Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by the Belgian artist David Claerbout. The exhibition will transform the gallery to show a selection of video installations that date from 1996 to the present.
David Claerbout draws on the conventions of film, photography, and digital media, challenging boundaries by combining traditional technologies in the production of his works. His works defy the expectations of the viewer, as he manipulates still photographs to introduce movement, subtly accelerates or decelerates his films, edits separate recordings together, and often employs narratives that become a secondary feature to the work. What is central to Claerbout’s body of work is the nature of time. Claerbout frequently introduces natural elements—such as sunlight and darkness—as anchor points for the perception of time.
The Belkin Art Gallery exhibition will include Claerbout’s Bordeaux Piece (2004), which is nearly 14 hours in length, and comprised of 70 short films shot by the artist at 10 minute intervals between 5:30 am and 10:00 pm over the course of several days. Actors play out the same scripted scene over and over, while the slow movement of daylight across the set becomes the organizing principle in the work, and as Claerbout explains, “gives form to duration by means of natural light.”
The exhibition is curated by Scott Watson and is a collaboration with the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada. The exhibition catalogue, David Claerbout: The Shape of Time, was produced with the Centre Georges Pompidou.
The artist’s talk is co-presented by the Charles H. Scott Gallery, Emily Carr University of Art and Design; the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver; and the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.
Bordeaux Piece, 2004. Single channel video installation, colour, PAL, 2 channel audio 13 hours 43 minutes. Courtesy of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada.
Long Goodbye, 2007. Single channel video installation, colour, 1600 x 1200 progressive 13 min 44 sec. Courtesy of the Rennie Collection, Vancouver, Canada.
David Claerbout: The Shape of Time.
Exhibition catalogue. 160 pages, colour and b/w images. $40.00.
ISBN# 978-3-905829-38-9 — To order contact: belkin@interchange.ubc.ca, tel. 604.822.2759, fax. 604.822.6689.
Scott Watson (Canadian, b. 1950) is Director Emeritus and Research Fellow at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia. A curator whose career has spanned more than thirty-five years, Watson is internationally recognized for his research and work in curatorial and exhibition studies, contemporary art and issues, and art theory and criticism. His distinctions include the Hnatyshyn Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2010); the Alvin Balkind Award for Creative Curatorship in BC Arts (2008) and the UBC Dorothy Somerset Award for Performance Development in the Visual and Performing Arts (2005). Watson has published extensively in the areas of contemporary Canadian and international art. His 1990 monograph on Jack Shadbolt earned the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize in 1991. Recent publications include Letters: Michael Morris and Concrete Poetry (2015); Thrown: British Columbia’s Apprentices of Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries (2011), a finalist for the 2012 Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize; “Race, Wilderness, Territory and the Origins of the Modern Canadian Landscape” and “Disfigured Nature” (in Beyond Wilderness, McGill University Press, 2007); and “Transmission Difficulties: Vancouver Painting in the 1960s” (in Paint, Vancouver Art Gallery, 2006).