Rockin' Robots

These are the awesome drawings done by the Life Skills Art class!

By: Alex

By: Casey

By: Casey

By: Crystal

By: Delvin

A Lesson in Manners By: Kiel Torres

Babak Golkar: “TIME TO LET GO”

Vancouver Art Gallery – Offsite

When I think of terracotta, I think of strength: tiles of stability, roofs of protection, statues of preservation, and warriors of the afterlife. It can hold its own against the elements and withstand almost any form of manipulation, but it is weak in the face of gravity.

Like terracotta, we humans can attest to possessing a similar paradox. During stressful bouts, even the strongest can shatter.

Babak Golkar’s current installation at Offsite investigates this relationship between composure and vulnerability. Situated in Vancouver’s business district, Golkar invites the public to release their emotions into five terracotta vessels that have been designed to contain a scream. Surrounded by high-rise office towers and high-end business centres that house high-levels of stress, I could not imagine a more appropriate location for this installation.

With all of the pressures of senior year weighing me down, I could not wait to let it all go, yet when I arrived at the tranquil scene, I experienced quite a bit of hesitation. Each vessel was propped up on a stack of sandbags that were surrounded by a thin layer of water, creating a peaceful setting I did not want to disrupt. Although cars were whizzing by and snippets of overheard conversations polluted the air, everything just felt too quiet!

After having timidly stood at the edge of the site staring at the vessels for some time, I worked up the courage to let my lungs have their way. I stuck my head in and...AHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhh!???

It was awkward. I was expecting the roar of a lion, but instead I released the peep of a mouse. Why was this so difficult?

To put things into perspective, if you were to look up the antonym for “rebel”, my name would yield the first result. I was that kid in kinder-garden who was awarded the gold stars for never speaking out of turn and whispering in the library, and although I have certainly relaxed over the years, my goody-two-shoes character hasn’t shed completely. That being said, even when given permission to yell to my heart’s content, I was rather tentative.

Having been taught to use my “inside voice” through all of my childhood, I (un)learned a valuable lesson in social etiquette through Golkar’s piece: being fragile takes a fair bit of strength. By pushing the public to find comfort in the uncomfortable, Golkar has created a transparent form of therapy that leaves participants with an enlightened sense of self.

With my head emerged in the terracotta mouth, I stood in silence and allowed the external sounds to echo in the chamber. My breathing was amplified by the shape of the vessel, creating an ambient arrangement of inhales, exhales, and muffled city sounds. It was an overwhelming feeling of being entirely surrounded by yourself that cannot exactly be described, only experienced.

One of the things that really stood out to me about Golkar’s piece was the use of sound. I was really interested in how the sounds of the surrounding city became fused with the quiet thoughts inside my head while my face was buried in the vessel. The meditative quality of this experience served as inspiration for my exploratory piece. The following clip is comprised of a series of sounds collected from my bedroom, a place where I do a lot of my thinking.

During stressful times I often retreat into silence, creating a heightened sensitivity to noise. Sometimes even the tiniest rustle seems amplified, which can be REALLY distracting when I am trying to focus on something. But on the other hand, by allowing myself to be completely aware of surrounding sounds, I am able to mute my thoughts and in turn, let go of whatever is on my mind.

Couches in 108: A Group Exhibition

When tasked with creating an exhibition for the Point Gallery, we were given the theme of public engagement. Our goal was to get as many students as possible to come down to the Point Gallery and participate in our exhibition. When brainstorming ways of getting people to come to the gallery we thought of the couches in the library. Everyone always rushes to the couches and tries to get the best spot for themselves and their friends. For our show, we decided to explore this obsession by bringing couches down to the gallery...but our artistic process didn’t end here.

We were inspired by Vancouver artist Ken Lum’s piece Red Circle, in which he created a couch that challenged the convention and efficiency of furniture.

We liked the idea of the awkward couch that Lum used and decided to explore this concept of awkward-comfort.

We sourced four couches from around the school and each day, we arranged them in new unconventional positions that not only challenged how visitors interacted with the furniture, but also how they interacted with the people around them in accordance to how the couches were set up.

