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Restore Arts Funding Now

The Gallery Gachet Collective | A COLLECTIVE RESPONSE | FEB 5

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Curated by Lara Fitzgerald | Exhibition runs: 5th – 28th Feb | Opening

Reception: Fri Feb 5th, 7 – 10pm

Dance Party Celebrating the Arts: Sat Feb 13th, 8 – late (With support from

Art Walk 2010 and the Alliance for Arts and Culture)

Exhibition is part of Art Walk 2010, www.artwalkvancouver.ca

Gallery Gachet presents the exhibition A Collective Response, featuring The

Gallery Gachet Collective’s response to the current cultural landscape in

Vancouver. The exhibition showcases each artist’s reaction to the arts

funding cuts through their own art-making practice, celebrating and

reinforcing the importance of art as a critical means for achieving a

healthy and flourishing society.

A Collective Response aims to focus on the critical role of art in society.

In particular as a way of responding to contemporary issues. Vancouver is

currently undergoing a massive upheaval, and these changes affect all its

citizens profoundly. Gallery Gachet’s Collective Membership feels strongly

about the importance of community engagement and asserting a response to

these changes, and they believe that art provides a powerful and

significant channel for dialogue.

Based on the idea of Documenta (an international contemporary art

exhibition held in Kassel, Germany every five years), The Collective will

transform Gallery Gachet into a free speech zone offering both commentary

and critique of issues relevant to art and life in Vancouver at this

specific historical juncture. Thematically, the work addresses the massive

funding cuts that most arts organizations have received in BC, as well as

political priorities and how these precedents impact our cultural climate.

The Gachet Collective believes in the expression of art and culture as a

human right, and as a means for achieving social, cultural and economic

justice.

The link between A Collective Response and Documenta is one of intention

and spirit. Documenta is known as an exhibition that explores the

intersection between contemporary art and the current critical issues of

the time, inviting people from all over the world to convene, assess the

situation, and enact a dialogic process. Documenta began in the early

1950’s, and was developed as a response to the degenerate art politics of

the Third Reich. In contrast to other international exhibitions that

emerged from the World Fair models, the tradition behind Documenta is one

of theoretical grounding, and a sense of urgency in regards to the role and

meaning of art in society. Inclusivity and dissolution of elitism are

founding values of the festival; these beliefs are also woven into the core

of The Collective’s ideology and integral values that are unanimously held

by The Collective.

A Collective Response will feature multidisciplinary works from Gachet’s

twenty-one collective members, and represents not only the distinct

response of each individual member but also the unique energy and drive

behind The Gachet Collective as a whole.

Artists featured: Benitto, Sharon Burns, Sharon Smith, Kara Lee, Stephen

Long, Jay Peachy, Karen Ward, Bernadine Fox, Bruce Ray, Dylan Wolney, Quin

Martins, W.N. (Bill) Pope, Laurie Marshall, Robert Gardiner, Leef Evans,

Diane Thorn, Cherise Clarke, Lisa Walker, Ariel Kirk-Gushowaty, Geoff

Greene and Youngsin Lee.