Events Archive 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003      
 

The Vancouver Book Launches of Two Montreal Writers

Sextant by Maya Merrick (conundrum press)
Abandon by Oana Avasilichioaei (Wolsak and Wynn)
Also featuring Jacinda Oldale

Thursday, December 15, 8:00 pm

Join us for our last event of the year with these book launches! Sextant is Merrick’s debut novel, a story of the perpetually displaced Cassy Peerson, a young woman who lives in a car on a beach in an unnamed California town and works as a mermaid at a strip club. Part Dorothy Parker, part William Faulkner, Merrick's fragmented narrative moves between an eclectic cast of characters and flashbacks to memories of Cassy’s family which she would rather forget.

Avasilichioaei’s Abandon melds the legends of Romania with its new reality in her vivid and insightful poetry. Dragons rub shoulders with Mountaineers with bad teeth. Women wash carpets in the river, and builders wall women in Monasteries.

ABOUT THE WRITERS:
Originally from Vancouver, Maya Merrick presently works as a barmaid in Montreal. She has given readings in Montreal and Toronto, where she recently appeared as an invited guest at the Word on the Street festival and at Canzine. Her work will soon be seen in an upcoming issue of Matrix. Sextant (Conundrum Press, 2005 ) is her first publication.

Oana Avasilichioaei was born in Romania, but has lived in Canada since 1987. She is the author of The Dictator’s Garden (2003), Close Your Eyes (2005) and the translator of Occupational Sickness (2000), by the poet Nichita Stanescu.

Poet Jacinda Oldale is moved by flavour and cadence. She ponders and hopes to practice patience but will settle for a great olive. Her work has been published
in Hip Mama and the Vancouver Review.

 
     

 

Book Launch
Shift and Switch: New Canadian Poetry

Saturday, November 26, 2005 at 8 pm

A unique alternative to conventional poetry anthologies, Shift & Switch offers radicality, innovation, and experimentation with sound, visual elements, mathematics, surrealism, and pataphysics, in convenient book-form! Crack the spine of this highly anticipated collection to discover Canada's next generation of avant-garde poets and their electrifying poetry.

CONTRIBUTORS: derek beaulieu, Gregory Betts, Michael deBeyer, Alice Burdick, Jason Christie, Chris Fickling, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jay Gamble, Sharon Harris, Jill Hartman, Jamie Hilder, Geoffrey Hlibchuk, Matthew Hollett, Jesse Huisken, Kedrick James, Reg Johanson, Frances Kruk, Larissa Lai, Jason Le Heup, Glen Lowry, Danielle Maveal, Jeremy McLeod, Max Middle, Gustave Morin, Janet Neigh, Angela Rawlings, Rob Read, Jordan Scott, Natalie Simpson, Trevor Speller, Nathalie Stephens, Andrea Strudensky, Hugh Thomas, Mark Truscott, Douglas Webster, Jonathon Wilcke, Julia Williams, Rita Wong, Suzanne Zelazo, Rachel Zolf.

   
     

 

Caroline Bergvall
Transparency Machine

Sunday, November 20, 2005 at 2 pm

The Transparency Machine is a collaborative series curated by Rob Manery and Louis Cabri involving the projection and discussion of texts. The project began in Ottawa in the late 1980s and has since continued in Philadelphia, Calgary and Vancouver. The proceedings are di gitally recorded on a shared website where discussion can continue after the event.

Caroline Bergvall's latest book of poetry Goan Atom was published by Krupskaya in San Francisco (2001). Her mixed-arts performances and installation projects are frequently done in collaboration with other artists and have been shown across North America and Europe. Her critical and poetic work is increasingly concerned with "plurilingual" writing and sited textwork. She was the Director of Performance Writing, Dartington College of Arts (1994-2000), has taught writing at the University of Cardiff and is a Research Fellow in English at the University of London. She has recently been teaching at Rutgers. For a taste of her critical writing, see "In the Place of Writing" (in Assembling Alternatives: Reading Postmodern Poetries Transnationally, Wesleyan University Press, 2003). While at the KSW she will present a unit in the ongoing series, The Transparency Machine

   
 

 

A Triptych of Chapbook Launches

Saturday, November 12, 2005 at 8pm

Featuring:
Steve Collis—Blackberries (Bookthug 2005)
Kim Duff—This Thing On? (delusional books 2005)
Matt Nashlenas—riding the iron shovel (delusional books 2005)

From anarchism to tree planting, blackberry brambles to the world wide web, three Vancouver poets launch chapbooks and read from their work at the Helen Pitt Gallery.

