A New Path to the Waterfall

Harrell Fletcher

Elisa Ferrari

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

Andrew Dadson

Join artist Andrew Dadson for a walking tour as he introduces the themes and ideas present in the exhibition, *Site For Still Life*.

###Biography
Andrew Dadson lives and works in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include *Andrew Dadson*, Contemporary Art Gallery offsite, New York (2017); RaebervonStenglin, Zürich (2016 and 2013); *Over the Sun*, Vancouver Art Gallery, (2015);  David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles (2015); *The Brink: Andrew Dadson*, Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2012); *New Paintings and Visible Heavens*, Lawrimore Project, Seattle (2010); *Evening all afternoon*, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Vancouver (2007). Selected group exhibitions include *Summer 2016: Collection Works*, Rennie Collection, Vancouver (2016); *Les traces matérielles, la temporalité et le geste en art contemporain (Material Traces: Time and the Gesture in Contemporary Art)*, Galerie Leonard & Bina Ellen, Université Concordia, Montreal (2013); *Phantasmagoria*, Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012); *On the Nature of Things*, Kamloops Art Gallery (2011); *WYSIWYG: What You(ngs) See Is What You Get*, Rosenblum & Friends Collection, Paris (2011); *Everything you can imagine is real…*, Xavier Hufkens, Brussels (2011); and *Without you I’m Nothing*, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2011). In 2011 Dadson won The Brink Award, The Henry Art Gallery, Seattle. Dadson is represented by Galleria Franco Noero, Turin and David Kordansky Gallery, Los Angeles.


A detailed image of Andrew Dadson's work. A cactus illuminated by pink-purple light. 

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Talk

Lyse Lemieux

Join us for an introduction to the work on display as Lemieux discusses her response to the two difference sites for her exhibition, *FULL FRONTAL*.

###Biography

Lyse Lemieux studied at the University of Ottawa (1973–75) and the University of British Columbia (1976–78), receiving a BFA from the University of British Columbia (1978). Solo exhibitions include *A Girls Gotta Do What A Girls Gotta Do*, Richmond Art Gallery (2016); *Black Is The Size Of My New Skirt*, Republic Gallery, Vancouver (2015);* In-Between-In-Between: Lyse Lemieux & Meryl McMaster*, Katzman Contemporary, Toronto (2015); *Soldiers and Vesperers*, Chernoff Fine Arts, Vancouver (2009). Alongside her exhibitions, collaborative work by Lemieux has also resulted in two new works by choreographer/dancer Ziyan Kwan, *Dumb Instrument Dance*, Richmond Art Gallery (2016) and *À Fleur De Peau: The Skin Project* with Marguerite Witvoet and Barbara Bourget for Vancouver International Dance Festival (2005). Participation in recent group exhibitions includes *Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2016-17); *Aujourd’hui Encore*, Trépanier Baer Gallery, Calgary (2016); *Out of Lin*e, Oakville Galleries, Ontario (2015); *Cut & Paste*, Equinox Gallery, Vancouver (2012). In 2017 Lemieux was the recipient of the Doris and Jack Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts VIVA award for Outstanding Achievement in the Visual Arts. She lives and works in Vancouver.

Exterior image of CAG with the work of Lyse Lemieux installed in vinyl across the ground and top floor windows. Large-scale black ellipses alternate with black linear patterns on a beige background.

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Cease Wyss

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

Over the course of the 2017-18 school year *A New Path to the Waterfall* was a collaborative art project that situated a CAG satellite gallery space within MaryAnn Persoon’s grade 6/7 class at Lord Strathcona Elementary School.

In 2015 the Contemporary Art Gallery invited Portland-based artist Harrell Fletcher for a residency at our Burrard Marina Field House. Growing out of that period of research, Fletcher proposed a yearlong project in a classroom connected to issues and topics in the school curriculum. The project was conceived to open up new ways for the students to engage with art and the wider world while re-shaping the ways in which we consider contemporary art, gallery spaces and public schools.

Within *A New Path to the Waterfall*, MaryAnn Persoon’s grade 6/7 class engaged in five projects created and led by six Vancouver-based artists; Justine A. Chambers, Elisa Ferrari, Hannah Jickling, Carmen Papalia, Helen Reed, and T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss.

