Join guest curator David MacWilliam for a live virtual tour of Griffin Art Project’s current exhibition NOW BULLETIN Artworks, Letters and Printed Matter from the Garry Neill Kennedy Collection 1968 – 2019.

Now Bulletin is an exhibition, residency series, public art project and public program on the archive, collection and works of eminent Vancouver artist and former NSCAD president, Garry Neill Kennedy. Reflecting on hospitality, history, memory and the archive in relation to Kennedy and his long history at NSCAD, this project also invites previous NSCAD graduates to collaboratively explore this history through Canadian and international residencies, public programs and a publication.

Currently based in Vancouver, British Columbia, David MacWilliam is an educator, independent curator and visual artist whose practice is primarily concerned with the societal role of art, the relationships between forms and colour, and painting as labour. MacWilliam completed his BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and his MA in Visual Arts at the University of the Arts, London. As Professor Emeritus of the Audain Faculty of Art, MaWilliam taught at Emily Carr University of Art + Design for twenty nine years. His work has been exhibited extensively in Canada and occasionally in Europe.

Registration link: ttps://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMqd-ysrj8rHtNCgyennvFC1Zk1yXPs8CtG

Join Canadian artist Cathy Busby in the Vancouver home she shares with Garry Neill Kennedy for an intimate look at the hand-drawn artist proof for Lawrence Weiner’s book Posters: November 1965-April 1986, published by NSCAD Press in 1986. Busby was involved in collecting the posters for this book, as the then director of the Anna Leonowens Gallery. The hand-drawn “printer’s dummy” was gifted to Kennedy by Weiner as a 50th birthday gift. Busby will be showing visitors this hand-drawn version by appointment over the course of three Thursday afternoons throughout the exhibition.

Lawrence Weiner is a conceptual artist best known for his use of text and printed matter, and his declaration that “The piece need not be built.” He first came to NSCAD in 1969 as a visiting artist and was instrumental in organizing the 1970 Halifax Conference with Seth Siegelaub. Weiner and Kennedy remain lifelong friends.

Bio:

Cathy Busby is a Canadian artist whose practice addresses the politics of local sites as they relate to critical issues. Her works shed optimism on the role that art can play in contributing to justice-based social change, and on the ability of communities to function outside of prescriptive agendas. Busby completed her BFA at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1984, her MA in Media Studies at Concordia University in 1992. She was a Fulbright Scholar at New York University from 1995 - 1996 and completed her PhD in Communications at Concordia University in 1999.

Note: Viewers will be provided with an address upon registration. Maximum four guests per viewing. Register by sending an email to info@griffinartprojects.ca.

Available in the Gallery on Saturdays throughout the exhibition, starting October 3rd, 2020.

Hey Kids! Have you ever received a postcard, greeting card or hand-written letter delivered directly to your home the old-fashioned way? Receiving a special note in the mail can be a delightful experience. Why not spread the joy?! Griffin Art Projects is inviting you to make some snail mail to brighten someone’s day. Here’s how it works: Our hands-on creative Snail Mail kits will be available for pickup at the gallery every Saturday from 12 – 5pm from October 3rd to December 12, 2020. Each kit contains everything needed to create a snazzy one-of-a kind card: fancy paper, stickers, colored pencils, markers and more! Once you get back home, get to work creating your masterpiece: Draw a picture, share a story or write about an awesome idea on your card. Once complete, stick it in the envelope and send it back to Griffin. We will be delivering it to a local community centre where it will bring cheer and comfort to someone in need.

Our Snail Mail kits are brought to you in conjunction with Now Bulletin: Artworks, Letters and Printed Matter from the Garry Neill Kennedy Collection 1968 - 2019 an exhibition that explores the collection and works of eminent Vancouver artist and former NSCAD president, Garry Neill Kennedy. Featuring artworks, postcards, letters, drawings, prints, photographs and more, Kennedy’s collection captures a constellation of events, histories and relationships embodied in objects and ephemera traded between and gifted by friends, artists and colleagues throughout Kennedy’s time at NSCAD.

A number of students who studied at a small art college in Halifax went on to become teachers and professors at a number of Fine Art Faculties in Universities across Canada. Five artists living in the lower mainland will recall and talk about what they learned from their experience at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) and how their time there influenced their teaching pedagogy and the impact that this may have had on subsequent generations of students and artists.

Join Allyson Clay (NSCAD late-70s)(SFU) in conversation with Ingrid Koenig (NSCAD early 80s)(Emily Carr), Anne Ramsden (NSCAD mid-70s) (SFU, UQAM), Landon Mackenzie (NSCAD early-70s) (Emily Carr), and Marina Roy (NSCAD mid-90s)(UBC)

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMrcu2qqDwsH9XXyfTwfuFJy6WrQedbluCV

Bios:

Allyson Clay

Clay has a BFA from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, Halifax, an MFA from U.B.C. Vancouver and has exhibited nationally and internationally. She taught in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University from 1988 to 2020. Awards received include SSHRC Connection and travel grants, Senior Artist Grants from the Canada Council, the Mexico/Canada/USA Artist Exchange Residency, and the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Residency Program. Her work is in collections including the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, the Banff Centre, and the Art Gallery of Windsor. Over the years Clay has worked in painting, photography, video, artist books, text works, and installation.

