Feminist Land Art Retreat, Free Rein. Installation view, Audain Gallery, 2018. Photo: Blaine Campbell.
Feminist Land Art Retreat: Free Rein
May 31 - August 4, 2018
Audain Gallery*
Offsite Billboard: Transmissions
May 28 - August 4, 2018
Corner of Abbott St. and West Hastings St.
Feminist Land Art Retreat (FLAR) is a conceptual project that provokes reflection on relief, escape and wildness within contemporary life. FLAR draws upon the visual and linguistic iconography of canonical conceptual and feminist art, fashion, graphic design, and advertising in their posters, photographs, sculptures, performances, and videos. By proposing a feminist land art retreat, yet perpetually suspending its manifestation, FLAR opens a space to consider the social and cultural paradigms that construct femininity, nature and solitude.
Free Rein features a new video work titled No Man's Land which witnesses the lives of horses, the women who work with them, and the landscapes they share. With attention to interiority and intimacy, FLAR pictures the interdependence and influence between these sentient beings in their daily routines of work and pleasure.
FLAR initiated this project through close observation of tropes within the western film genre, grand gestures of earth art, and colonial allegories in space exploration that have yoked the sovereignty of land, elements, animals and women to men's vision. Working with strategies of feminist cinema, science fiction symbolism and social utopianism, No Man's Land proposes alternative images of freedom and autonomy to the lone ranger or intrepid explorer. Through their feminist lens, the concept of "no man's land" is mercurial: it is land free from the presence and pressure of man, land relations beyond ownership and a space beyond the rein of the image.
Parallel to the exhibition, FLAR will present a new work, Transmissions, on the Pattison billboard at the corner of West Hastings St. and Abbott St. Aligned with this public exhibition, FLAR will also produce a new poster series that will be available in the gallery and disseminated around the city.
Feminist Land Art Retreat's recent solo exhibitions include No Man's Land, ACUD Gallery, Berlin; Heavy Flow: The Re-Release, Ginerva Gambino, Cologne; Duty Free, Studio for Propositional Cinema, Düsseldorf; and Last Resort, Kunsthaus Bregenz Billboards, Bregenz.
Curated by Amy Kazymerchyk.
Supported by Canada Council of the Arts and British Columbia Arts Council. No Man's Land was produced with support of the Western Front Media Arts Residency. The offsite presentation of Transmissions is sponsored by Pattison Outdoor Advertising. The screening Groundwork is co-presented with DIM Cinema and The Cinematheque. The first chapter of No Man's Land was presented at ACUD Gallery, Berlin, April 29 - May 28, 2017.
* Due to lobby renovations, the entrance to the gallery has changed for this exhibition. Please enter the gallery through the doors at 149 West Hastings St.
Events
Opening Reception and Artist Talk
Wednesday, May 30, 7 - 9pm
Audain Gallery, Vancouver
Exhibition Tour
Saturday, June 23, 1pm
Audain Gallery, Vancouver
Part of the Downtown Vancouver Gallery Tour with the Or Gallery at 2pm and Contemporary Art Gallery at 3pm.
Retreat: No Person's Land
Sunday, June 24, 10am - 5pm
SFU Gallery, Burnaby
No Person's Land uses collaborative research to enact how alternative structures might be formed between peers based on shared commitments and support, mapping a terrain between practice, thinking and being. In this one-day retreat, participants will work with listening, reading and writing methodologies to explore shared desires for the Otherwise, a concept that encompasses the possibility for social, political and institutional relations to take new forms through collective imagining. Derya Akay, Simranpreet Anand, Roxanne Charles, Tarah Hogue, Vanessa Kwan, Steffanie Ling, Pablo de Ocampo, cheyanne turions, and Kurtis Wilson will facilitate the retreat's program, which will take place in SFU Gallery and outside on SFU's Burnaby Campus.
The retreat is open to the public, though capacity is limited and registration is required. Participants are asked to commit to attending the entire program. Lunch will be provided.
No Person's Land will expand upon values regarding sentience, sovereignty and mutual dependence that Feminist Land Art Retreat's exhibition Free Rein expresses. No Person's Land was initiated by Amanprit Sandhu and cheyanne turions through DAM Projects in London, UK. This iteration is programmed by cheyanne turions.
Screening: Groundwork
Wednesday, July 18, 7:30pm
DIM Cinema at The Cinematheque
1131 Howe Street
Tickets $12 / $10 students and seniors; membership required
Babette Mangolte, The Sky on Location. 1982, 78:00 min, 16mm
Amy Greenfield, Element. 1973, 11:50 min, 16mm
Marie Menken, Moonplay. 1963, 5:00 min, 16mm
Barbara Hammer, Place Mattes. 1987, 8:00 min, 16mm
Sandra Meigs, Western Gothic. 1985, 11:00 min, 16mm
Program length: 114:00 min
This selection of 16mm works reflects the visual and linguistic iconography of conceptual art, feminist art and land art that Feminist Land Art Retreat draws on in their 3-channel video work No Man's Land.
In equestrian culture, groundwork is comprised of exercises that mature a horse's response to their rider's cues and the environment. This program of landscape films from the 1960s through 1980s similarly demonstrates structural and formal methods used by artists to finely tune their perception of natural phenomena. In The Sky on Location French cinematographer Babette Mangolte focuses her camera on seasonal light and its variegation of the American West's colour palette. American avant-garde filmmaker Marie Menken uses stop motion capture to slow down the wonder of night stargazing in Moonplay. Using optical printing techniques, feminist artist Barbara Hammer explores the proximity and distance between the human body and the natural world in Puget Sound, Yosemite and the Yucatán. Canadian artist Sandra Meigs explores the narrative potential of the panorama shot's searching gaze to trace layered histories written on the Alberta Badland's landscape. American filmmaker Amy Greenfield uses the body to direct both the movement of the earth and the camera in Element.
Support Material