The students were encouraged to take creative risks and experiment with different ways of making to investigate local ecosystems and issues surrounding accessibility, inclusion, power structures and taste and consumption across all sensorial experiences. Aspects of each project in A New Path to the Waterfall were presented to the public through exhibitions, interventions, performances and public programming at six week intervals onsite at the school and in the surrounding Strathcona neighbourhood.

A limited edition publication of six printed pieces by each of the artists and students will be available for purchase in CAG's Book Shop.

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

Two smiling children in a classroom looking at a handmade herbarium book. Other herbarium books surround them on the table.   

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A New Path to the Waterfall 

Andrew Bartee

From Ballet BC, we are delighted to welcome dancer Andrew Bartee to the Contemporary Art Gallery, who over successive visits will develop a series of individual performances in response to ideas and themes present within the exhibitions.

Andrew Bartee is currently artist-in-residence at Ballet BC. As part of his year-long residency, Bartee is examining gesture and movement with a particular interest in audience in consideration of permeability of the fourth wall. He will be framing his research and performances around a guided exploration of the different ways we converse with art and each other.

#### Performance dates

Tuesday, September 19, 2 – 4pm

Friday, October 27, 4 – 6pm

Tuesday, October 31, 4 – 6pm

Saturday, November 4, 2 – 4pm

Friday, November 10, 2 – 4pm

Tuesday, November 21, 4 – 6pm

Saturday, December 2, 1 – 3pm

### Biography

Andrew Bartee is a member of Ballet BC. From Everett, Washington, he studied on scholarship at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle, WA and attended summer courses at the School of American Ballet, American Ballet Theatre and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. He was also the first recipient of the Fleming Halby exchange with the Royal Danish Ballet, a 2007 Princess Grace Award recipient and was one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2015. From 2008–2014, Andrew danced with Pacific Northwest Ballet while also performing frequently with Whim W’Him and Kate Wallich + The YC. In 2014, he joined Ballet BC and is currently the Artist in Residence for the 17/18 season. In addition to performing, Andrew has had the opportunity to create his own dances for Pacific Northwest Ballet, PNB School, Grand Rapids Ballet Company, Whim W’Him, Wolf Trap Center for the Performing Arts, Velocity Dance Center, Seattle International Dance Festival, CHOP Shop, Arts Umbrella, and Dances for a Small Stage.

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Performances

*FIRE ALARM* is an exhibition of work by seven 15-19 year old participants of Looking Through the Window: Visual Art Summer Intensive, a youth program created in collaboration with Arts Umbrella. The exhibition is presented at CAG’s Window Spaces from September 16-24, 2017.

For this exhibition, each student has developed a character from a set of found objects. Using their character as a guide, the students created an arrangement consisting of found objects and a variety of window dressings. Through strategies of display and concealment, *FIRE ALARM* provides a window into the domestic spaces and lives of 7 characters while reflecting on CAG as a site inevitably tied to the private space of the condominium.

### Participants
Sam Brock-Mahood, Xing Chen, Peggy Li, Gracie Lyngen, Mina Mitic, Nicole Pereira, Danielle Rozali

### About Visual Arts Summer Intensive

The Visual Arts Summer Intensive offered in collaboration between CAG and Arts Umbrella is a three-week visual arts intensive specifically designed for youth between the age of 15 and 19 interested in developing their visual art practice. The program is designed to be a stimulating and challenging experience for young artists committed to experimentation and pushing the boundaries of their own art making in a supportive studio environment. Throughout the program, participants have the opportunity to work with leading artists, curators and educators in Vancouver as they explore a range of contemporary art practices and exhibition making. The program culminates in a professionally installed exhibition in the windows of the Contemporary Art Gallery.



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Visual Arts Summer Intensive 2017

FIRE ALARM

Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn

Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn is the eighth and final artist to participate in *Twenty-Three Days at Sea*, a travelling artist residency originated by Access Gallery and produced in partnership with the Contemporary Art Gallery and Burrard Arts Foundation.

