Lorna Brown is Acting Director/Curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia and a visual artist, writer, educator and editor, exhibiting her work internationally since 1984. Brown was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004 and is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting projects that consider the varying conditions of public places and public life. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. Brown received an honorary degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2015), the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
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 and the UBC Walter C. Koerner Library are pleased to announce the exhibition of Threshold (cont.), 2007 – 2009 by Lorna Brown.
Threshold (cont.) is part of on ongoing inquiry into the topic of boredom that Brown began in 2000. Within various fields of research, boredom has been written about in diverse ways: as a condition that is dangerous to society, a precursor to positive radical change and the result of becoming overwhelmed by tedious, repetitive activity. Placed in the context of a university library where the published results of research are stored and accessed through different media, Threshold (cont.) raises questions about how knowledge is circulated, the processes of engaged learning and the weariness or lack of interest that can result from information overload.
This video installation is made up of quoted texts from sources in literature, criticism, sociology and other discourses. The texts are projected to roll very slowly across the library floor, eventually becoming legible as they reach the bottom of the wall. The quotes reflect their diverse sources through the jargon or vocabulary of the original texts and frequently contradict each other. The quotes are marked with endnote symbols, and these endnotes are presented in a printed list available at Walter C. Koerner Library. Animated dingbat symbols reminiscent of “waiting” icons of computer operating systems punctuate each quote.
As a “convolute,” the video loop of indeterminate length displaces time and presents an indeterminate definition of boredom. The scrolling text is suggestive of a credit roll in film and television, which stands in awkward distinction to the action of the film or TV program. The anticipation or impatience that may result from waiting for the text to become readable parallels the struggle to form meaning from the potentially endless, contradictory list.
This project is a collaboration of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and the UBC Walter C. Koerner Library and has been made possible by the generous support of the Audain Foundation.
Lorna Brown is Acting Director/Curator at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia and a visual artist, writer, educator and editor, exhibiting her work internationally since 1984. Brown was the Director/Curator of Artspeak Gallery from 1999 to 2004 and is a founding member of Other Sights for Artists’ Projects, a collective of artists, architects and curators presenting projects that consider the varying conditions of public places and public life. She has taught at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and Simon Fraser University. Brown received an honorary degree from Emily Carr University of Art and Design (2015), the Vancouver Institute for the Visual Arts Award (1996) and the Canada Council Paris Studio Award (2000). Her work is in the collections of the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the BC Arts Council, the Surrey Art Gallery and the Canada Council Art Bank.
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 Audain Foundation