Ingrid Koenig

Ingrid Koenig is Artist in Residence at TRIUMF, Canada’s particle accelerator centre and co-organizes processes of collaboration between artists and physicists. Her studio practice traverses the fields of physics, social history, feminist theory and narratives of science through visual art and relational projects. She is the recipient of grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Goethe Institute, and the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), co-awarded for the project Leaning Out of Windows – Art + Physics Collaborations Through Aesthetic Transformations (2016-2020). Koenig has exhibited her drawings and paintings in public galleries across Canada, Europe and New Zealand. In 2019 she was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant to join the Arctic Circle art and science residency in the international territory of Svalbard. Koenig earned her MFA at NSCAD, Halifax. Based in Vancouver, she is an associate professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

Landon Mackenzie

Landon Mackenzie’s paintings have been widely exhibited in Canada and internationally and collected by museums including the National Gallery of Canada, Vancouver Art Gallery, Audain Art Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Recent shows include Emily Carr and Landon Mackenzie; The Wood Chopper and the Monkey at the Vancouver Art Gallery; Landon Mackenzie; Parallel Journey, Works on Paper, 1975-2015, organized and toured by Kelowna Art Gallery; and Landon Mackenzie: Recollects at the West Vancouver Art Gallery in 2019. Mackenzie holds an MFA from Concordia U and a BFA from NSCAD in Halifax (1972-1976). She is Professor Emerita at Emily Carr University of Art and Design and received numerous awards including both the Queen Elizabeth II Golden, and Diamond, Jubilee Medals for her outstanding contribution to Canadian culture, as well as the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2017). Mackenzie is represented by Art45, Montreal and Nicholas Metivier Gallery, Toronto.

Anne Ramsden

Anne Ramsden is a multidisciplinary artist based on Gabriola Island (Nanaimo). Since the early 1980s she has exhibited her work in video, photography and installation across Canada and internationally. In 1981 Ramsden was co-founder of Artexte Information Centre, a Montreal archive and research centre on contemporary art. She taught studio art at Simon Fraser University’s School for The Contemporary Arts from 1987 - 1998 and subsequently at the School for Visual and Media Arts at the University of Québec in Montréal until 2017, when she returned to B.C..

Marina Roy

Marina Roy is an artist and writer, and is associate professor of visual art at the University of British Columbia. She works across a variety of media— drawing, painting, sculpture, video, and animation. Her artwork investigates the grotesque, at the intersection of language and materiality. Her research interests include ecology, posthumanism, psychoanalysis, and biopolitics. In 2001 she published sign after the x (Arsenal Pulp Press/Artspeak). Her newest book Queuejumping (Information Office) will be published in late 2020.

Join New York based artist and gallery director Martha Wilson for a live virtual Zoom talk presented in conjunction with Griffin’s upcoming exhibition Now Bulletin: Artworks, Letters and Printed Matter from the Garry Neill Kennedy Collection 1968 - 2019. Wilson will talk about her experiences as a young artist in Halifax in the 1970’s where she become involved with the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design’s revolutionary arts community, spearheaded by college president Garry Neil Kennedy, who was, at the time, in the midst of transforming the institution into a forerunner of art education. From there, Wilson will survey her post-Halifax years in New York City, beginning with the founding and evolution of Franklin Furnace and ending with her current work and artistic practice.

Currently based in New York city, Martha Wilson is a pioneering feminist artist and gallery director, whose innovative photographic and video works explore her female subjectivity through role-playing, costume transformations, and “invasions” of other people’s personae. Wilson completed her Bachelor of Arts degree at Wilmington College in Ohio, and her graduate studies at Dalhousie University in Halifax Nova Scotia. Wilson taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design before moving to New York City in 1974. Two years later she founded and continues to direct Franklin Furnace, an artist-run space that champions the exploration, promotion and preservation of artists’ books, installation art, video, online and performance art.

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIocOuqpz4oEtCb5vJDp3IgGBOAqCVNAGrz

Griffin Art Projects invites viewers to stream David Craig’s The Mill, a gripping portrait of a rural community deeply divided over the fate of the local pulp mill. Welcome to Pictou County, Nova Scotia where a plan to redirect pulp effluent into the fishing grounds of the Northumberland Strait has stirred controversy. Lobster fishermen say “No Pipe!” The mill says “No Pipe No Mill”. A line has been drawn and with hundreds of jobs at stake the issue has reached a boiling point!

