the mid 1970s. Worden's films develop out of his interest in intermittent projection as the source of cinema's primordial power. How a stream of still pictures passing through a projector at a speed meant to overwhelm the eyes might be harnessed to purposes other than representation or naturalism. Worden teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Maryland. His films have been shown in the Whitney Biennial, Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Rotterdam International Film Festival and numerous other venues.

Presented by the 2009 Antimatter Film Festival

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Diyan Achjadi "We Expected Hysteria" September 8 to October 8, 2009

We Expected Hysteria is a series of three panoramic prints from The Further Adventures of Girl. The Girl is the central character in an ongoing series of narrative prints and animations that examine representations of militarism and disaster in popular culture. Clad in a simple red dress and mary-janes, Girl is accompanied by identically-dressed clones, towering over a dystopic miniaturized world punctuated by bubble-gum explosions. Invoking political rallies and celebratory marching bands, borrowing from the visual language of propaganda and children's books, We Expected Hysteria explores the construction of group identities amidst natural disasters.

Diyan Achjadi was born in Jakarta, Indonesia.  She received a BFA from the Cooper Union,New York in 1993 and an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal, in 2002.  Her works in print media and animation have been exhibited across Canada and the US.  Achjadi teaches in the Faculty of Visual Arts and Material Practice at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, BC.

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John Abrams "Dracula" July 20 to August 31, 2009

My recent painting proceeds from looking at film, and by extension digital video. I am interested in the possibilities that open up in the translation of cinematic episodes into painting, because I have found, that by pushing the painting process to stand as a signifier for painting while deriving imagery specifically from motion pictures a series of ruptures or charges may be produced.Similar in some ways to Tod Browing's 1931 adaptation of Bram Stokers 1887 novel, Dracula , which in turn mimics Nosferatu: A Symphony in Terror (1922), the first early German silent film based on Stroker's book, which in turn inspired me to make a series of paintings that incarnate the beauty which resides on the other side of horror using the film's the cinematic tropes of eerie lighting and shadowy atmosphere.

John Abrams holds an MFA from York University. Paul Petro Contemporary Art in Toronto and the Boltax Gallery on Shelter Island, New York, commercially represent his paintings. His forthcoming exhibitions include a solo shows at Spoke Club and Paul Petro Contemporary Art, in 2009 and in Here in My Car, curated by James Patten, at the Art Gallery of Windsor in 2010.

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Daryl Vocat "A Boy's Will" June 1 to July 11, 2009

Largely derived from found and manipulated drawings from old Boy Scout manuals, A Boy's Will explores a world where young boys create rituals, form bonds and explore dubious notions of morality. Adults are scorned and children assert their autonomy. The voice of authority bellows unanswered, as it were. Rather than simply being victims of neglect, these boys assert outsider identities, investigate power dynamics, and lay claim to a culture of their own making.A Boy’s Will reveals a secret world behind the good intentions of the popular world-wide movement. The manipulated Scouting imagery is both an homage to, and critique of, the original source. This work exposes the private world of young boys, and tags alongside as they fumble between expectation and desire.

Daryl Vocat, born in Regina, Saskatchewan, is a visual artist living and working in Toronto. He completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, and his Master of Fine Arts degree at York University in Toronto. His main focus is printmaking, specifically screen printing. He works out of Toronto's Open Studio. For more information about the artist please visit http://darylvocat.com

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Shelter Installation (A Collaboration with the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria) January 29 to May 24, 2009

Assume Nothing: New Social Practice is an international contemporary exhibition staged by the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. In 115 days of 2009, our city is introduced to art that intersect the social and political landscape through actions ranging from protests to installations in public spaces.In Assume Nothing, the artists investigate human relations and their social context as their starting point. It brings forward exciting ideas about the way in which cities can be sites of social and cultural interaction and public spaces can be dynamically considered.

At the location of Window Project, Cuban artist Rene Francisco Rodriguez works with students from the Vancouver Island School of Art to create a series of work that explores the theme of "shelter."For a listing of events, please visit the website of Art Gallery of Greater Victoria: www.aggv.bc.ca

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James Wentzy "Remembrance" December 6, 2008 to January 7, 2009(Efendi Sheikh Muzaffer and the Halveti Jerrahi Dervishes performing the Sufi Ceremony of Dhikr in New York City, 1980)

"This photograph of the circling Ceremony of Dhikr (Remembrance) has hung on my wall since its photography twenty five years ago. The image was inspired by the Dervishes, realized by synchronized mechanics of the camera, formulations of reflected light on film, finessed time and space within a frame, and printed image on paper. I have long-used photography as repository of memories and perceptions. Photography has a particular affinity with remembrance, as memorabilia deposited for future recollection. Remembrance is a particularity of perception, with its own transcendence of space and time. When remembering the experiences of photographing the Dervishes many years ago, the past becomes present. For me the image was always more than memorabilia, reflected light from circling Dervishes time-lapsed onto paper; the image becomes a representation of the commonality with everything, of self without identity, and form without volition."