In *Object without Shadow*, Skoolisariyaporn re-enacts a ritual she practiced with her father’s Chinese-born family each September, the period when it is believed that ghosts are able to make a momentary reappearance from the afterlife. In this custom, paper replicas of desirable objects — such as jewelry, iPhones, computers and mahjong sets — are presented as offerings to ancestors. Skoolisariyaporn’s performance combines a series of offerings with the reading aloud of texts to consider the myriad ghosts produced under capitalism: from the spectral return of living things, to the invisible labour of historical Chinese immigrants to Vancouver. In this way she conjures a relationship between the North Pacific Ocean in the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries, as a theatre for both colonialism and neoliberalism.

### Biography
Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn’s practice involves moving image, performance, text, and installation, and examines notions of human and non-human history embedded in geological spacetime: the history of mankind as remembered by the earth and its landscape. She is particularly interested in the landscape of the sea, because a “seascape” offers the potential to imagine a perpetual landscape that transcends the concept of “space” into “time.” In this way, she suggests, the landscape of the sea suggests a new way to understand and approach history and spatiality. Recent exhibitions and performances include Chongqing Changjiang Contemporary Museum, Chongqing, China; Biquini Wax, Mexico City; Deptford Lounge, London, UK; Kunstakademie Dusseldorf; Gruentaler 9, Berlin; and Five Years Project, London, UK. Skoolisariyaporn lives and works in London and Bangkok.


An inflated plastic bag covers the head of the artist. The artist’s face looking down her hands is visible through this translucent bag. Many people seated behind her are watching this performance. 

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Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn: Object Without Shadow

Performance

In partnership with Arts Umbrella, Contemporary Art Practices is a three-week summer visual art intensive run annually since 2017, designed for artists ages 15-19 interested in advancing their artistic skills and creative thinking.

The intensive is a stimulating experience for young artists committed to experimentation and dedicated to pushing the boundaries of their own art-making. In a supportive studio environment, students work with professional Vancouver artists, curators, and educators, exploring a range of contemporary art practices.

Each year, the program culminates with a presentation of student work.

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Visual Arts Summer Intensive

Contemporary Art Practices

Levine Flexhaug

Peter White

Nancy Tousley

Join guest curator Peter White as he introduces the research and process undertaken with Nancy Tousley to produce the exhibition Levine Flexhaug, *A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings*. 

The talk will be followed by a film screening of *Flexie! All the Same and All Different* at 7pm. This feature-length documentary was made in association with the exhibition by Calgary filmmakers Gary Burns and Donna Brunsdale.

Multiple, framed paintings of similar mountain landscapes in different sizes cover the walls of a gallery in a salon-style layout. Four vitrines in the center of the gallery display more. 

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Join guest curator Nancy Tousley as she discusses the research undertaken with Peter White to produce the exhibition Levine Flexhaug, *A Sublime Vernacular: The Landscape Paintings*.

Three circular paintings of mountain landscapes hang in a horizontal line on a bright blue wall in a gallery. The landscapes appear to be duplicates but are subtly different.

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Aileen Burns

Gordon Bennett

Join Aileen Burns, co-director of the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane, for an introductory walking tour of the exhibition, *Gordon Bennett: Be Polite*. This will be followed by the opening reception.

Detail shot of the work of Gordon Bennett. The colourful drawing shows two figures. One at the center that is part skeleton. A smaller figure sits on top and is holding two snakes. 

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Aileen Burns 

Derya Akay

 Tayybeh

 Carmen Aldakhlallah

 Hayat Shabo

Join artist Derya Akay, Hayat Shabo and her daughter Carmen Aldakhlallah of Tayybeh as they explore Syrian cuisine.

Hayat Shabo, a chef originating from Damascus, and her daughter Carmen Aldakhlallah will discuss traditional Syrian dishes while demonstrating how to prepare kibbeh, minced meat, onion and bulgur balls. All participants are welcome to try their hand at making kibbeh under Hayat’s guidance. Over the afternoon there will be opportunities to taste a range of Syrian recipes and share stories about food traditions.

