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Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in partnership with the University of Lethbridge and curated by Ryan Doherty. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the City of Lethbridge and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. From January to May the Southern Alberta Art Gallery is hosting Montréal artist Raphaëlle de Groot for an open-ended project investigating objects, the instability of any meanings they embody and the burden endured in their accumulation. Self-reflexive and collaborative, the project will include the participation of art students from the University of Lethbridge and the public-at-large in a series of exercises to gather and transform a stockpile of objects that one no longer has space for physically and psychologically. By embracing these “residual” items – the unwanted, unseen, rejected other – through collective exercises of gathering, selecting, sorting, dismantling, reassembling and displaying, de Groot is able to shift our attention and to actively engage the public in a reexamination of art, life and the human condition.
The focus of the project is not to recycle, re-use or produce predetermined forms from these materials, but to reconsider the stock of elements gathered as a representation and as a playing field that can act as a common ground for collective action/interaction. Generating a performative chain of operations around this stock, the artist proposes to look at the choices and actions that surface through “negativity” (what they discard), instead of “positivity” (what they hold on to). By exploiting this conceptual inversion, she opens a metaphorical ground to investigate the ambivalent position of the discarded and the act of letting go. At the same time, she examines what it means for these objects, the accretion of a community, to be recontextualized and appropriated into an artistic practice. Moreover, what does it mean for de Groot to now bear the burden of these objects personally?
Vital to de Groot’s practice is an understanding of the project as open-ended and process-oriented. There are few parameters or expectations opting instead to favour intuition, listening and becoming acutely receptive to the objects and the unanticipated actions and interactions they undergo. Exercises to trigger this shift in attention range from data collecting, context analysis and networking to intervention, performance, video and installation. Far from predetermined, the outcome of each activity will help to shape the next course of action.
Given the open-ended nature of the project a more traditional form of exhibition has not been planned (though this does not exclude the possibility). In it’s place, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery has created an Open Studio to serve as a site where the artist will meet and interact with her students and the community. There, people will be able to observe and converse about her practice and the artistic process as it develops with local groups and/or contribute to the project directly by bringing in material (see Call for Objects on this page).
It is worth considering this project in light of the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and the transitions the institution is undergoing. As we prepare our current spaces for repair, a reconfiguration of space and a modest expansion, it seems an appropriate time to explore notions of maintenance, renovation and re-vision as it applies to art and art institutions. De Groot’s project parallels our renewed commitment to actively engaging our communities in contemporary art and ideas, and more, her reconsideration of the objects and actions that define us gives us pause.
Raphaëlle de Groot was born in 1974 in Montreal (Canada) where she lives and works.
Her work has been the subject of several solo exhibitions in Canada and abroad, the most recent being Chantiers (Le Quartier, Quimper, France, 2008), Il volto interiore (Galleria Z2O – Sara Zanin, Rome, Italy, 2007) and Raphaëlle de Groot. En exercice (Galerie de l’UQAM, Montréal, 2006). She has participated in many group shows, including the landmark exhibition Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed (The Québec Triennial 2008, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal). De Groot has often worked in the framework of artist residencies most recently in Italy between 2002 and 2004 at the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella), where she carried out a project with workers in a textile factory.
Raphaëlle de Groot holds Master’s degree in visual and media arts from the Université du Québec à Montréal. She has received several grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. In 2006, she was awarded the Pierre-Ayot Prix d’excellence by the City of Montreal and in 2008 she was a finalist for the 2008 Sobey Art Award. CALL FOR OBJECTS The objects we are interested in are items you can no longer contend with, items you no longer need or want, and items that have become (or are slowly becoming) a burden. Perhaps your attachment to them has changed, or maybe you were never really attached to them at all. But sending them to a landfill or giving them to charity did not quite seem the right thing to do, instead, you piled them away, hid them under your bed, made them disappear in a closet or forgot them on a shelf… We could say these objects are not a part of your life anymore, but they are still taking space somehow, a space that you might like to free.
By bringing these objects to the SAAG and contributing them to this art project you will give them another life. The outcome is not yet known, and that’s the exciting thing. The work will evolve in close relation with the material we gather.
Staring from March 1st, you will be able to see the development of this project in the Southern Alberta Art Gallery’s Open Studio located at 324 – 5th Street South.
When & where to drop off the objects:
FROM FEBRUARY 1 TO APRIL 10
The sooner you bring in your stuff, the sooner it will start surprising us!
Bring your items to the Southern Alberta Art Gallery (601 – 3 Ave S) until March 1st.
After March 1st, bring your objects to the Open Studio located in SAAG’s temporary space at 324 – 5th Street South.
HOURS: Tuesday-Saturday 10am-5pm / Sunday 1pm-5pm / Closed on Monday
How to Proceed Bring your objects (one or a series) in a bag or a box to the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. At the desk you will be given a very short questionnaire to fill out. The questions will ask you to give a short description of the objects and their story (how you first got them and why you’re now letting them go). You will remain anonymous, but this personal information will enrich the project.
Want to be more involved? JOIN US at the open studio for In Collaboration on February 25, March 18 and April 1 from 5 PM to 7 PM.
FEBRUARY 25 at 601 3 Ave S
MARCH 18 at 324 5 Street S
APRIL 1 324 at 5 Street S
APRIL 2 at 324 5 Street S (in French) THANK YOU FOR PARTICIPATING!
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