exhibition/performance/shared meal
here and now and then
September 15 to October 21, 2017
Here and now and then
Derya Akay and Anne Low, Meaghan Price and Matthew Walker
September 15 to October 21, 2017
Curated by Tarin Dehod
For AKA’s 35th Anniversary the gallery becomes an expression of liveness, through a six week testimony of time, through a shared meal and its remnants.
Meghan Price presents Watching Rocks: Hamilton, a live-stream of Matthew Walker’s Extinction Event (2015), inserting the glacial erratic boulder into digital time and space. Walker’s boulder was liberated from an urban sprawl development site, layering its history of movement and transition through time by both glacial forces and human hands. Aside from transporting the boulder, Walker attempted to reset the rock itself by sandblasting the physical surfacing of time, in the process revealing an unknown or perhaps unwitnessed deep time. The boulder seemingly recalibrated within a human timeframe, witnessed now through Price’s live stream, a broadcast facilitating a wide network of watchers and multiple viewing sites, online, IRL and at AKA. Live streams can feel voyeuristic, but are diffused and mediated means of looking, creating a kind of illusion of presence; for the watcher a oneness with the frame of the camera. Watching Rocks generates atypical activity for a fixed and stoic boulder, acting as a kind of campfire or physical and virtual meeting place. Listen to Meghan Price talk with Norah Young about Watching Rocks Saskatoon on CBC’s Spark.
Joining the continued presence of Watching Rocks: Hamilton, Elaine takes the place of host with a shared meal for 35 guests, the remnants of interactions and performances left behind as records. Derya Akay and Anne Low’s informal banquet accompanies Price and Walker’s work as a foundation for gathering and exchange. Elaine’s immersive dining space is created through local collaboration and seasonal availability. Elaine’s guests are artists, AKA founders and members, neighbours, community organizers, past board and staff; a selection of those who have and will impact AKA’s history and future.
Here and now and then operates as a snapshot of an organization adapting to meet social and artistic conditions. AKA’s upcoming curatorial framework is inspired by the metaphor of a gateway, positioning the ARC as place-based, engaging with Riversdale and diverse and varied publics, while taking a self-reflexive look at AKA’s role within the local, provincial and national arts ecology. An emblematic sign of this three year vision will be a shifting emphasis on AKA’s name, prioritizing “also known as” as a flexible form directly speaking to this line of inquiry.
Derya Akay (b, 1988, Turkey) is an artist living in Vancouver. He received the 2016 Portfolio Prize Emerging Artist Award in Vancouver. He has an upcoming two person project with Dilara Akay at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver in January 2018. Recent solo exhibitions include with bread, Campbell River Art Gallery, 2017; Pumice, Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles, California, 2017; Painting with Light, Kunstverein Toronto, 2015; Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner & Supper, Centre A, Vancouver, 2014. Group exhibitions include Dream Islands, Nanaimo Art Gallery, 2017; Here, Aga Khan Museum, Toronto, 2017; Unit 17, Vancouver, 2017; Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2016; The Gardiner Museum, Toronto, 2015; Geometry of Knowing Part I, Simon Fraser University Gallery, Burnaby, 2015. He recently completed his project Mantı, Börek, Baklava at the Burrard Marina Field House Residency program hosted by the Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver. For this project Akay worked with elder women with immigrant backgrounds to host a series of cooking workshops and lunches open to the public.
Anne Low is based in Vancouver, Canada. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at Artspeak, Vancouver in 2017. Solo exhibitions include Some Rugs and Blankets, The Taut and the Tame, Berlin (2012) and Women’s Assembly: Two Scenes from a Radio Play, Hex Projects, London (2008). Recent and forthcoming group exhibitions include Above and Below Ground, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2018); Dream Islands, Nanaimo Art Gallery (2017); Separation Penetrates, Mercer Union (2017); Ambivalent Pleasures, Vancouver Art Gallery (2016) and Reading the Line, The Western Front, Vancouver (2015). Her collaboration with Evan Calder Williams, A Fine Line of Deviation, was shown at Issue Project Room, New York in 2016. Her ongoing project with Derya Akay, Elaine, has hosted events at Haunt, Vancouver and the Vancouver Art Gallery. She has collaborated with The Grantchester Pottery as part of The Grantchester Pottery Paints the Stage, Jerwood Space, London, 2015; ARTIST DECORATORS, ICA, London, 2013 and Studio Wares, David Dale Gallery, Glasgow, 2013. In 2016, she co-curated with Gareth Moore the exhibition Kitchen Midden, which included artworks, objects and artifacts from the collections of 87 artists.
The sculpture, print and video work of Meghan Price is rooted in the language of textiles and figures relationships between human time and geological time. Recent exhibitions sites include The Center for Craft, Creativity & Design (Asheville), the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba (Brandon), Katzman Contemporary (Toronto), Idea Exchange (Cambridge) and Blackwood Gallery (Toronto). Price holds a DEC in Textile Construction from The Montreal Centre for Contemporary Textiles (2003) and an MFA from Concordia University (2009). Meghan Price lives in Toronto and teaches in the textile studios of OCADU and Sheridan College.
Matthew Walker lives and works in Hamilton, Ontario. His sculpture base practice is an exploration of materials and place, where he engages in forms of poetics that are both conceptual and material in nature. His exploration of materials and process reflects his interest in landscape and the models we use for understanding place. Walker has shown internationally and has received grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, The Ontario Arts Council and The Alberta Foundation for the Arts. He completed his MFA at the University of Calgary and spent 8 years working and studying at the Banff Centre. Walker has been in residence at Plug-In ICA (Winnipeg), Artfarm (Nebraska), and the Centre for Innovation and Culture (Kamloops).