Born and raised in South Dakota, James Wentzy has resided in New York City since 1976. He attended the P.S.1 Artist-in-Residence from 1980 to 1982. Wentzy has exhibited internationally in numerous film festivals and galleries, including the Berlinale (2003) and the Museum of Modern Art. His work is in the collection of the AIDS Activist Video Preservation Project at the New York Public Library.

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Ho Tam "Go For the Gold!" September 4 to October 26, 2008 Window Project re-opens with Victoria artist Ho Tam's "Go For The Gold!" - an installation that continues the Olympic spirit and explores the ambition of the Asian men. The installation will coincide with his solo exhibition "Confessions of A Salesman" at the Yukon Arts Centre (Whitehorse) this Fall. Both exhibitions runs from September 4 to October 26, 2008.* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

WINDOW PROJECT ARCHIVE:August 1, 2006 to July 31, 2007 ~ One Year of Visual Art Exhibitions by Artists/Writers Across Canada June 29 to July 3, 2007: Barb Hunt "Fallen" (Corner Brook NL)May 5 to June 3, 2007: Kim Huynh "Top Hat" (Calgary AB) March 14 to April 15, 2007: Libby Hague "Paradise Apartment - Waiting for Skylark" (Toronto ON) January 20 to February 28, 2007: Mark Prier "Continental Drift" (Corner Brook NL)December 6, 2006 to January 14, 2007: Jon Baturin "Tama Triptych" (Toronto ON) September 8 to October 8, 2006: Laura U. Marks "Letters from Beirut" (Vancouver BC) August 1 to September 4, 2006: Alan Kollins "Before/After" (Victoria BC) (Please scroll down for images and desctiptions)

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Barb Hunt "Fallen" June 29 to July 31, 2007

Barb Hunt’s art practice is based in textiles, with focus on the rituals of mourning, particularly those of Newfoundland. Her current work is about the devastation of war: knitting anti-personnel land mines in pink wool, and working with camouflage army uniforms. The repetitive nature of textile work is often a way of coping with grief and loss, since fabric has many associations with bodily protection, particularly in the important role for camouflage uniforms. Working with army fatigues, Hunt's sewing give rise to a new purpose: to mourn the loss of life during war. It also references the fragility and beauty of the human body, and the visible traces of the specific individuals who wore the fatigues. Fallen is therefore Hunt's attempt to balance her abhorrence for the cruelty of war and her empathy for the soldiers.

Barb Hunt studied art at the University of Manitoba and completed her MFA at Concordia University, Montreal in 1994. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions across Canada and internationally. She lives in Corner Brook, Newfoundland where she teaches at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University. She has been the recipient of: grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the President’s Award for Outstanding Research from Memorial University, and research residencies in Canada, France and Ireland.The artist wishes to gratefully acknowledge the support of Canada Council for the Arts.

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Kim Huynh "Top Hat " May 5 to June 3, 2007

Calgary-based artist Kim Huynh was born and raised in Sai Gon, Vietnam and immigrated to Canada in 1980. She studied art history, philosophy, painting and drawing before going on to receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria in 1990 and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Alberta in 1992. She has exhibited widely with solo exhibitions across Canada and in group exhibitions world-wide. Her works are held in many public collections including the Shanghai Art Museum, China, the University of Jaipur, India and the Graphic Art Museum in Poland.

For the Window Project, Huynh is presenting her work from the Top Hat series. Using camouflage prints and crushed top hats, Huynh investigates power relation and cultural identity under our post-colonial condition.

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Libby Hague "Paradise Apartment - Waiting for Skylark" March 14 to April 15, 2007

Toronto based artist Libby Hague was born in St. Thomas, Ontario but grew up in the suburbs of Montreal. Using combinations of print, video and installation she looks at the risks of living in a precarious world. Her point of view is secular, and she uses narrative to puzzle out how, without an external code to direct us, we can determine humane social relationships.