This event is presented in collaboration with Tayybeh, a nascent organization that aims to support Syrian women in Vancouver by organizing community-based dining experiences. By showcasing beautiful and authentic dishes from their hometowns in Syria, the women of Tayybeh have access to an income and financial independence. Working together, they build connections with other women and interact with the communities they live in. All while doing something they love: cooking.

The word “tayybeh” in Arabic is the feminine construction that means “kind”, and in the colloquial Levantine dialect means “delicious.”

The Contemporary Art Gallery welcomes Vancouver-based artist Derya Akay as the Burrard Marina Field House resident this spring. Expanding on recent projects, Akay is collaborating with women elders from a range of cultural backgrounds to explore and share local and diasporic culinary traditions through a series of workshops and meals. This convivial partaking of food is a gateway to oral history, which Akay understands as both storytelling and the sensations and memories summoned through communal eating.

### Biography

Derya Akay (b, 1988, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Campbell River Art Gallery, 2017; Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2017; Painting with Light, Kunstverein Toronto, 2015; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper, Centre A, Vancouver, 2014. He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award, Vancouver, and was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Emerging Artists People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2016; Geometry of Knowing Part I, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver, 2015.

A salad in a big blue bowl, a bottle of olive oil, and various other plates are placed on a table. 

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Derya Akay: Exploring Syrian Cuisine

Workshop

 Sally Tallant

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to partner with the Vancouver Art Gallery to present a talk by Sally Tallant, Director of Liverpool Biennial, who is visiting Vancouver on the occasion of the exhibition *Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures*, December 3, 2016 to April 17, 2017. Please join us Wednesday, April 12 at 5:30pm for Tallant’s presentation on her current work, followed by questions and a small reception. 

Sally Tallant is the Director of Liverpool Biennial, UK. Developing an interdisciplinary approach, Tallant has delivered large-scale exhibitions and commissioned ambitious music and performance programmes, including a new work by Michael Nyman in 2014. Previously Tallant was Head of Programmes at the Serpentine Gallery, London where she developed and delivered an integrated programme of Exhibitions, Architecture, Education and Public Programmes. She has curated exhibitions in a wide range of contexts including the Hayward Gallery, Serpentine Gallery, Hospitals, Schools as well as public commissions. Additionally, her curated performances, sound events, film programmes and conferences include initiating the *Park Nights* series in the Serpentine Gallery Pavilions and co-curating the Serpentine Gallery Marathon series with Hans Ulrich Obrist.

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.

A portrait photograph of Sally Tallant smiling. Tallant is wearing a green shirt and a silver necklace. 

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Sally Tallant

 Greg Staats

Greg Staats will discuss his multidisciplinary practice and the works on display for *Song of the Open Road*.

Toronto-based artist Greg Staats’ (Kanien’kehá:ka, b. Ohsweken, Six Nations of the Grand River Territory) works combine language, mnemonics and the natural world as an ongoing process of conceptualizing a Haudenosaunee restorative aesthetic to define the multiplicity of relationships with trauma and renewal. For *Song of the Open Road* Staats’ installation untitled (objects of reciprocal thinking) (2014) brings together images and objects from personal and community archives that offer intellectual and aesthetic interpretation of body and ceremony.


Installation image of various works in a gallery. Coloured photographs of various landscapes, texts, and some objects are sparsely placed on the wall.

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Greg Staats

Artist Talk

CAG and The Jewish Museum and Archives of BC are pleased to present *The Chosen Food: Shabbat Dinner & Fresh Challah*. This is the second event in the series *Mantι, Börek, Baklava* by Vancouver-based artist Derya Akay, the current Burrard Marina Field House resident this spring. Akay will prepare a dinner informed by the family recipes of Jewish community members Sara Ciacci, Leonor Etkin, Claire Hammer, and Debbie Kafka. Several of these women will be present to share the history, memory and symbolism associated with the dishes served.

Expanding on recent projects, Akay is collaborating with women elders from a range of cultural backgrounds to explore and share local and diasporic culinary traditions through a series of workshops and meals. This convivial partaking of food is a gateway to oral history, which Akay understands as both storytelling and the sensations and memories summoned through communal eating.

