PAST EVENTS, 2014 - 2016
Toxic Town Mark Making ||Over the course of thirty days, James Black Gallery guest resident Leya Tess has filled a 30' paper scroll with freehand ink mark making. The starting place of this piece began from the song Toxic Town by Emily Millard. Reception includes a solo performance by Emily Millard.
Dark Prophecy || is a show exploring the beauty in darkness. Featuring Alison Woodward, Dena Lazarenko, Devin Rosychuk, Hannah Dixon, Jamila Pomeroy, and many more. Join us for an evening of spooky tunes spun by Taylor Ferguson, tarot card readings as well as spooky vendors selling strange oddities. Dark Prophecy will surely set the tone for Halloween and have the hairs on the back of your neck running for the hills! Curated Jamila Pomeroy.
Animal Colony volume 1: guitar ||Five of the coolest guitar and effects pedals meisters are coming together to perform a soundscape moving anywhere from ambience to noise. This will be the first time these five guitarists come together to combine their talents. A fun art experiment not to be missed! Guitar meisters: Evancory Taypaywaykejick, Heig Khatcherian, Kyle Goddard, Miggy Hawes and Ricky Castanedo-Laredo. Hosted by Misery Fields.
Liminal Confines || In conjunction with contemporary politics, LIMINAL CONFINES discusses borders and crosses them knowingly. Transforming the space between oneself and another through recreation, rebirth, and renewal. How does one relate to the confines and barriers of a homespace, or four walls of a gallery? Transition from one state to another such as with fluidity in sexuality and gender, push ones limits in cathartic manners, navigate the boundaries within emotional interplay. Harness the power and potential of transitory states. This curation is by Echo Moon and Zandi Dandizette.
ROVE YVR || The James Black Gallery artist-in-residents and studiomates showcase some of their works in-house at the ROVE Mount Pleasant art walk. To ROVE all you need to do is pick a starting location on the route and there you will find the ROVE map. Use the map to rove around Main Street to check out galleries, art studios and creative spaces that feature a local artist’s work.
Esoteric || Esotericism can be understood as comprising those world views which eschew a belief in instrumental causality and instead adopt a belief that all parts of the universe are interrelated without a need for causal chains. It therefore stands as a radical alternative to the disenchanted world views which have dominated Western culture since the scientific revolution, and must therefore always be at odds with secular culture. Esoteric is curated by Kaz Simpson.
Wintering Womb and Latex Honey Glove
July 29th, 2016
Performative Audio|| LHG performs a ritual using sounds, images and motion to shake and alter the percived notions ov gender. Wintering Womb brings their crushing sound from San Francisco as a guest resident. Cocuration between Misery Fields and Jay Williamson.
Vancouver Mural Festival || The James Black Gallery artist-in-residents and studiomates showcase some of their works at a stall while Esoteric happens in-house. Expect the unexpected with our own backshop getting a mural during the event!
IRL:URL|| Aims to have URL crossover into the IRL conversely. The internet has revolutionized and impacted how we interact, think, and spend our time AF. It has informed our way of life. Arguably we have exited the golden age of the internet; let us explore how we have been shaped by it! This show co-curated by Echo Moon & Zandi Dandizette.
Bestiary|| A culmination of sculptural and drawn works by Kim Edgar that was completed during a month-long guest residency with The James Black Gallery. The show is an exploration of the physicality of death as shown through animal forms.
The Other || Guest Resident Liisa Kruusmägi from Estonia created a solo show based on her experiences in a new cultural landscape. Her work evokes love for the landscapes, amusement, and the feelings of an outsider in a new place. Liisa self-curated her exhibition.
FIDAAC || FIDAAC is a travelling Colombian Film Festival hosted in different countries every year- this year, it will be held by the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival (VLAFF) from September 3rd to 13th. Their objectives are to generate cross-cultural exchange and promote the Colombian audio-visual arts through exhibitions, lectures, and competitions. The festival was born in 2012, aiming to create spaces for promoting Colombian Cinema and their authors - inside and outside of the country. The James Black Gallery is hosting photography and part of the film showcase.
ANTICS || noun : A grotesque, fantastic, or ridiculous presentation.
Artists have been formally invited to celebrate, deride, challenge, reinforce, subvert and enjoy the ANTICS in their lives and those of others. From small slips in neurons to tanker spills and drive bys, they bring arts, (multidisciplinary) and hearts to a conglomerate recognition of the events that force their ways onto our dance cards and lives.
Exhibition co-curated by Matthew Wise and Zandi Dandizette.
Kingsgate Mall|| Partnering with MPBIA, the artist residents at The James Black Gallery showed Tautological : Ecological at the Kingsgate Mall. An immersive interactive art piece, Tautological : Ecological was created to embody the shift in space, sound reacted, and the audience participated when taking a piece of the work away with them.
Autumnal Shift Festival || Hosted by the MPBIA, and local community and arts organizations, our member businesses are encouraged participate, showcasing their goods and services, demonstrating product and creating interactive entertainment for kids of all ages. The James Black Gallery participated and was given a budget to create an immersive interactive art piece for this event. Tautological : Ecological was created to embody the shift in space, sound reacted, and the audience participated when taking a piece of the work away with them.
STRUCTURE || As our cast and crew form the space, we would like to invite all to experience new works by the residents and studiomates at The James Black Gallery. Collaborative co-curation between current artists-in-residents in the ARTHROBS COLLECTIVE and the first of yearly in house shows.
TOPOGRAPHICS || exploring landscapes of the imagination. In this exhibition, the featured artists navigate the strange territories of the human mind. The spaces created by the artists involved will reflect the wild places that we travel to in dreams, or the land that exists beyond the edge of the last horizon. The landscapes will be expressed through a multiplicity of disciplines, from painting and photography to sculpture and performance. Through the installation of the works, the landscape of the gallery itself will be transformed into a stage for the strangest parts of the imagination to bleed into reality. Exhibition co-curated by Dan Brown Hozjan and Zandi Dandizette.
POLYPHONICS || refers to the harmony of two or more textures in a melodious composition. This exhibit is to explore harmony between colours or chords. Unless working with light, artists work in a subtractive colour model to achieve these distinct ideas. Explorations are of colour harmonies such as cool, warm, complementary, analogous, monochromatic, or triadic, to create a whole concept. Zandi Dandizette's first solo curation.
Blue Shift || Change is a-coming! Like a tumbleweed rolling into town... and then rolling on out again without stopping. Change is like that. Are tumbleweeds perhaps the seminal symbol for order out of chaos? "Blue Shift" is the kind of distortion experienced as things move away from us, both in space and in time. This showcase was for SWARM 2014 and started the ball on The James Black Gallery transitioning from Gropps Gallery. Curation by Ezra Bloom.