Digital Projects
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Intuition Commons aims to facilitate a space to archive women-identified, trans and non-binary artistic influences in creative practice that lie outside of conventional citations. The project invites creative contributions that articulate or address the intuitive, affective or tacit links that have informed creative output and ways of being in the world. Perspectives, accounts and memories may differ, so you are encouraged to contribute your own versions, your own records, creating a rhizomatic web of links — visual connections and nuanced and overlapping stories that demonstrate the complexity of relationships we have with knowing. An installation of the work, featuring sound by Scott Catolico was part of the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: Collective Acts at the Belkin Art Gallery (September 4-December 2, 2018), curated by Lorna Brown.
Intuition Commons is an artistic work by Christine D’Onofrio, developed in partnership with Plot + Scatter. Intuition Commons would not have been possible without the support of the Canada Council for the Arts. The project was also developed with the participation of Creative BC and the British Columbia Arts Council.
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Initiated in Summer 2016, Both/And is an online site for discussion and documentation of research and events with the goal of investigating the relationships between art practice and activism, to build awareness of community archives and their value in generating knowledge, and to document our findings. We invite you to follow our progress and contribute!
Both/And emerged from research related to the Belkin’s Beginning with the Seventies project, an ongoing initiative investigating the 1970s, an era in which social movements of all kinds – feminism, environmentalism, LGBTQ rights, access to health services and housing – began to coalesce into models of self-organization. Many non-profit organizations formed in Vancouver to provide direct assistance, engender and distribute new knowledge, and resist forms of oppression, thereby creating a network that overlapped with the production of art and culture. The history of these organizations and their founders is preserved across archives, collections and networks; these resources vary in terms of public accessibility and are not well known to younger producers. We speculate: what if these archival materials are examined through an interdisciplinary lens that includes art and cultural practices?
At the same time, we see a current resurgence of art practice involved with social activism (and is often itself a form of social activism), with the 1970s becoming increasingly interesting to artists and other cultural producers. How might the acts of exploring grassroots archives and forging direct connections with activist networks shift the very way in which art and culture are defined and imagined? Could study and exchange between and among generations contribute to developing new models of presenting and valuing art?
Beginning with the Seventies will continue to collaborate with networks of artists, archivists, curators and activists on events, publications, exhibitions and discussions over the next three years. The project is made possible with the generous support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Vancouver Foundation, the Department of Canadian Heritage Young Canada Works Program and our Belkin Curator’s Forum Members.
Image: From the Women In Focus Society archives, Special Collections, VIVO’s Crista Dahl Media Library & Archive.
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vancouverartinthesixties.com
The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the grunt gallery, Vancouver invite you to visit the online project, Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties.
Since its launch in June 2009, this resource and digital archive incorporates hundreds of photographs, press clippings, audio recordings and film clips. The project has been enthusiastically embraced by libraries, directories, blogs and listings worldwide. Drawn from private collections and archives as well as public sources, Ruins in Process brings together the research of many artists, curators and writers in an exploration of the diverse artistic practices of Vancouver art in the 1960s and early 1970s. Collaborative methods, interdisciplinary activity and an interest in emerging technologies are revealed in the selections of the contributors to this educational resource.
The website has a fully searchable digital collection, video interviews with artists Ingrid Baxter, Christos Dikeakos, Carole Itter and Gary Lee-Nova, as well as a number of essays that contextualize the work in the archive. Five project sites document in detail the work of specific artists and collectives and explore the relationships between artistic media during this dynamic period in Vancouver.
Aboriginal Art in the Sixties, curated by Marcia Crosby, examines the relationship of visual artists to broadcast and print media, political movements and the city.
Al Neil, curated by Glenn Alteen, combines documentation from performances, concerts and readings as well as photo-documentation of collage, assemblage and text by and about the artist.
Expanded Literary Practice, curated by Charo Neville and Michael Turner, looks at the relationships between writing and visual art and the merging of the two in concrete poetry.
The Intermedia Catalogue, curated by Michael de Courcy, archives the activities of this interdisciplinary collective of artists, musicians, writers, film and video makers and performers.
Transmission Difficulties: Painting in the Sixties, curated by Scott Watson, examines the many challenges to the idea of high art that were posed by electronic communication and psychedelic exploration.
Ruins in Process is produced through a partnership of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia and the grunt gallery, Vancouver. The project is managed by Lorna Brown, with technical direction and design by Jeff Khonsary and Courtenay Webber of The Future. Editorial direction is provided by Scott Watson, Glenn Alteen and Lorna Brown. Additional project site design by Dexter Sinister, Archer Pechawis and James Szuszkiewicz. This project is made possible with the support of the Department of Canadian Heritage through the Canadian Culture Online Strategy. We are grateful for the assistance of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Image: Carole Itter, Raw Egg Costume, 1974. Courtesy of the artist.
