03 Jul 2010

Audain Gallery at SFU Woodward's presents Coming Soon, Kathy Slade

In the Hastings Street window of the Audain Gallery Vancouver artist and SFU alumni Kathy Slade asks the question, Is Everything Going to Be Alright?. This seemingly direct question tests public sentiment at a moment of general global uncertainty and at a moment when Vancouver is coming out of its Olympic daze and is rebranding and refiguring its relationship to nature as a green city based on sustainable urbanism. The text-work is also in dialogue with a neon work by British artist Martin Creed, who, like Slade, produces text and music-based works. Creed's affirmative work, Everything is Going to Be Alright has been shown in various cities such as Detroit and New York before its installation on the Wing Sang Building in Vancouver's Chinatown. The typeface for Slade's sign is based on the type used in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Cold-War film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. This use of popular cultural references is characteristic of Slade's solo and collaborative work (with Brady Cranfield); her textual and music-based works draw on specific songs and slogans and recirculate them into new site-specific contexts. These three aspects of the work – its public address, its dialogue with Creed's work, and its reference to a dystopic film – add several layers of convergence and contradiction to this compelling public work.

Slade's window project concludes the initial public art project entitled Coming Soon for the new Audain Gallery, located in the Woodward's development in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. The works in this provocative series address the qualities of Vancouver's Downtown East Side, the neighbourhood and context of the new location of Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. As well, Coming Soon highlights the Audain Gallery's commitment to art in the public sphere that addresses the present and history of Vancouver.

Four visual artists who are Simon Fraser University alumni have been commissioned to create new site-specific public art works for a series: Ken Lum's work in the window was followed by web-projects by Lorna Brown and Jamie Hilder. Coming Soon is curated by Sabine Bitter.
See www.audaingallery.ca/coming-soon

Named in honour of arts supporter Michael Audain, the Audain Gallery will serve as a vital aspect of the Visual Arts program at Simon Fraser University's School for the Contemporary Arts. Central to the Audain Gallery is the Audain Artist-in-Residence Program that will commence in Fall 2010. The Audain Gallery's mission is to advance the aesthetic and discursive production and presentation of contemporary visual art in Vancouver and internationally through a responsive program of exhibitions in a flexible project space. The Audain Gallery is curated by Sabine Bitter and is part of SFU Woodward's Cultural Unit.