Following the film, Griffin will be hosting a live director’s talk and Q/A with David Craig, a prominent Canadian filmmaker and former student of Garry Neill Kennedy. This program is presented in conjunction with Griffin Art Projects Now Bulletin: Artworks, Letters and Printed Matter from the Garry Neill Kennedy Collection 1968 - 2019 an exhibition, residency series, public art project and public program on the archive, collection and works of eminent Vancouver artist and former NSCAD president, Garry Neill Kennedy, as well as the legacy and careers of NSCAD grads across Canada and beyond.

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYqdOihrTMqH9brHJL5TDEdvQloqGCzTzwd

Edmonton’s 中華門 Harbin Gate was dismantled for LRT construction on November 4, 2017. In response, aiya哎呀, an intergenerational group of Edmonton-based artists and Chinatown community members, invited contributors to share their memories of Edmonton’s Harbin Gate by expressing their thoughts in the form of an art calligraphy banner. Participants were invited to mourn, be sad, be angry and share their stories, memories and wishes. This project resulted in a community art installation that served as a visual mark of this important community icon.

Griffin Art Projects is thrilled to host a live virtual Zoom presentation and workshop with aiya哎呀. Participants will learn first hand about the Harbin Gate Remembrance Project, followed by a hands-on virtual workshop in which participants will be invited to create a calligraphy and crochet banner of their own. This event is scheduled in anticipation of “Whose Chinatown? Examining Chinatown Gazes in Art, Archives, and Collections”, guest curated by Karen Tam and scheduled for exhibition at Griffin Art Projects from January 29 - May 1 2021. This exhibition brings together an art history of Chinatowns and their communities by historical and contemporary Canadian artists such Emily Carr, Unity Bainbridge, Paul Caron, Yucho Chow, Fred Herzog, Paul Wong, Mary Sui Yee Wong, Morris Lum, and aiya哎呀, among others. Complementing the artworks are artefacts and materials from family and institutional archives, as well as a robust public programming. This exhibition aims to question how narratives are constructed around the idea of Chinatown and the colonial notions that underwrite some of these relations.

Registration for this online workshop is limited to 15 participants. Please note that this workshop is for BEGINNER crocheters. All workshop materials will be available for pickup at the gallery on Saturdays from October 24th - November 7th from noon - 5pm.

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJApduyoqT4qG9OygzrB2pLP5WrP_36whOPM

Join Griffin’s current artist-in-residence, Kelly Lycan, for an artist talk live over zoom to learn more about what she has been up to throughout her time at Griffin Art Projects!

Kelly Lycan is a photo-based installation artist who resides in Vancouver, BC, Canada. Lycan’s work investigates the way objects and images are placed and displayed in the world and the cycle of value they experience. She employs photography and sculpture in order to engage them beyond medium specificity. Her work has been exhibited across Canada, the US, Europe and the Middle East. Lycan also collaborated from 2005-2015 with the artist collective Instant Coffee, a service-oriented artist collective who have exhibited extensively.

www.kellylycan.com

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIld-6oqDwvGtP8kMhmjPX3NG9NMZ9Z_BSX

Join guest-curator David MacWilliam in conversation with internationally renowned artists Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler.

Currently dividing their time between Austin, Texas and Berlin, Germany, Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler have been working collaboratively in film, photography and sculpture since 1990. They began collaborating as artists-in-residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and later completed graduate degrees at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In April 2017, they were each awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts in recognition of their outstanding achievements to art and culture by the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

In 2017 they represented Switzerland in the Swiss Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennial in the exhibition “Women of Venice”, curated by Philipp Kaiser. Their work invites suggestive, open-ended reflections on place and cinema and is “propelled by the artists’ fascination with the open circuits of social life, memory, and history that sit just outside the frame of moving images.”1 Hubbard / Birchler’s work is held in numerous public collections internationally and their exhibition history includes venues such as the 48th and 57th Venice Biennial; Los Angeles County Museum of Art LACMA; Tate Museum Liverpool; Kunstmuseum Basel; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin and Reina Sofia Museum Madrid, to name a few.

Hubbard grew up in Australia and later attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, as well as the graduate sculpture program at Yale University School of Art, New Haven, Connecticut. Birchler grew up in Switzerland and studied at the Academy of Art and Design Basel and the University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland. Currently, Hubbard and Birchler are faculty members at the European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Birchler is an Associate Professor of Practice at the University of Texas at Austin and Hubbard holds the William and Bettye Nowlin Endowed Professorship in Photography in the Department of Art and Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. 1 Jordan Amirkani, „Sound Speed Marker at the Blaffer Art Museum“, in: Daily Serving: An International Publication for Contemporary Art, 10. Juni 2015. Image Caption: Teresa Hubbard / Alexander Birchler on the filmset of Flora ,Berlin Photo: Haley Austin

Registration link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEvde6orTgjG9wM2k2d8sjk76-DqCCu6BHj