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To coincide with the centennial of the artist’s birth and the accompanying exhibition at the Belkin, Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection was created as a standalone site with over 490 collages, drawings, paintings and prints dating from 1938 to 1998. The site includes essays about the work of Jack Shadbolt (1909-1998) by art historian Robert Linsley and by Scott Watson, Director Emeritus of the Belkin. At the core of the Shadbolt Collection are 320 drawings that were chosen by Shadbolt himself to represent his 70 year career. Jack Shadbolt: Works from the Collection was made possible with funding from the British Columbia History Digitization Program through the UBC Irving K. Barber Learning Centre.
Image (above): Jack Shadbolt, Festival of the Worm II, 1954-63
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The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery is pleased to present the online catalogue, Judy Radul: World Rehearsal Court, of the exhibition presented at the Belkin Art Gallery from October 9 to December 6, 2009. In 2010 the exhibition traveled to the Generali Foundation in Vienna, Austria and to Media City Seoul in Korea, and in June 2011 it will be presented at the Henie-Onstad Kunstsenter in Oslo, Norway.
World Rehearsal Court is a large-scale installation that draws on Radul’s research into the role of theatricality and new technologies in the court of law. Based on trial transcripts from International Criminal Tribunals, the exhibition presents a series of pre-recorded courtroom scenes, an evidence room, objects, and a series of computer-controlled live cameras that feed to an array of monitors that turns the gallery into a theatrical and cinematic space.
“World Rehearsal Court repeats and mimics the way visual technologies are gradually colonizing the courtroom, mirroring the mirrors and screens of the court,” writes Costas Douzinas, Professor of Law and Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, University of London in his catalogue essay. “Scholarly discussion of the judicial visual,” he continues, “has mainly addressed the veracity and trustworthiness of images as evidence. But the pluri-visual staging of World Rehearsal Court is much more important. It goes to the heart of law’s iconoclasm, its enduring suspicion of images.”
One of the highlights of this online catalogue is a video walk-through and audio commentary of the exhibition with artist Judy Radul and Scott Watson, Director and Curator of the Belkin Art Gallery. Designed by Jeff Khonsary and Courtenay Webber of The Future, the catalogue features video documentation of the courtroom drama, over one hundred installation images, and provocative essays by Scott Watson, Costas Douzinas, Anselm Franke, curator and writer based in Brussels and Berlin, Sharon Kahanoff, Vancouver-based filmmaker, artist and writer, and artist Judy Radul.
Biography
Judy Radul was born in Lillooet, British Columbia and lives and works in Vancouver. She received her MFA from Bard College, New York (2000). A consideration of forms and conditions of performance informs her practice which has recently focused primarily on video installation. In October 2009 Radul’s large-scale installation, World Rehearsal Court, involving live and prerecorded video, was presented as a solo exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at The University of British Columbia. Other recent solo exhibitions include Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; Oboro Gallery, Montreal; Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver; and The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. Radul’s work And So Departed (Again) was part of the 2004 Videodreams: Between the Cinematic and the Theatrical at Kunsthaus Graz, Austria. Her major five-channel projection installation, Downes Point, was shown in the 2005 exhibition Intertidal: Vancouver Art and Artists at the Museum van Hedendaagse Kunst (MuHKA) in Antwerp, Belgium. In 2008 the Vancouver-based Kootenay School of Writing commissioned a new video work (Touch Theatre Flood Judgment) from Radul for their Positions Colloquium. In the 2009 exhibition All that is Solid Melts into Aircurated by Dieter Roelstraete in Mechelen, Belgium, Radul’s 1999 work In Relation to Objects was shown. Judy Radul teaches at Simon Fraser University.
This project is made possible with the support of the British Columbia Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts. The international tour of World Rehearsal Court is supported by the British Columbia Arts Council’s Touring Initiatives Program.
Image: Judy Radul, World Rehearsal Court, 2009. Photo: Howard Ursuliak.
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Laiwan: Quartet for the Year 5698 or 5760
A multimedia collaboration between Vancouver-based artist Laiwan and virtuoso clarinetist Lori Freedman from Winnipeg that uses film with audio, live performance, music improvisation, computer media and the internet. It is a celebration of the improvisational musical body, spontaneous time and space, and the presence/absence of cultural histories within a critique of the limitations of machines.
Portions of this site use Flash and Shockwave which are no longer viewable.
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An exhibition of formal works and an investigation of the influence of the New York Correspondance School on the Canadian avant-garde. The exhibition was initiated by Scott Watson, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov and was curated by Michael Morris and Sharla Sava. In addition to this website, a catalogue which includes an exhibition check list, critical essays and a chronology was published.