This event is also the first evening in The Jewish Museum and Archives of BC supper club series, *The Chosen Food*. Each event in this series will showcase a regional style of Jewish cuisine. 

### Biography
Derya Akay (b, 1988, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Campbell River Art Gallery (2017); Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (2017); Kunstverein Toronto (2015); and *Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper*, Centre A, Vancouver (2014). He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award, Vancouver, and was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Emerging Artists People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include *Ambivalent Pleasures*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2016); *Geometry of Knowing Part I*, SFU Galleries, Vancouver, (2015).

People self-serving food from various dishes on a long silver table.

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Derya Akay: The Chosen Food: Shabbat Dinner & Fresh Challah

Diane Borsato

The Contemporary Art Gallery presents a unique one-night installation by Toronto-based artist Diane Borsato with the collaboration of Judie Glick, Kuniko Yamamoto, Naomi Sawada and Anne Morrell Robinson. Evolving from a research visit to Vancouver in summer 2016 as part of our Burrard Marina Field House Studio Residency Program, Borsato worked with members of the Japanese flower arranging (Ikebana) community in Vancouver to develop *The Moon Is Often Referred To As a Dead, Barren World, But I Think This Is Not Necessarily The Case.*

Typical of her practice, Borsato often works with amateur organizations — mycologists, astronomers, beekeepers — in projects that examine social and sensorial modes of knowing. She has been practicing and researching Sogetsu Ikebana for several years.

Taking its title from a statement made by the modern sculptor and Sogetsu founder Teshigahara Sofu in *Kadensho: Book of Flowers* the work echoes ideas found in the publication in which he imagines making arrangements in another, very different world. For the project, Borsato invites several Ikebana masters from the modern Sogetsu school to participate in a collaborative workshop and installation. The practitioners will work with seasonal materials, and objects, supplies and the space of the gallery building itself to provide a conceptual framework for materializing a dialogue between the worlds of Ikebana — often a highly technical, rule-based traditional cultural practice and contemporary art — with its own unmistakable tropes and cultural specificities.

###Biography
Diane Borsato has established an international reputation for her social and interventionist practices, performance, video, photography, and sculpture. She was twice nominated for the Sobey Art Award and was winner of the Victor Martyn-Lynch Staunton Award for her work in the Inter-Arts category from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has exhibited and performed at major Canadian institutions including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; The Power Plant, Toronto; the Art Gallery of York University, Toronto; MOCCA, Toronto; the Vancouver Art Gallery; the National Art Centre, Ottawa; and in galleries and museums in the US, France, Mexico, Taiwan, and Japan.

A close up view of a patchwork quilt made of fabric squares of varying patterns and colours. Quilted overtop are large white block letters. Only a fragment of a sentence is visible. 

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A sculptural installation occupies the center of a gallery space. The installation is made of various objects including ladders, plants, chairs, plinths, a quilted banner and boxes, among others.

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A detailed view of a sculpture installation. Orange gerberas and small twigs are arranged in a small black ikebana flower vase. The vase is situated on wood bars placed on a step ladder. 

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Detail of a sculpture installation. Some pink flowers and twigs are arranged in a flat rectangular-shaped vase filled with water. A large mirror is placed beneath the vase.

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A detailed view of a sculpture installation. Three white flowers protrude from a bike tire and a ladder with plants suspended from it are blurred in the background. 

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Diane Borsato: The Moon Is Often Referred To As a Dead, Barren World, But I Think This Is Not Necessarily The Case

Installation

Join Derya Akay, Maria Dyulgerova & granddaughter Biliana Velkova as they explore traditional recipes shared in Bulgarian & Turkish cuisine. We invite participants to join in the preparation and enjoyment of the food while sharing stories and conversation.

The Contemporary Art Gallery welcomes Vancouver-based artist Derya Akay as the Burrard Marina Field House resident this spring. Expanding on recent projects, Akay’s project *Manti, Börek, Baklava* includes the artist collaborating with women elders from a range of cultural backgrounds to explore and share local and diasporic culinary traditions through a series of workshops and meals. This convivial partaking of food is a gateway to oral history, which Akay understands as both storytelling and the sensations and memories summoned through communal eating.