During each lunch period, we took photos of people interacting with the space and displayed them in a linear arrangement on the gallery wall. This created a timeline of sorts and served as documentary evidence of how the exhibit evolved each day, as well a method of creating intrigue. As the exhibition began to take off, we noticed that certain students returned to the space just to see if they were captured in the previous days’ round of photos.

Every day we noticed differences in how people responded to the exhibit: when there was more comfort and it was less awkward, more people came but didn’t understand that they were participating in an art intervention. When the couches were more awkward and less comfortable, less people came but those that did come understood the intention of the show.

The best set ups were when the couches were positioned in a way that was awkward, but didn’t impede on the conversations between people. The spiral pattern on Day 5, and the corner arrangement on Day 6 had the best mix of the two elements and drew the perfect crowd with a good size and mindset.

Over the course of our seven day exhibition, certain regulars started showing up but new people continued to arrive every day.

Our forms of advertisement included a Facebook page, where we posted daily photos and information about upcoming events, posters that we hung throughout the hall ways, and many announcements over the P.A. In our advertisements we concentrated solely on one phrase: “Couches in Room 108”. The repetition of this vague line conveyed what we were doing in its simplest form, but also sparked intrigue.

The show had certain aspects that made it a success and certain aspects that were failures. It was successful in the way that we got huge crowds down to the isolated room and made it known that the Point Gallery existed. On the other hand, the crowd that came to the gallery was dominated by Grade 12s who were only looking for somewhere to sit.

This conflict could also be partially attributed to the fact that prior to our exhibition, the majority of the student body was not aware that Room 108 was in fact an art gallery.

But it is understandable how this mistake could be made. From the checkered floors, to the frosted windows, to the chairs and tables stored in the space, the Point Gallery looks more like a retro storage room than a typical art gallery. It is far from being the typical “white cube” that people are used to. This led us to question how context plays a role in the outcome of interactive exhibitions. It would be interesting to recreate this experiment in a space where it was obvious that one shouldn’t interact with the couches and observe how the exchanges would modified.

Looking back at the exhibit there were certain things that could have been done differently to attract a more diverse crowd. Many of the younger students seemed to be intimidated by the Grade 12s and wouldn’t stay for long. There should have been signs showing people where Room 108 was actually located and we should have been more proactive about getting the younger grades to come to the gallery.

Overall, although Couches in Room 108 had its pitfalls, we learned a lot about collaboration and what it takes to put together an art exhibition. We would like to thank everyone who participated and supported our show, as well as Mr. Long, Mr. Enns, and Kirsten Hermanson for letting us borrow your couches.

-Aly Slobodov, Cosette Bote, Kevin McCallum, Kiel Torres

In Between: a Gallery Review by Nancy Tseng

Artist : David Burdeny

Title of show: Saudade 

Location: Jennifer Kostuik Gallery

At a first glance, Burdeny’s artworks look nothing more than simplistic parallel objects, or patterned landscapes. Then you ponder upon this simplicity. What is this? These are actually photographs? Where is this? How is this taken? The foggy background presents an ominous feeling, which almost numbs your senses. It offers a melancholy, wistful, and confusing atmosphere, which makes it that much more intriguing.

Burdeny’s purpose behind these photographs is this idea of Saudade: a Portuguese word referring to this desire for what was or what could be—to be someplace anywhere but the present. These photographs are supposed to represent a dream state where one floats above and wonders through, with no prescribed destination. Burdeny purposely objectifies his images, to create this feeling of being neither of this world, or another, but in between.

With this idea of objectifying images, and Burdeny’s use of parallel structure/pattern, I similarly took photos of architectural structures and landscapes. By playing with close-ups, and angles, I wanted to achieve Burdeny’s idea of Saudade, and create that dream state of floating in between worlds. 

Art Careers at Satellite Part 2

Friday April 25th saw the Art Careers 12 group return to the satellite gallery for a full day workshop.  The plan included working with the artists, developing imagery and then creating a collaborative installation of the artwork developed in the Gallery's "window space".