About the Authors:
Steve Collis is the author of Mine (New Star 2001) and Anarchive (New Star 2005).

Kim Duff's poetry and essays have appeared in Filling Station, W, dandelion, West Coast Line and Stuffed Dog.

Matt Nashlenas no longer plants trees and resists biography. This is his stunning debut.

   
 

 

The Hotmails

Performance: Saturday, October 29, 2005 at 8:00 pm

The Hotmails is an Internet punk project produced by internationally exhibiting Media Artists Alberto Guedea (Mexico) and Jeremy Turner (Canada). For this project, Turner and Guedea perform as an Internet punk band in attempts to evolve Internet Art from that of a dry archival database to a rebellious purveyor of direct experience—as performance art.

The Hotmails audio works are computerized compositions made out of samples taken from classic and contemporary punk and metal bands that accentuate and investigate the nostalgic cliches surrounding the Punk aesthetic and sensibility. Considered the first VoIPUNK project on the Net, The Hotmails stream from Vancouver, through the Hotmail voice-chat service MSN and other Voice-Over Internet Protocol (VoIP) platforms (Skype, Google Talk), to artist-run centres and happenings around the world.

This project is a manifestation of William Gibson's Cyberpunk in its purest form.

www.thehotmails.com

 

 

 

-- The Hotmails

 

 

Concert with Nate Wooley and Jeffrey Allport

Performance: Saturday, October 22, 2005 at 8:00 pm

The Helen Pitt Gallery is pleased to present this premier performance between New Jersey-based trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley and Vancouver-based percussionist Jeffery Allport. Guided by a shared affinity for textural sound and a non-idiomatic approach to improvisation, this performance will create a close-listening environment for these artists' individual, yet overlapping, talents.

Nate Wooley grew up in a Finnish-American fishing village in Oregon. He has spent the rest of his life trying musically to find a way back to the peace and quiet of that time by whole-heartedly embracing the space between complete absorption in sound and relative absence of the same. He has studied and played regularly with Anthony Braxton, Ron Miles, Herb Robertson, Chris Speed and Okkyung Lee.

Jeffrey Allport approaches the physical nature of his chosen instrument through a variety of preparations and implements to liberate a unique palette of sounds. In addition to solo work, Allport has enjoyed a lengthy collaboration with Tim Olive, releasing three CD's since 1998. He has toured through Canada, the United States, Western Europe and Japan, and has collaborated with saxophonist John Butcher, trumpeters Axel Dšrner and Greg Kelley, as well as harpist Rhodri Davies.

   
 

 

Weekend Getaway at Birkenhead Resort

Presented by: The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC
Time: Friday, August 19-Sunday August 21, 2005
Place: Birkenhead Resort (past Pemberton, near Gates Lake) Cabin space is limited, call the gallery for further details (604) 681-6740.

 

 

--Cabin at Birkenhead Resort

 

 

Reading by Joey Dubuc

Presented by: The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC
Time: Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 7 p.m.
Place: 148 Alexander Street
Cost: Free

 

 

-- Joey Dumac, 2005

 

 

The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC 30th Anniversary Celebration

Presented by: The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC
Time: Saturday, June 18, 2005 at 7 p.m.
Place: Our exciting new location--148 Alexander Street
Cost: Free for all!

Featuring:
Memories and Gossip by Todd Davis
Music by The Weather
Auction featuring works by artists from the Pitt’s recent and past exhibition history.

