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BUNNIES, CHOCOLATE EGGS AND ART

Here are some artful activities you can take in over the next seven days in Vancouver... the city is a buzz with all the art openings happening. This post includes twelve events, some serious proof of Vancouver's thriving arts community.

Here are some artful activities you can take in over the next seven days in Vancouver... the city is a buzz with all the art openings happening. This post includes twelve events, some serious proof of Vancouver's thriving arts community. With the exception of the event on April 8th, all of these events are free to attend.

Here are the highlights:

April 3 - SATELLITE GALLERY - CURATOR TOUR & DISCUSSION WITH ARTISTS

On the heels of the April 2 exhibition opening (that was also Capture Photography Festival's official 2015 launch), join Curator Christopher Eamon at Satellite Gallery (560 Seymour St) for a curator tour followed by a discussion with some of the participating exhibiting artists. The talk and discussion will run from noon until 1:30pm.  About the Exhibition: Images that Speak showcases ten local and international contemporary artists, several of whom will be showing in Vancouver for the first time.  This exhibition was jointly commissioned by Capture Photography Festival and Presentation House Gallery in partnership with Satellite Gallery. The exhibit features new works purpose created for the exhibition and demonstrates some innovative strategies and applications in contemporary photography.

Eileen Quinlan, Women's Business, 2010, Gelatin silver print mounted on aluminum, 24 x 20 inches (61 x 50.8 cm)

April 4 - ACCESS GALLERY - BILL BURNS BOOK READING

Artist Bill Burns will be reading a few passages and showing some imagery from his forthcoming book entitled Hans Ulrich Obrist Hear Us at 2pm at Access Gallery (222 East Georgia St). The book also includes contributions from Jennifer Allen, Dannys Montes de Oca Moreda and Dan Adler. It is published by YYZ Books, Toronto and Black Dog Publishing, London.  Bill Burns' work has been shown around the world including the ICA in London, the KW Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin and the Museum of Modern Art New York.

Image Courtesy of artist Bill Burns

April 4 - WAAP - SCOTT BILLINGS IN CONVERSATION WITH MARINA ROY

Also on this coming Saturday at Wil Aballe Art Projects (105-1356 Frances St.)  at 2pm, current exhibiting artist Scott Billings will discuss his exhibition with Marina Roy. Billings is a Vancouver based artist and designer whose art practice centers on issues of animality, mobility, and cinematic spectatorship. He has exhibited across Canada and internationally.  Marina Roy is an associate professor of visual art in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory at UBC, she also recieved the VIVA award in 2010.  She exhibits nationally and internationally. About Scott Billings' exhibition at WAAP:  A Risky Jump features a slow motion video of the artist falling through a trapdoor in his studio. Drawing its title from Vertov’s experiment with a high speed camera, the video opens up the one-second duration to reveal an unfamiliar world that is invisible but always adjacent. Destabilized, the viewer is vertiginously placed between spaces: between the precise transposition of the studio and the infinitely divisible world caught between the frames of perception.

Image Courtesy of Scott Billings and WAAP

APRIL 5 - PRESENTATION HOUSE GALLERY - NORTH VANCOUVER

After your Sunday Easter Egg Hunt head over to the north shore and stop in at the Presentation House Gallery (333 Chesterfield Ave) (Noon - 5pm). You will be able to feast your eyes on an amazing collection of photographs by Allen Ginsberg.  The show is a celebration of the visual and verbal artistic pursuits of prolific twentieth century poet and photographer Allen Ginsberg. This is but a selection of a collection of 7,600 Ginsberg prints that were donated to the University of Toronto. It is an amazing opportunity to see a collection that is not normally available for viewing in Vancouver.

Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, 5 Turner Terrace, 1955, Image Courtesy of Presentation House Gallery, University of Toronto Art Centre and the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery. With the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto. The circulating exhibition is generously sponsored by The Rossy Family Foundation.

April 7 - READ BOOKS - THE DEMOCRATIC MULTIPLE

If you head to READ Books on Granville Island you can take int a selection of books that are new creations by PRNT 323 Emily Carr Students, you can also try your hand at book making as this is also a crafting event.  The course PRNT 323 examined the theoretical and historical underpinnings of the artist publication, with special attention to the politics of distribution. The book sale and crafting kicks off at 7pm. (READ Books - Charles H. Scott Gallery, 1399 Johnston Street)  READ is an award-winning bookstore located within the Charles H. Scott Gallery. The store stocks an impressive array of artist's monographs, exhibition catalogues, critical theory, artist editions, magazines, and ECU course textbooks.

April 8 - WOMEN AND SELF-REPRESENTATION IN CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHIC ART

In collaboration with Capture Photography Festival, The Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver and the Museum of Vancouver, four Vancouver-based artists examine issues in contemporary photographic art, exploring topics ranging from the personal to the political to express a collective anxiety around femininity and art making. This discussion hopes to provide fresh perspectives on the local and current situation of women working in photography. Panelists include Holly Marie Armishaw, Susan Bozic, Dina Goldstein, Birthe Piontek. This event seems to be pretty much sold out, but you may get lucky at the door...?  (8pm - Museum of Vancouver - 1100 Chestnut Street)

Rotting Candy Apple, Birthe Piontek, Part of the artist's Lying Still Series (2010-2015)

April 9 - ART EXTRAVAGANZA MARATHON - READY GET SET - GO!

