Perception and Interpretation
SpART: Bringing People Together through Sport and Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Pierre Leichner
SpART was a yearlong artist residency in 2017 at the Thompson Community Center in Richmond, BC that aimed to engage participants of all ages in their sporting activities in expressing themselves artistically about their sport. The project was carried out in 3 phases. First were one-time community family events such as a family day, a community pic-nic and a youth day. Second were specific projects working with the instructors and their class participants: indoor soccer, volleyball, basketball, taekwondo, ball and senior fitness classes, Zumba, and a running group. Painting, video and photography were used in these classes. Four workshops were held with seniors transforming sport equipment into art objects. One project included participation by preschoolers. Lastly, a yearlong project was a video compilation of sporting memories and the related emotions. These works were compiled and shown in two separate exhibitions at the center. A short compilation of all video projects will be shown. I established a consistent presence by participating in some of the sporting activities when appropriate and through an information and event board, social media and a website page. Approximately a couple hundred individuals participated directly in making these works and hundreds saw them. An evaluation survey was distributed to staff and instructors and the feedback was overall positive. The limitations of this project will be reviewed.
Applying Studio Ceramic Practice to Constructions of Meaning in the Banal Object: Utilising Collections as a Creative Tool
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kate Wilson
This paper examines how the culturally deeply embedded ceramic mug, reflective of individual and collective identity, can become a vehicle for emotional engagement and a material expression of the human condition. Using The Shepton Collection as a creative tool, comprised of 412 drink related vessels and representing over 200 years of mass produced pottery in the UK, the collection evidences the banal ceramic mug as an indicator of a locally cultivated preference and, more broadly, human/object relationships. The subsequent relational and comparative creative studio practice interrogates the social function of the banal ceramic mug in terms of celebration, commemoration and remembrance in a contemporary context. Applying a theoretical multi-disciplinary approach to the practice, new meanings are explored using the mug form as a familiar construct, questioning the concept of function and value in post-structuralist terms. The meeting point between theory and practice is the handling and cataloguing of The Shepton Collection. Potentially incongruous, the vernacular of the industrially produced, appropriated by the studio practitioner in a "hand made" context, facilitates the examination of material objects through the application of a tripartite approach of cataloguing, theoretical analysis and practice,evidencing individual and collective cultural identity, ultimately expressed via new constructions of meaning, in this particular case, related to the ceramic mug.
Counter Visual: Land, Environment, Contamination, and Justice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ben Davis, Kevin Walby
This paper explores a new collaboration between visual artist Ben Davis and Professor of Criminal Justice Kevin Walby. Although Davis and Walby investigate land using different disciplinary lenses and tools, both of their research centers on issues of justice and addresses ideas of layering. At the core of Davis’s practice is an understanding of land as text, using the idea of a 'palimpsest' - an overwritten paper document with partially occluded layers of older text, which then gradually show through beneath the newer writing. Walby's research, exploring decommissioned industrial sites through the lenses of social and environmental justice, suggests that there is something about place that eludes visual methods, especially photography, which is consistent with 'counter-visual' analysis - examining what is communicated through the invisible, as opposed to focusing on readily apparent narratives. This paper examines the rationale for the collaboration, and the process by which Davis is developing new work from Walby's research into Uranium City, Saskatchewan - a decommissioned war industry site. Walby’s data includes photographs, audio recordings of interviews, maps, and other documents, which will be integrated into a series of pieces that bring to light the contradictions behind the seemingly benign landscapes depicted in Walby's photographs and explore the tension between appearance and reality, troubling reliance on photographic representation alone. The paper concludes by discussing how this project might open up a more dialogical space for engagement with an audience other than the academy to highlight and explore issues centered on land, environment, contamination, and justice.
Discursive Acts: Flowers and Other Things
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Monique Redmond
This paper is prefaced on the idea of the gesture as a temporal event and potential site of sharing and reciprocity. It considers public social contexts in relation to discursive and subtle acts of gifting, trade and service as creative methods and conduits for exchange through the lens of durational practice and collaborative artworks. The focus of these social situations (art events) is on sharing and exchange, mediated through ephemera (objects and documents) such as a recipe, a ceramic cup for use at a tea break, a flower delivery. These events aim to uncover temporal connections and to create reciprocal relations with publics. Kenneth Bailey, in a talk about ds4si' Creativity Lab: Public Kitchen in 2016 (University of Auckland), spoke about: "[I>A>E] - Ideas embedded in Arrangements which produce Effects" positing the notion that installation as a "productive fiction" has the power to effect relations and therefore act as an organisational tool in mobilising the social. Taking this concept as a starting point, this paper will explore the potentiality and tactical role of aesthetics and installation in engaging publics in temporary exchange events.