   
 

 

Carly Haddon, Rob Ochiena and Megan Wilson

March 29 - April 2
Evening Reception: Friday, April 1, 8 pm
Artist's Talk: Saturday, April 2, 2 pm

This assemblage of proposals, models, dioramas, notes, and images, builds around invisible structures concerning desires and ideologies. Their trajectories end in hermit-like retreats and communal utopias. Using an economy of means that resists fixed coordinates, the artists offer methods of "making do", and conceptualize spaces that rest between architecture and folly.

Carly Haddon's drawings, photographs, sculpture, and installation works have involved research into topics including the human-animal divide, feral children, the history of philosophy, and autistic cognition. Her current interests range from utopian impulses in architecture to contingency, to the artist and the left. Carly's writings on art have been published in Canada and the US, and she will be participating in the SFU BFA grad show this spring.

Rob Ochiena is an Integrated Media student at Emily Carr Institute, currently concentrating on film and video with a strong background in photography. However, his practice is interdisciplinary and he has exhibited site-specific interventions and multi-media installations throughout Western Canada in the past two years.

Megan Wilson is an alumni of Emily Carr Institute and is currently completing her MFA at Simon Fraser University. Her thesis work focuses on durational performance and the practice of imposing regimes on daily life in contemporary art. This project is her third collaboration with Rob Ochiena and continues a long-standing interest in notions of 'retreat'.

 

 

--Carly Haddon, 2005

 

-- Megan Wilson, Rob Ochiena

 

 

The Happiest Night of Your Life

Presented by: The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC and Access Artist Run Centre
Time: Saturday, March 5th - 8pm DOOR - 9pm Show - Dancing until absurdly Late
Place: 252 E. 1st Avenue (@ Main St.)
Cost: 8 bucks students/under-employed, 12 bucks everyone else

Featuring::
The "Let's Get It On (Stage)" Variety Show
with celebrity judges
Glenn Alteen + Liz Magor+ Eric Metcalfe

and your hosts for the evening
Liza Lewis and Jerry Minelli
Plus
The AMAZING "2Legit2Quit" DANCE PARTY featuring: DJs Sascha Yamashita and Trevor Ketler, Doorprizes and a CASH BAR!

Celebrate the richness and diversity of Vancouver's Emerging Artist Communities!
SUPPORT ACCESS! SUPPORT the PITT!

All proceeds from this fundraising event will be donated to the Access and Helen Pitt Artist Run Centres for immediate operational assistance.
For more information please call Jeremy at (604) 681-6740 or Vanessa at (604) 689-2907.

 

 

-- The happiest night of your life

 

 

The Infinity Project
Conception and Organization by Jo Cook

Opening Reception, Friday, Feb.4, 7pm
EVERYONE WELCOME!

The Helen Pitt Gallery ARC facilitates public outreach initiatives, projects, experimentation and dialogue concerning contemporary art and community whenever possible. Before the opening of our next exhibition programme we will be hosting The Infinity Project.

This Project will be open to the public free of charge Saturday, Feb.5 and Tuesday, Feb.8 until Saturday, Feb.12, 2005, 12-5pm. ONE WEEK and a DAY ONLY! Don’t miss it!

The Infinity Project is an installation of work from over 100 local, national and international respondents to an Open Call posted by Jo Cook through the Helen Pitt Gallery ARC. Submissions from both artists and “non-artists” were encouraged. Contributors were asked to submit something dealing with the “idea of infinity” that did not exceed 2 feet square. Work in any discipline was welcomed.

Modeled after amateur science fair displays, this project is an experiment that draws attention to the connections between things rather than specifically highlighting the work of individuals. The diverse practices represented focus particularly on gestures embracing the ephemeral, the uncertain, the fallible, and the bewildered. Slapstick humour and a baroque feeling for materials infect cool science fair formality with an arcade aesthetic -- the sublime and the grotesque meet in an intimate tête-à-tête.

Jo Cook is an artist, curator, writer, and publisher. Her work has been exhibited in artist run centres across Canada, and internationally in Tokyo, Manchester, Belfast, Stockholm, and Bergen, Norway. In March of 2004 Cook curated Self-Publish or Perish, an exhibition of artist’s books for Open Space in Victoria, BC. Over 180 national and international artists were included in the exhibition.