Skylarks and flowers are signs of spring in Victoria. In this case, a group of kids on the rooftop of their apartment building are waiting with their spray paint for Skylark so they can all go out "hitting their names”. To paraphrase the artist Claes Oldenberg, everything is grey and gloomy and all of a sudden up pops a graffiti roofline like a big bouquet. It must be spring. Paradise Apartments is an ongoing series of time sensitive installations taking place in window galleries across the country.
http://www3.sympatico.ca/libbylibby/

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Mark Prier "Continental Drift " January 20 to February 28, 2007

Mark Prier's eclectic practice ranges from installation and performance to audio art and electronic music, often exploring themes of mapping, wilderness, and survival. He has presented exhibitions at Redhead Gallery, Toronto Free Gallery (Toronto, Ontario), White Water Gallery (North Bay, Ontario), City Without Walls (Newark, New Jersey), and Contemporary Art Forum Kitchener and Area (CAFKA). As a curator, Prier runs 312, putting together video art screenings and exhibitions both offline in alternative spaces and online at www.312.ca. As half of the electronica duo hellothisisalex, Prier has played the MUTEK Festival in Montreal, done commissions for CBC Radio’s Brave New Waves, and taken part in the National Film Board of Canada’s Minus 40 project.

Continental Drift tells the story of a fictional Newfoundland family with found diagrams of plate tectonics. The narrative, presented as a series of figures, mixes Canadian history with North American geology to relate the family's gradual migration from Newfoundland's south coast to Canada's west.

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Jon Baturin "Tama Triptych" December 6, 2006 to January 14, 2007

Jon Baturin is an Associate Professor at York University in Toronto. He has spent much of the last decade investigating ideological constructs and the formation of dogmatic systems as they relate to notions of Truth. British Cultural Historian, John Calcutt, has located those concerns as “…Truth, Justice, Power, and Identity.” To be entirely accurate these investigations should be seen as sub-sets of the notion of “Hope” which has been the locus, whether the projects appear as mediated critiques of political systems or as collaborative works, which envision social change. The phrase “ideology of care” best defines this broad philosophic position. Baturin is presently working on a series of new collaborative projects which deal with gender, identity, and the visual manifestations of his collaborator’s notions of wellness and loss. His research projects can be found in the following websitse:
http://www.vtapedigital.org/baturin_tama_site
http://www.digibodies.org/works/baturin
http://www.criticalmedia.ca

The work Jon_Tama Triptych is an excerpt from The Tama “Tapestry” / Tama “Trees” cycle. Each Tama in the series has eulogistic overtones. Each portrays a friend - in contemplation, grief (or death). Each image-based structure continues investigations into personal memory – not from an “impossible objectivity” but from a more “realistic truth” - the confluence of the many subjective activities, events, images, thoughts and perceptions that arise from a specific point in time. Aspects of chaos confusion and visual manifestations of ‘noise” are part of that truth.

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Laura U. Marks "Letters from Beirut" September 8 to October 8, 2006

Letters from Beirut is a collection of email letters sent to friends (later forwarded by her friends to others and hence reached the hands of the curator). Documenting the time period from the Israeli first strike in Lebanon to the eventual exodus of the Canadians in July 2006, Marks's letters illustrate her personal experience in the war-torn city, written with urgency from an intimate and humanistic perspective and encapsulating a recent past. The fifteen installments of the letters will be on display, in sequence, during the month long exhibition. To accompany her writing, a series of snapshots by Marks is also included in the exhibit.

Laura U. Marks is a theorist, critic and curator of independent and experimental media arts. She is the author of The Skin of the Film: Intercultural Cinema, Embodiment, and the Senses (Duke University Press, 2000) and Touch: Sensuous Theory and Multisensory Media (Minnesota University Press, 2002). Her current research includes: formal commonalities and historical connections between Islamic art and contemporary computer art (a book project), contemporary Arab media arts; and audiovisual forms for intellectual work; and non-Western approaches to new media. Dr. Marks is the Dena Wosk University Professor of Art and Culture Studies at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver.

To download the entire collection of Letters from Beirut (Word document), please click here.

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ALAN KOLLINS "Before/After" August 1 to September 4, 2006

Alan Kollins defines himself less as an artist than he does an arts administrator, former academic and generic misfit still pursuing the rock and roll lifestyle. Alan serves on the board of directors at Victoria’s FiftyFifty Arts Collective and has had a hand in its programming and administration since its inception in 2002. Producing few works for exhibition, Alan’s installations are influenced by post-structuralism, film theory, particularly the work of Christian Metz, and postmodern anxieties in image based culture.

Before/After seeks to engage critically with the context of the self portrait. Its cultural associations to self representation and the potential power of highlighting a self defined gaze is mocked by the text as well as the portrait’s bracketing of the hair-dos. Moreover, the possibility for a narcissistic gaze inherent to the self portrait is problematized by the before/after concept which is closely associated with hair replacement, body trimming and other cheap attempts at improving one’s image of self. The portrait’s symbolic passing of time and marks of aging serve to illustrate the futility of preserving youthful features.

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For more information on the Window Project, please contact: hotam88@yahoo.com.The Window Project acknowledges the supports of Decade for its generous donation of the space, and David Broome and Mike Huston of the Department of Fine Arts, University of Victoria for the webhosting of this site.