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26/9/2014

Two exhibitions

Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge

Raphaëlle de Groot
The Summit Meetings | Rencontres au sommet

The Summit Meetings ponders the underpinnings of our propensity for material attachment. By gathering and exhibiting objects that are recontextualized in a kind of limbo, Raphaëlle de Groot invites us to consider their value in a different way and to examine the human and cultural processes that document, create, and weigh the immaterial importance of things. Paradoxically, this importance is sought by giving attention to objects that are discarded – whose value has come into question.

This exhibition will shift and evolve across its three venues: Southern Alberta Art Gallery (SAAG), Art Gallery of Windsor (AGW), and Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ). The Summit Meetings is a large-scale installation that stages gatherings of objects from diverse sources and origins, presenting them as if they were the protagonists of an important gathering of leaders. Composed mainly of items the artist collected herself as part of an artistic investigation called The Burden of Objects, the installation will also include elements borrowed from ethnographical, historical and community museums.

In 2009, Raphaëlle de Groot set in motion her long-term project, The Burden of Objects, inviting communities within Lethbridge to donate personal items that have been stored away and bear an emotional or mental 'weight' - to free themselves of these loaded objects and transfer their burden to her. This burden became the catalyst for de Groot’s creative process. For the next five years, de Groot's collection would grow as she travelled throughout Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Italy, using her objects to produce installations, performances, video, and photographs. Coming full circle, de Groot returns to SAAG where the intention of her collection evolves before moving on to AGW and MNBAQ. This exhibition serves as a summit where the items convene to contemplate their future. De Groot sees the project as a collection of events; at each venue performances allude to different phases in the meeting - from inauguration to closure.

Raphaëlle de Groot presents her work actively in Canada and abroad. Some of her major collaborations include 8x5x363+1 (2002-2004) with the Cittadellarte-Fondazione Pistoletto (Biella, Italy), En exercise (2006) with the Galerie de l'UQAM (Montréal), and The Burden of Objects (2009) with SAAG. Her work was shown as part of the first Québec Triennial at Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal in 2008. In 2013, Raphaëlle de Groot carried out a performance during the opening days of the 55th Venice Biennale – the event was presented by the Galerie de l’UQAM and the Conseil des arts et des letters du Québec under the curatorship of Louise Déry. De Groot holds an MFA from the Université du Québec à Montréal (2006). She was awarded the Pierre-Ayot prize (2006), the Prix Graff (2011) and the Sobey Award (2012). Raphaëlle de Groot is represented by the Galerie Graff in Montréal and the Z2O Galleria - Sara Zanin in Rome.

This exhibition is organized in partnership by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Windsor and Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec, supported by the Ministry of Culture and Communications of Québec, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Ontario Arts Councl, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the City of Windsor, the City of Lethbridge and the Canada Council for the Arts. Loans generously provided by the Buchanan Bequest, City of Lethbridge, Galt Museum and Archives, AGW, Windsor's Community Museum, MNBAQ, Musée de la civilisation, Landriault-Paradis Collection and the artist's collection.

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An Te Liu
In Absentia

I look at an object and its underlying cultural assumptions. What does it look like, how does (or did) it function, and why? It is interesting to me how form and intention come together, and how strange, paradoxical - and telling - this relation can be.
- An Te Liu

For this new multi-venue exhibition, An Te Liu presents a selection of recent work, which lies at the intersection of contemporary material culture, modernism, and ethnographic display. At a glance, Liu's bronze, ceramic, and concrete sculptures resonate within the tradition of modern sculptors from Constantin Brâncuși to Barbara Hepworth, together with their affinity for raw, elementary forms. Inspired by collections in the Museum of Anthropology in Mexico City and the Natural History Museum in Vienna, Liu has assimilated references as diverse as Mayan and Aztec artifacts, rare minerals, fossils and meteorites. Using the enigmatic shapes of foam packaging and other found sources as a point of departure, Liu constructs an archaeology of forms spanning the primeval, ancient and present day. Just as the partial imprint of a new laptop might also resemble a ritualistic idol of a vanished race, the abstract and decayed remnants of In Absentia invite us to unravel their identity and meaning: their origins are obscured, while new ones are conjured. As an ensemble, these works compel us to consider how ways of seeing and knowing shape our relationship to objects, across cultures and time.

An Te Liu (born 1967, Tainan, Taiwan) lives and works in Toronto. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the CAG (Vancouver), the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Humlebæk), the Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna), the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Liu's works are included in the permanent collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Art Institute of Chicago. Upcoming exhibitions include Art Labor Gallery in Shanghai, and the 2014 Biennial of the National Gallery of Canada.

This exhibition is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in conjunction with the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, Alberta Foundation for the Arts, the City of Lethbridge and the City of Grande Prairie.

Opening reception: September 27 at 8 PM

Southern Alberta Art Gallery
601 Third Avenue South - Lethbridge, Alberta
HOURS
Sunday: 1 PM to 5 PM | Monday: Closed
Tuesday – Saturday: 10 AM to 5 PM

ADMISSION
General $5
Student/Senior $4
Children under 12 free
Free for SAAG Members
Free on Sundays

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