SFU Galleries encourage experimental programs that explore ways in which contemporary art is socially and politically engaged. There are three distinct galleries established at different moments in SFU’s history: SFU Gallery (1970), Audain Gallery (2010) and Teck Gallery (1989). Simon Fraser University is known for a radical past, commitment to academic freedom, interdisciplinary research and innovative pedagogy, and has created opportunities for important international and Canadian artists to exhibit, teach, study and create work since it was established in 1965.
SFU Galleries have undertaken diverse projects with artists and curators such as Raymond Boisjoly, Claire Fontaine, Fred Herzog, R.B. Kitaj, Liz Magor, Julie Mehretu, Antoni Muntadas, Marjetica Potrč, Raqs Media Collective, Allan Sekula, Hito Steyerl, Mina Totino, Ian Wallace, Lawrence Weiner, and YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, among others. Programming includes exhibitions, publications, symposia, conversations, screenings, performances, and other events. Collaborating with SFU’s School for the Contemporary Arts, Audain Gallery presents exhibitions with Audain Visual Artists in Residence Program as well as BFA and MFA student exhibitions.
SFU Galleries winter/spring 2014 programming includes three exhibitions that respectively consider the historically and theoretically layered sites of the studio, the institution and the stage.
Damian Moppett: The Bells
January 18–April 19, 2014
SFU Gallery, AQ 3004, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby BC V5A 1S6, Canada
Moppett’s focus on the process of creation in the studio finds articulation in new video work for SFU Gallery. Moppett’s studio has been depicted and re-presented through numerous iterations over the last decade including drawings, paintings and sculpture, including a large-scale work that will be permanently installed on SFU’s Burnaby campus. Accompanied by a publication.
Althea Thauberger: Marat Sade Bohnice
January 16–March 8, 2014
Audain Gallery, 149 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC V6B 1H4, Canada
Thauberger’s experimental documentary video installation focuses on a staging of Peter Weiss’s 1963 play Marat/Sade at the Bohnice Psychiatric Hospital in Prague. Her work documents and reconfigures the staging of the play in this location to audiences of the institution’s patients and staff, and in doing so approaches layered issues of timely reassessment, (de)institutionalization and shifting political terrains. A symposium will held in conjunction with the exhibition.
Instant Coffee: The hero, the villain, the salesman, the parent, a sidekick and a servant
Continuing to April 27, 2014
Teck Gallery, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver BC V6B 5K3, Canada
This year-long installation by the artist collective Instant Coffee operates as a stage or set for social framing that blurs the lines between the work, participants and audience. It considers theatrical histories and the title evokes stock characters in Victorian melodramas, allowing for myriad social activities and configurations to play out within its framework over time.
Exhibitions curated by Melanie O’Brian, Director/Curator, SFU Galleries.
