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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.
The Shebeen Club 