Image: Geometry of Knowing Part 3, 2015. Installation view at SFU Gallery (Itter's work in the foreground and Knowles' work behind). Photo: Blaine Campbell.
Talk: Geometry of Knowing: Carole Itter and Devon Knowles
Saurday, May 9 2015, 12pm
SFU Gallery
This event is being held in conjunction with SFU Gallery's exhibition The Geometry of Knowing.
Josef Albers, Lee Bontecou, Brian Fisher, Carole Itter, Devon Knowles, Evan Lee, Bruce Nauman, Hannah Rickards, Kika Thorne and Brent Wadden.
The final event in our Geometry of Knowing series brings together two Vancouver based artists to discuss their projects in Part 3 of the exhibition. Both projects find unique spatial articulations in relationship to the local landscape, history and culture.
Carole Itter will discuss her 1979 photographic series Euclid (from the slide series Euclid's 13th Theorem which was used in collaboration with an Al Neil performance). The works bring together images of Neil drawing Euclidean geometry on the sand at Cate's Park almost directly across from Burnaby Mountain with the diagrammatic source material for the project. Neil and Itter's storied cabin, the last of an era of "unofficial" residences on the North Shore, is currently being removed. As part of a consideration around shifting contexts, materials and forms the exhibition includes Neil's LP Boot and Fog, which uses one of Itter's Euclid images on the cover. A listening portion will accompany Itter's discussion.
Devon Knowles will contextualize her new work, MPB Umwelt from 2015 within her practice that considers materiality and models of production. This new work focuses on how the environment (umwelt) has shifted through climate change and industrial production, specifically the northern marching of the mountain pine beetle (MPB). The work was created in response to Bridge Beardslee's 1976 Energy Alignment Sculpture, Pyramid in the Golden Section, a sculpture in the SFU Art Collection that ascribes mystical dimensions to the landscape. Knowles' consideration of this pyramid remaps a contemporary relationship to landscape, art history and material knowledge.
Geometry of Knowing is curated by Amy Kazymerchyk and Melanie O' Brian. Supported by a Project Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts.