Beijing-Vancouver

BEIJING – VANCOUVER

Cathy Busby and Garry Neill Kennedy

Curated by Makiko Hara

Exhibition Patron: Dr. Marla Kiess

Paint supplied by Ted Harris Paints

September 12 – October 24, 2009

Opening: Friday, September 11, 8:00 pm

Artist talk: Saturday, September 12, 2:00 pm at Centre A

Public Lecture by Garry Neill Kennedy: Thursday, September 10, 7:00 pm at Emily Carr University,  Room 301, south building, hosted by the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver.

http://www.casv.ca/

Centre A is pleased to open its fall season with an exhibition by Garry Neill Kennedy and Cathy Busby from Halifax. This is the Centre’s first exhibition by artists from Nova Scotia.

Garry Neill Kennedy is a pioneer of conceptual painting and as the former president and professor of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (NSCAD) is a teacher of several generations of Canadian artists. His accomplishments as an artist, teacher and administrator were recognized in 2003 with the Order of Canada and in 2004 with the Governor General’s Award for Visual Arts.

Cathy Busby most recently completed We Are Sorry (2009), a public art commission for the City of Melbourne on the exterior of a downtown power substation. This work featured the abbreviated apologies made to Canadian and Australian Aboriginal communities in 2008. She is an artist whose work addresses increasingly globalized and corporatized conditions. She holds a BFA from NSCAD and an MA and Phd from Concordia University.

Their exhibition is based on work produced during two residencies hosted by the Red Gate Gallery in Beijing. The artists spent a total of four months between 2007 and 2008 researching and developing site-specific art works. These were exhibited at the Pickled Arts Centre in Fall 2007 and immediately following the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

Busby, inspired by the large-scale vinyl banners advertising products and the Olympics used the same commercial technology to produce Your Choice, a series of two giant photographic posters. For Centre A she will produce two more and these will displayed as a large cube of images in the centre of the gallery.

Kennedy produced two large wall painting installations entitled, I Don’t Want to Pay the Full Price and The Eight Banners, a Chinese History Painting. These works will be reproduced in brilliant colours painted directly onto the walls of Centre A. The first piece, covering the entire south wall of the gallery, an area over 2,000 square feet, will be possibly the largest painting ever produced in Vancouver. It will also incorporate the use of monochrome flags. The second piece will cover several other walls and refers to his celebrated work, The American History Painting, on view at the National Gallery of Canada.

These works reflect the artists’ experience of being in Beijing, before, during and after the Olympic Games and can be read in the context of globalization and culture that characterizes this major spectacle.

Centre A is honoured to welcome Dr. Marla Kiess as Exhibition Patron. Dr. Kiess has made a sustained contribution to the development of the visual arts in Vancouver for several years. We are also grateful to the Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver and Ted Harris paints for their generous sponsorship of this exhibition.

Centre A gratefully acknowledges the support of its patrons, sponsors, members, partners, private foundations, as well as government funding agencies, including the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.