The group worked with the artists creating contact microphones from scratch.  They used the mics in the area collecting sound native to the location, a strategy that the grad students used themselves.

 They then ran the collected sounds through a program called "Audacity" which transformed the sounds into abstract images, which were then projected onto the walls of the gallery.

Pinning paper up the walls, the students responded to the images projected, tracing, colouring, drawing.
It was interesting to see the development of their collaborative process, beginning quietly, tentatively, safely, and developing into a more interactive and discussive, though still fairly tentative, relationship.

Now they had the challenge, using much the same collaborative strategies as were used in the Grad student's exhibition, to inhabit the window space and, using their developed imagery as well as any found items, to install a "stream of consciousness exhibition.  I stayed outside and watched (which they said made them feel like "gerbils in a cage" :) and it was fascinating.  I watched them learn how to work with one another and how to work with what they had to develop an interesting, engaging and meaningful exhibition.

Art Careers at Satellite! PART 1

On April 23rd 2014 the PG Art Careers 12 class travelled to Satellite gallery after school to meet some artists.  These artists are Grad students at UBC who were in the midst of creating a time-based, perpetually developing, collaborative art exhibition which explored the history of the Satellite gallery space and explored the collaborative process and audience participation/interaction.  Check out more about the project on the Satellite website: http://www.satellitegallery.ca/extended-party-mix.html.  This was to be part 1 of a two part workshop for the students in which they explored these themes from a curatorial, as well as artistic angle.  Our goal was to introduce the Grad's project as well as the grad's themselves as well as entice our own students to begin thinking about these themes.  The end result of this two hour intensive was for the students to create a blog entry for the Satellite blog reviewing the exhibition.  The intense timeline made it necessary for the students to organize quickly and collaborate effectively in order to meet the deadline.  Their solution (which was fabulous to watch develop) was an "exquisite corpse" format for composing the review: passing around computers (each screen with a different theme written at the top) with half composed thoughts, to be finished or left behind by the next contributor, unedited, spelling mistakes, grammar errors, stream of consciousness.  The results can be seen here: http://satellitegallery.wordpress.com/2014/04/23/collective-consciousneawkward-sweaty-dance-party/

Stay tuned for part two in which our heroes get to make some art!

Flowers by Art 9

A painting project by my art 9's.  I am always trying to get them introduced to new ideas for drawing, painting and image development  and this one really progressed naturally from having them create a new drawing tool (4 pencil crayons tied to a flat piece of cardboard).  The inherent limitations of the tool forced them to think about their drawings in more abstract terms and notice composition rather than torturing themselves trying to draw the flowers "just right".  From there I  just told them that they needed to demonstrate their understanding of the painting techniques that we had learned (gradation/blending, glazing, and edging) and of colour theory.  Really loose, they're a class that needs some freedom.  I'm very pleased with the results.

 Rachel Au

Maren Heyman

Kelia Chen

Hockey Jersey's by Casey Kong and Christian Aquilini

In my special needs art class I try to allow students to pursue their individual interests through art.  I find   subjects, techniques, styles or materials that they are interested in then try to facilitate different individual projects for them - it's definitely hit and miss, trial and error, but It tends to work better than giving everyone the same project all the time.  On a whim one day I thought it might be fun for a few of my students to design hockey jerseys as they are both obsessed with sports.  I did a quick drawing of a jersey, photocopied it and gave it to them.  They have been working on these all year!

Casey Kong is obsessed with recreating the Jersey's of all highschools in the Vancouver district.

Christian Aquilini loves redesigning NHL jeseys and sometimes creating original super quirky designs.

I love them.

Casey Kong

Casey Kong

Progressive Drawings by Helen Yu

Progressive Drawings

Helen Yu

A prominent idiosyncratic style is what is lacking the most in this exhibition, but this showcase of my artworks definitely presents development in my artistic technique throughout the years. My passion for art sprouted at a young age. As I mature in my ceaseless artistic training, there are challenges faced, accomplishments made, and audiences pleased. Simultaneously, the individualistic style is gradually being discovered.

Visit the Point Gallery between April 1st and 15th on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Friday's at lunch to see the full exhibition of Helen's work.