### Biography 

Derya Akay (b, 1988, Istanbul, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. Recent solo exhibitions include Campbell River Art Gallery, 2017; Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2017; *Painting with Light*, Kunstverein Toronto, 2015; *Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper*, Centre A, Vancouver, 2014. He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award, Vancouver, and was shortlisted for the 2015 RBC Emerging Artists People’s Choice Award at the Gardiner Museum in Toronto. Recent and upcoming group exhibitions include *Ambivalent Pleasures*, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2016; Geometry of Knowing Part I, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Vancouver, 2015.




Two people standing and mixing cut vegetables in a bowl on a kitchen table. 

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Derya Akay: Cooking with Maria Dyulgerova and Biliana Velkova

Erdem Taşdelen

David Balzer

As part of Canadian Art Magazines Gallery Day, Vancouver Editor-in-Chief David Balzer discusses the work of Turkish Canadian artist Erdem Taşdelen and his current CAG exhibitions *Wild Child and The Quantified Self Poems*.


A white graph on a black background with a heading that reads "How do you feel?" A "Next" button is beneath the graph.

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David Balzer on Erdem Taşdelen

Feedback Series

Erdem Taşdelen will discuss his multidisciplinary practice involving video, installation, sculpture, drawing, and artist books along with recent works on view at the Contemporary Art Gallery. CAG presents two new works by Toronto-based Turkish artist Erdem Taşdelen. Commissioned by CAG in partnership with Cineworks, *Wild Child* is an ambitious two-part video installation which takes as its starting point, *An Historical Account of the Discovery and Education of a Savage Man* by Jean Marc Gaspard Itard, a physician who decided to care for a feral boy found in Aveyron, France in 1798. Convinced that he could “civilize” the boy by teaching him language, Itard was left frustrated in his attempts to make the boy transcend his so-called savagery when he proved incapable of learning to speak.

Presented in our windows is *The Quantified Self Poems*, a new series of twelve screen prints. Over a period of three months in the summer of 2016, Taşdelen reported his moods approximately three times a day on Emotion Sense, a self-improvement smartphone app developed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, UK. As he answered a series of questions the artist’s feelings were numerically encoded as data, effectively quantifying the unquantifiable. Working with programmer Ali Bilgin Arslan, Taşdelen developed an algorithm that translated this information into words drawn from a unique dictionary created by Vancouver-based poet Daniel Zomparelli. Unusual sentences emerge from which we attempt to make some kind of sense.

### Biography

Erdem Taşdelen lives and works in Toronto. His multidisciplinary practice involves a range of media including installation, video, drawing, sculpture, sound and artist books. He has shown extensively internationally and across Canada, including exhibitions at Burrard Arts Foundation, Vancouver (2016); Museum für Neue Kunst, Freiburg (2016); Stacion Center for Contemporary Art, Kosovo (2015); Sakip Sabanci Museum, Istanbul (2015); Galeri NON, Istanbul (2013); Western Front, Vancouver (2013); Biennial of the Americas, Denver (2013); ARTER, Istanbul (2-13); MAK, Vienna (2013); 221A, Vancouver(2012; and Oakville Galleries (2012). 


Haroon Mirza

Mirza is an internationally acclaimed UK-based artist who ‘composes’ with light and sound waves and electric current. In his talk he will discuss his practice and recent work, devising kinetic sculptural works and immersive installations. 

Presented in partnership with Visual Art Forums and the Audain Faculty of Visual Art and Material Practice.

###Biography
Haroon Mirza has received international acclaim for work that tests the interplay and friction between sound and light waves and electric current. Kinetic sculptures, performances and immersive installations purposefully cross wired. An advocate of interference (in the sense of electro-acoustic or radio disruption), he creates situations in which he describes his role as a composer, manipulating electricity, alive, invisible and volatile phenomenon calling on instruments as varied as household electronics, vinyl and turntables, LEDs, furniture, video footage and existing artworks by other artist to behave differently. 


In a darkened gallery space, four thin TV monitors with stands play video works. In front of them, twelve speaker boxes are placed in a large circle, inside which visitors sit while watching videos.