#gruntarchive

"If anyone was to ask me where I thought David Ostrem fitted in, I'd proudly say, he doesn't.  That is one of the refreshing bits about Ostrem.  He's looking at the same world we are.  He's listening to the music.  He picks up the same magazines, watches the same newscasts and eats the same packaged food.  The difference is that Captain Dave is in Ostremtime; it's the same world and it's the same culture, only David Ostrem, like Billy Pilgrim, is unstuck in time.  Maybe, like Billy in Slaughter-house Five, Ostrem sees himself as prescribing corrective lenses for Earthling souls.  3-D glasses to punch into the past and punch out the present.  Not too far into the past to be irrelevant but just far enough to make sense out of the present."

"The End of the Moon, [Laurie Anderson's] new and still- evolving solo show, is about many things, among them NASA, dogs, tress, and travel.  But one of its most obvious topics is the Unites States of America: when Anderson says, 'When you look at something this big and this broken how do you imagine putting it back together?'  she's not just talking about the wreckage of the space shuttle Columbia. In this performance, she offers no easy answers, revealing instead that even teh good things in life are fraught with peril.  Discussing a 10-day retreat she took on the Northern California coast, she describes hiking with her dog Lolabelle and being stalked by vultures hoping to chow down on the terrier.  For the rest of the trip, her pet walked nervously, its head in the air- just like the post-9/11 residents of Anderson's home city, New York.  Death from above, she posits, has become a constant waking nightmare." (Alexander Varty - Georgia Straight - November 18 2004) Check out Archer Pechawis' interview with Laurie Anderson from Brunt 2007/2008.

The three videos are characterized by their relationship to water; what Roux describes as “a way of working”.  Water in its various forms and resonant meanings shapes the nature of these videos.  This can be understood in contrast to another group of his videos, RGB Cycle, for example, where colour, rather than water, forms the basis of his working methodology.  Roux’s process can be characterized by a constant back and forth between complexity and simplicity, experiment and analysis.  Gradually, his work finds its place between what he has in mind and what he encounters while wandering through the landscape.

Well plenty, fuck face. ‘Cause it is interesting to ask, over and over, what defines this queer thing.  I go to queer shows, and participate in them, because I want to see what a bunch of sexual miscreants can get up to , or down for, or on about.  I’m interested for the same reason that I’m interested in what’s happening with the whole I-P scam.  Basically, Juicy tempts you to  believe that there may be something to queer (self) identity that actually links it up across individual expression.  The short answer is, of course, that queerness is just as varied (and just as voluntary) in art as in life.  So the value of the show, to belabour the point, is its unintentional detooling of the assumed inevitability of explicitly ‘sexual’ and/or victim imagery in so-called queer work.  For some the revelation came off a bit flat.  I heard more than one practiced scenester bemoan the loss of queerness as evidenced by the absence of sex.  If the lesson of Juicy is, finally, that there ain’t much of a diff between breeders and their betters (at least in terms of art making), then what we’re left with is something of a minor crisis in identity politics - that institutionalized difference is maybe more like institutionalized privilege.  A dangerous argument in the wrong hands." (Andrew Power, Planet of the Arts, Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design,Volume HI, issue 3+1= May/June 1996) Artists who contributed: Diane Barbarash, Carla St. Pierre, Michael Bell, Carmen Schwartz, Damon Crain, Christopher Sheldon, Jacques Gaudet, Constanza Silva, Kine Gullberg, Teri Snelgrove, Chris Hamilton, Penny Treen, Krista Lee Hanson, Jonathan Wells, Robert Harper Jones, Robert H. Lawrence, Brain Langlands, Selena Liss, Karla Martinez, Allison MacFarlane, Allana Murray, Chris Nash, Andrew Powers For more articles on this subject check out our (queer)intersections: vancouver performance in the 1990s site!

Upon closer inspection of Materiality, we see on two walls Souliere’s installation of feathered cones. A cluster of pieces on the left and a couple to the right, they are intricately fashioned to display like horny peacocks, those elaborate feathers in perfect rows. Inside are deeply colorful weavings of seemingly seamless proportions. They draw you in to see them closer and examine the pieces. However, a need to stand further back registers as if they would curiously retract if advanced upon. When confronted with her pieces, it’s as though you are forced to participate in a meditative chant. It pushes and pulls and breathes, finding your rhythm until you lose track of your breath. Perhaps the language she is using requires more context. (Skeena Reece - Brunt 2008) Check out the full Skeena Reece article, page 29 here

"An avid recycler, her works form narratives that poke and pull fun from popular culture and institutions.  They are insightful, witty and clever." "Valenti says of her work 'I look at my art as a natural outgrowth from my life long interest pattern and design, my almost compulsive sense of order and symmetry and my philosophical belief in recycling.'  This exhibition entitled Drawers of Life, features a series of drawers containing scenes and tableaus of imaginary settings that take jabs, reflect and speculate about our lives and concerns." Happy Valentine's Day from grunt! <3

“Because of my deep desire to explore the origins and co-existence of all living things,  I have a long lasting interest in such subjects as the philosophy of animism, folklore, mythology, and the natural environment.  Through daily contemplation, fascinating symbols of cosmos, natural objects, and old artifacts occur repeatedly in my mind.  I communicated with them and interpret them visually on paper.  Then, each symbol starts relating to the others through channels that together create a chart of wholeness.” (Tomoya Ihaya) This exhibition features long patch paper murals combining mixed media techniques of papermaking, painting, staining, printmaking and collage and explores animist imagery from folklore and mythologies.  Ihaya’s work is based in printmaking techniques of etching and chine colle.  Her work evokes the natural world and uses archetypal images in a new and exciting way.

Different/Divers brings together European video artist from the UK, The screening and exhibitions give a strong look at current European video practice.