Curated by Paul Kajander
Suzhou Alley, Carrall St. (between Keefer & Pender) and BC Electric Building, Carrall St. (between Pender & Hastings)
Signs, City Wall, City Path:
An informal panel discussion and site visit with Jenipher Hur, Avery Nabata, Paul Kajander and Laura Kozak
Saturday February 20, 2010
3:00 pm – Meet at 221A East Georgia Street
3:30 pm – Walking tour of the work (Carrall Street, between Keefer and Hastings)
4:15 pm – Return to 221A for panel discussion and reception
The Helen Pitt Gallery Artist Run Centre is pleased to present Signs, City Wall, City Path, a series of outdoor installations that humourously co-opts billboard marketing, tourist maps and other forms of official public signage. Local artists Jenipher Hur and Avery Nabata address the familiar features of Vancouver’s constantly changing cityscape, subtly drawing our critical attention to the way the city represents and negotiates its complex social reality.
Recent graduates of the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, Jenipher Hur and Avery Nabata have a history of producing collaborative interventions that humourously engage with a range of spaces. From outdoor architectural features (such as pedestrian overpasses) to public artworks and sculptures, their interventions usually consist of the ephemeral installation of oversized industrial tarps or fabrics.
They use this material as drapings or dressings to complicate and underscore the particular aspects of a chosen site. Do we approach these coverings as an indication of maintenance/shelter meant to protect a material from being harmed by exposure to the elements? Or do these installations reveal themselves immediately as a form of critical engagement that seeks to conceal or denigrate the chosen subject? Through their attention to various kinds of sites, the collaborative practice of Hur and Nabata shifts from work to work and destabilizes the situatedness of these things in the world.