There are so many killer exhibition openings happening on the 9th!

It would be recommended to grab yourself an early bite to eat, make it something substantially filling, then brace yourself to gallery hop across town to all of these events. We will give you bonus points if you hit all of them before they close and also identify the themes running through several of them... Challenge accepted?....

BAF Studio (108 E. Broadway) - deConstruction - Evann Siebens - Opening from 7-10pm

Vancouver is crumbling. Or perhaps itâs being methodically taken apart brick by brick. Whether for reasons of density, seismic upgrade or simply escalating value, old houses, schools, and movie theatres are being demolished to make way for the new. deConstruction is an ongoing series of photographs and short films that capture the dismantling of the historic

city. What may have been inhabited for half a century can be demolished in a day.  Siebens is a Vancouver based artist who has exhibited locally and nationally.

BAF Studio (108 E. Broadway) - Eidetic Image - 7-10pm

Also opening in the same location, a group exhibition featuring works by Kristen Abdai, Eli Craven and Tereza Zelenkova. The exhibition is curated by Christina Hirukawa and Meredith Preuss.  This group exhibition examines the basic aspects of dream-work; exploring the images, symbols and the overarching role of visual culture in Freudâs dream-work theory. Both of these exhibitions are also part of Capture Photography Festival.

GRUNT GALLERY (350 E 2nd Ave, #116) - Eraser Street - 7-10pm

Eraser Street - Hubris, Humility and Humanity in the Making of a City! is an exhibition that mixes Robideauâs newest and oldest photographs of moments, milestones and monuments in Vancouver, tracing the character of the city and its residents during the last 40 years of non-stop growth. The work reflects upon the quality of life in Vancouver, the value of heritage, the economic engine of development, homelessness and the voice of the people. Robideauâs holographic satirical text charts history while critiquing the forces of government and commerce that have had a hand in shaping our urban environment. Henri Robideau is a photographer and cultural narrator. His life in photography spans nearly five decades - the medium providing both his profession and his means of artistic expression. For the past twenty years his large format photographic skills have been in demand by Canada's leading artists, whom he has assisted in the production of their work. He is currently exploring digital colour technology, alternative means of perpetual photographic presentation and writing anecdotal stories about the ironic tragedy of human existence.

UNIT/PITT PROJECTS (236 E. Pender St.) - Cultivating Equilibrium 6-9pm

Unit/Pitt Projects is launching an exhibition of works by Madison Killo and Patrick Campbell. This duo will transform the gallery space into an immersive and systematic, non-site recontextualization of the Bloedel Conservatory. Cultivating vanishing habits in a utopian realm, the conservatory acts as a hermetic container of preservation, understanding and interiority.

WESTERN FRONT (303 E. 8th Ave.) - Light Music  (A film screening)- 8pm

Western Front presents a screening of Lis Rhodes' 1975 film, Light Music. An iconic work of expanded cinema, the immersive two-channel 16mm film explores the indexical relationship between image and sound, using its structure to comment on the unseen role of women in 20th century music and art. The performance is presented as part of the group exhibition Reading the Line: Alma Alloro, Maggie Groat, Anne Low, Tanya Lukin Linklater, Lis Rhodes, on view at Western Front from March 20th until May 2nd, 2015. Lis Rhodes is a major figure in the history of artists' filmmaking in Britain and was a leading member of the influential London Filmmakers' Co-op. In 1979 she co-founded Circles Women's Film and Video Distribution, the first British organization to distribute the work of women film and video artists. She currently lives and works in London, where a survey exhibition of her career, Lis Rhodes: Dissonance and Disturbance, was held at the ICA in 2012.

Liver + Spleen, 2013 - Evann Siebens (top) Light Music, 1975, Lis Rhodes (middle) Eraser Street, Henri Robideau (bottom) All images courtesy of the artists.

April 10 - ACCESS GALLERY - EXHIBITION OPENING

Exhibition opening for Field Studies: Exercises in a Living Landscape at 7pm. Participating artists: Rebecca Bayer & Laura Kozak, Emiliano Sepulveda and Eden Veaudry.  Presented in conjunction with Capture Photography Festival, Field Studies investigates radical and inventive ways in which our everyday landscape might be experienced and mapped. From community based projects that interconnect visual artists and musicians with historians gardeners and meteorioligists to photography experiments incorporating weather kites made of light-sensitive paper, the exhibition promises to be thought provoking. Access Gallery (222 East Georgia St).

Image courtesy of the artists: Alex Grunenfelder and Alex Muir, Collecting Field Notes, The Hadden Park Map Exchange, 2014

So now that we have your week all planned out, go forth and get your art on.