Harrell Fletcher

Join CAG and artists at Lord Strathcona Elementary for the launch of the limited-edition volume *A New Path to the Waterfall*, celebrating the year-long collaborative art project between local artists and students from MaryAnn Persoon’s 2017-18 grade 6/7 class. A special screening of an experimental film created by this year’s class with artist Gabi Dao will accompany the launch.

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A New Path to the Waterfall

Publication Launch

For the third part of *A New Path to the Waterfall*, artist and disability activist Carmen Papalia introduced Ms. Persoon’s grade 6/7 class at Lord Strathcona Elementary to *Open Access*; the model of five guiding principles for accessibility he produced in 2015. In a weekly program that included exercises ranging from running with eyes shut to staging a solidarity march for *Open Access* on school grounds, the group engaged in a dialogue about their subjective access needs leading toward a new model for mutual support.

Join them on March 1 as they share points in their process and reveal their collective statement for accessibility in the classroom.


A photograph of a piece of white cloth on a wall of a classroom. A phrase, '"open access is..." is printed in the middle of the cloth, and other handwritten ideas, including "not being judged" are written in the margins. 

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Carmen Papalia: Open Access: Practicing Accessibility Together

Join Elisa Ferrari, Harrell Fletcher, and the Lord Strathcona Elementary community for *the sound of a cactus being touched by a raindrop*, a communal listening event inspired by the early days of radio broadcasting. In addition to listening to sound collages and field recordings produced by the group, a selection of sound maps and graphic scores will be presented.

A launch of the limited edition publication *The Herbarium Project*, produced by artist Cease Wyss and the students of Strathcona Elementary, will follow the presentation.

This event is part of *A New Path to the Waterfall*, a new satellite gallery space within a Vancouver elementary school, re-shaping the ways in which we consider contemporary art, gallery spaces and public schools.

In *A New Path to the Waterfall*, over the course of six-week periods, each artist collaborates with students to explore different issues and investigate a variety of topics connected to their curriculum. Each artist’s tenure at the school will end with a public presentation that could take many forms.

*A New Path to the Waterfall* will be presented to the public through exhibitions, interventions, performances and public programming at six week intervals throughout the school year. The public are welcome to attend these events and programs during set hours provided on the project website.


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Elisa Ferrari: the sound of a cactus being touched by a raindrop

With *A New Path to the Waterfall*, the Contemporary Art Gallery situates a new satellite gallery space within a Vancouver elementary school. Initiated by US artist Harrell Fletcher at CAG Burrard Marina Fieldhouse Studio, the project places artists in Maryann Persoon’s grade 6/7 classroom at Lord Strathcona Elementary School to re-shape the ways in which we consider contemporary art, gallery spaces and public schools.

Coast Salish ethnobotanist, community gardener and interdisciplinary artist T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss is the first artist to collaborate with Maryann Persoon’s class. Through a series of foraging trips to Capilano River, Harmony Garden, Trillium Park and Stanley Park, Cease and the students gathered plants, fungi, moss, lichen and more from different local habitats. They identified species – learning both their Skwxwu7mesh and Latin names – and pressed their plants. The class then composed these into a series of individual, hand-stitched herbarium books, inviting students to open their senses to local natural environments and encounter first-hand the deep interconnectedness of our ecosystems. Together, the pressed plants form not only a beautiful collection but also a historical document of biodiversity and a way to measure change in our natural landscapes.

Please join Cease Wyss, the Lord Strathcona Elementary community, and our primary supporter, Telus Community Board, for the public launch and discussion of these unique herbariums.

A New Path to the Waterfall is generously supported by TELUS Community Board, the Hamber Foundation, Artstarts/Artists in the Classroom, the Vancouver Foundation and the Vancouver Park Board.


Various sheets of paper with pressed plants on them are scattered over a table covered in blue cloth.

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T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss: The Strathcona Herbarium Launch

The Contemporary Art Gallery has worked with Vancouver artist Gareth Moore to co-commission a project comprising seven new films and a series of related posters.

For *Children’s Films*, Moore approached a number of international artists to produce short films for children, each person free to focus on any particular topic, shaping the content and form of their respective piece. Artists invited consist of some from Europe as well as other Vancouver based practitioners familiar to our local audiences. Moore then collated the two to five minute pieces into one longer work, providing it with open and closing credits, each section acting as a discrete but interconnected episode. One point of reference for this project alongside the artist’s own fascination with the formats of popular children’s television is *Children’s Tapes* (1974) by American artist Terry Fox.