“I don’t think the structure of the human skull is to be blamed for man’s inability to understand the concept of infinity. He would certainly be able to understand it if, when young, and while developing his sense of perception, he were allowed to venture out into the universe...”
-- Mileva Maric, from a letter to Albert Einstein, October 20, 1897

Contributers: Sonja Ahlers (Vancouver) Azoix (Calgary) Jill Ballard (Victoria) Colleen Baran (Vancovuer) Charlotte Barker (Calgary) Marc Bell (Vancouver) Elisabeth Belliveau (Montreal) Amarie Bergman (Vancouver) Mireille Bourgeois (Halifax) Daniel C Boyer (Houghton, MI) Ian Campbell (Montreal) Rebecca Chaperon (Vancouver) Tamsin Clark (Victoria) Michael Comeau (Toronto) Mark Connery (Toronto) Nora Curston (Grand Forks) Mark Delong (Vancouver) Siobhan Devlin (Vancouver) Andrew Dick (Victoria) Kathryn Dingwall (Vancouver) Chai Duncan (Saskatoon) Donna Eichel (Victoria) Scott Evans (Victoria) Dominic Fetherston (Victoria) Julia Feyrer (Vancouver) Jason Fitzpatrick (Vancouver) Signor Giffone (Victoria) David Gifford (Victoria) Emily Goodden (Victoria) Roy Green (Victoria) Kevin Greisch (Vancouver) Jason Gress (Saskatoon) Alberto Guedea (Vancouver) Varouj Gumuchian (Vancouver) Carly Haddon (Vancouver) Susan Haddon (Victoria) Kelly Haydon (Vancouver) Natasha Henderson (Courtenay, BC) Satomi Joba (Fukui, Japan) Joel Herman (Victoria) Patricia Hindmarch-Watson (Vancouver) Joseph Hoh (Victoria) Emi Honda (Victoria) Tomoyo Ihaya (Vancouver) Sally Ireland (Mayne Island, BC) Marisa Jahn (San Francisco) Douglas Jarvis (Victoria) Monica Johnson (Vancouver) Morag Kidd (Montreal) Annette Kierulf (Bøvågen, Norway) Caroline Kierulf (Låksevag, Norway) Kyla Kinzel (Vancouver) Lorraine Kwan (Vancouver) leannej (Vancouver) Chris Lloyd (Montreal) Danielle MacDonald (Vancouver) Alisdair MacRae (New York) Donato Mancini (Vancouver) Rita Marhaug (Bergen, Norway) Meghan McDonell (Richmond, BC) Jordan McKenzie (Victoria) Mark Mizgala (Vancouver) Florence Montmare (Stockholm) Matt Moroz (Montreal) Wesley Mulvin (Mayne Island, BC) my name is scot (Vancouver) Arlene Nesbitt (Victoria) Jeremy Newman (Elyria, Ohio) Shauna Oddleifson (Kelowna, BC) Ines Ortner (Bowen Island, BC) Guinevere Pencarrick (Vancouver) Greg Peterson (Vancouver) Siva Pillay (Vancouver) Owen Plummer (Vancouver) Terry Plummer (Vancouver) Marc Luc Poelvoorde (Surrey, BC) Luke Ramsey (Victoria) Steve Rayner (Kamloops, BC) Lee Riedl (Rock Creek, BC) Jerry M Ropson (Pollard’s Point, Nfld) Igor Santizo (Vancouver) Anthony Schragg (Glasgow, Scotland) Steve Shada (SanFrancisco, CA) Colleen Sheridan (Richmond, BC) Tanya Skuce (Vancouver) Jeremy Isao Speier (Vancouver) Candice Stenström Moser (Vancouver) Jeremy Turner (Vancouver) Kumi Umuyashiki (North Vancouver) Stacia Veregin (Saskatoon, Sask) Kaspar Vigestad (Bergen, Norway) Caitlin Vliet (Rock Creek, BC) Julie Voyce (Toronto) James Whitman (Vancouver) Megan Wilson (Vancouver) Tina Wong (Richmond, BC) Karen Zalamea (Vancouver) Agnes Zorn (Red Deer, Alberta) Elizabeth Zvonar (Vancouver).

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