The Western Front : Exhibitions : The F Word

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The F Word

Rebecca Belmore, Patty Chang, Allyson Clay in collaboration with Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens, Kate Craig, Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Klara Lidén, Deirdre Logue, Jillian McDonald, Lisa Steele and Salla Tykkä
October 18 - November 22, 2008

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Lesbian Park Rangers, 2008.
Photo: Don Lee, Banff Centre, Courtesy the artists

Curated by Alissa Firth-Eagland and Candice Hopkins

Performance by Maria Legault, October 17, 8pm
Panel Discussion: Saturday, October 18, 1pm

Western Front Exhibitions and Western Front Media Arts are pleased to present The F Word, an exhibition presenting a range of video-based practices that explore the relationship between liveness and media, the roots of feminist video, persona development as critical methodology, and the performance of gender. The exhibition is conceived as a contribution to larger feminist discourses and highlights women artists using video making as a strategy to propose alternatives to dominant narratives of contemporary art. The exhibition will feature Canadian and international women artists whose practices intersect with a number of contemporary feminist social, cultural and political movements, theories and moral philosophies concerned with gender, equality, rights and access. The works’ production dates range from 1976 to a project that is being produced currently by Western Front Resident Artist Allyson Clay (in collaboration with Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens). This exhibition is poised at a critical time as women’s media practices today are furthering feminist discourses in ways that are notable, varied, rigorous and unexpected. The F Word is presented in association with the Vancouver Art Gallery’s WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution.

The Western Front gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council through the Government of British Columbia, the City of Vancouver, Direct Access Gaming, our members and volunteers. The Western Front is a member of the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centres (PAARC).

The Western Front specifically acknowledges the financial support of the Province of BC and the BC Museums Association through the BC 150: Celebrating Influential Women, Seniors and Elders program.

artist biographies

Rebecca Belmore Born is Upsala, Ontario, Rebecca Belmore is an artist currently living in Vancouver, British Columbia. She attended the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto and is internationally recognized for her performance and installation art. Since 1987, her multi-disciplinary work has addressed history, place and identity through the media of sculpture, installation, video and performance. Belmore was Canada’s official representative at the 2005 Venice Biennale. Her work has appeared in numerous exhibitions both nationally and internationally including two solo touring exhibitions, The Named and the Unnamed, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); and 33 Pieces, Blackwood Gallery, University of Toronto at Mississauga (2001). Her group exhibitions include, Houseguests, Art Gallery of Ontario (2001); Longing and Belonging: From the Faraway Nearby, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1995); Land, Spirit, Power, National Gallery of Canada (1992); and Creation or Death: We Will Win, at the Havana Biennial, Havana Cuba (1991). MORE >

Patty Chang Patty Chang was born on February 3, 1972, in San Francisco. Originally trained as a painter, she graduated with a B.A. from the University of California in San Diego in 1994 and shortly after moved to New York, where she became involved with the Performance scene. Her performances, recorded in short films, became notorious for testing the limits of endurance and taste. In Gong Li With the Wind (1995), performed at the New York University Film Center, she consumed and defecated a staggering quantity of beans. For Paradice (1996), an indictment of the international sex trade in Asia, she played a prostitute servicing a customer. In a series of performances titled Alter Ergo (1997), the artist balanced her body in a variety of torturously uncomfortable poses as a critique of female passivity. In recent years, she has incorporated photography and video into her performances. For Fountain (1999), Chang drank water from a mirror placed on the floor while projecting the performance onto monitors behind her and outside the gallery as though she were upright and ”drinking” her own image. The photographs of Chang in seemingly impossible physical positions in the Contortion series (2000/01) were faked, adding an element of play while again commenting on exoticized images of Asian women in popular culture. Stage Fright (2003), performed at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, incorporated video projection, more excessive eating, and the 1950 Alfred Hitchcock film of the same name. Chang has had solo shows at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid (2000), Baltic Art Center in Visby, Sweden (2001), and Jack Tilton Gallery in New York (1999 and 2001), among others. She has appeared in group shows and performances such as the Performance Festival at Kunstpanorama in Lucerne (2000), Quadrennial of Contemporary Art at the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent (2001), Mirror, Mirror on the Wall at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams (2002), and Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self at the International Center of Photography in New York (2003). She produced ”Revolver,” a show for European cable television, in 2002. Chang has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts (1999), the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation (2000), and the Rockefeller Foundation (2003). In 2003, she served as resident faculty at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. She lives and works in New York. MORE >

Allyson Clay in collaboration with Lisa Robertson and Nathalie Stephens Allyson Clay was born in Vancouver, Canada, and grew up in Burnaby B.C., Scheveningen, Holland, and Rome, Italy. She received her B.F.A. from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and her M.F.A from the University of British Columbia. Recent solo shows include Imaginary Standard Distance, a survey of work since 1988, curated by Karen Henry for the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, Alberta, 2002 (most recently at the Dunlop Gallery in Regina, 2003, and traveling to cities across Canada including the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, fall, 2004). She is represented in collections across Canada including the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art in Toronto, and Canada Council Art Bank. She has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally, most recently at the Canadian Cultural Centre in Paris, Yokohama Citizen’s Gallery, Japan, and the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, Taiwan. MORE >

Kate Craig Kate Craig was born in Victoria, British Columbia and lived in Vancouver since the early 1970s, traveling widely throughout the world and spending summers at Storm Bay on the Sechelt Inlet. Since 1975, her work has been presented at venues throughout North America, Europe and Asia. A founding director of the artist-run centre, the Western Front Society, Craig initiated the Western Front’s artist-in-residence program in 1977. She has been instrumental in producing video works for a number of the Front’s visiting artists. Over the past two decades Kate Craig has developed an international reputation for her video and performance based art. Craig’s attention to surface — as seen in her depictions of the human body, the porous face of a rock, the shimmering surface of a body of water or her investigation of the boundary between the contemplative space of the gallery and the structured chaos of the surrounding urban landscape — is central to her art. MORE >

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan Shawna Dempsey is one of Canada’s best known performance artists. She has collaborated with Lorri Millan since 1989, when this Winnipeg-based duo were catapulted into the national spotlight with the controversial, now world-renowned performance piece, We’re Talking Vulva. Since then, they have toured to great acclaim throughout North America, Europe, Australia, and Japan, and their film and video works have been screened in venues as far-ranging as women’s centres in Sri Lanka to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. They have also created installations (Archaeology and You for the Royal Ontario Museum), published books (Lesbian National Parks & Services Field Guide to North America, Pedlar Press), and curated exhibitions (recently as Adjunct Curators at The Winnipeg Art Gallery). Lorri Millan creates performance, film, video, books and installation with her collaborator, Shawna Dempsey. Throughout their practice they have been committed to placing their work in non-art spaces so they can speak to diverse audiences. They often employ humour to articulate their social justice concerns. This duo has shown extensively in diverse venues ranging from the Istanbul Biennial to United Church conferences. Millan also writes, curates and, along with Dempsey, has recently been appointed co-Executive Director of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art. Winnipeg is her chosen home. MORE >