By focusing on children, Moore seeks to engage visitors in a very different way to the conventional gallery goer, purposely taking work out into the city and challenging perceived conventions of whom the audience might be and where art may be apprehended. Distinctions are blurred between exhibition display and more usual educational activities. Furthermore his resort to a collaborative method of production questions the role of the artist as singular author, a more generous and outgoing approach that chimes with the underlying ethos of the gallery.

The exhibition format developed for *Children’s Films* deliberately moved between children’s cinema, pedagogical film and wandering circus. Akin to the early days of cinema with travelling magic lantern shows, weekly screenings of the 16mm films will take place in different locations throughout the city of Vancouver such as community centres, schools and a tent in open parkland, places including the Roundhouse, Trout Lake, Emery Barnes Park and the Moberly Arts and Cultural Centre amongst others. The place and time will be announced via posters in our windows as well those fly-posted throughout Vancouver, in addition to the internet via the project’s own website and that of the gallery.

With an audience comprising exclusively children — adults are only allowed if essential to accompany a child — Moore subverts, with charm and characteristic humour, not just the usual form of communication and presentation of exhibitions in an institution but also the notional audience itself. He debunks the idea that museums and galleries are merely places for adults, bypassing the conventional mediation with which children engage in contemporary art and involving them on their own terms while investing the work with a clear and significant social dynamic.

Moore’s work has long conflated performance, documentation, installation, and sculpture, as well as everyday activities normally considered peripheral to contemporary visual art, projects often involving communities external to the typical sphere of interest. As such this newly commissioned body of work is consistent with his broader practice: notional spaces and groups outside of the usual art audience become the key ingredient and participant.

*Children’s Films* highlights Moore’s enduring interests in ideas around museology, display, social engagement, and economic exchange. By using materials collected from his previous travels to create new objects that he will take with him on future journeys — or in this case the network of shared ideas within his broader artistic community and friendships — Moore’s inventions create a continuously evolving story of his pilgrimage where past narratives can be manipulated and transformed into new tales of exploration and ingenuity.

This expanded version of Children’s Films is presented by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. The project is commissioned with Bielefelder Kunstverein, Germany; IPS, Birmingham and the Whitstable Biennale. Venues in collaboration with Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre.

The exhibition was generously supported by The Audain Foundation for the Visual Arts.

### Biography

Gareth Moore was born in Matsqui, British Columbia. He currently lives and works in Kassel, Germany. Solo exhibitions include *Children’s Films*, Bielefelder Kunstverein (2011); *Passengers 1.9: Gareth Moore*, CCA Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco (2008); *As a Wild Boar Passes Water*, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008). He has also participated in the group exhibitions: *Elements of Chance*, La Biennale de Montréal (2011); *It Is What It Is*, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2010); *Right Right Now Now*, Arthur BoskampStiung M.1, Hohenlockstedt, Germany (2010); *The Chained Lady, the Microscope and the Southern Fish*, SOFA Gallery, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand (2010); *Nothing to Declare*, The Power Plant, Toronto (2009); *Every Version Belongs to the Myth*, Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2009). Currently he is exhibiting in dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, Germany and has been nominated for the Sobey Art Award 2012. Moore is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver.


ProgramGuideFall2012.pdf

A child, wearing a mask and dipping a brush into an ink bottle, sits in front of an open book with photos of statues. A print hangs on the wall in the background. The entire image has a magenta hue.

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A group of young children sit in a darkened room in front of a screen watching a projected video. The video depicts a shadow puppet-like, human figure tip-toeing across the screen carrying a large sack.

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Primary school age children sit on the floor in a gym and watch a video screening. On the screen, a boy wearing a black mask is dipping a brush into ink with a thick photo book in front of him.

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Image still from a video. A black cat sits in the middle of a window frame, its back facing the camera. Black text across the image reads, “Meow,” just to the right of the cat.

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Image still from a video of shadow puppets. A figure of a man stands before a wild boar in a forest, their arm raised as if in conversation with the boar.

Harrell Fletcher

Exhibitions

Talks & Events