Strawberry Jam

Centre A Presents

Strawberry Jam
Artists:  Echo Ho, crys cole, Joomi Seo, Sheng Jie

Exhibition: March 27 – April 24, 2009
Opening Reception: Friday, March 26, 8 pm
Beijing-Vancouver-Winnipeg Telematic Concert: 9 – 11pm
Curator: Debra Zhou

Centre A: Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art
2. West Hastings Street, Vancouver, BC, V6B 1G6
Tel: 604-683-8326, www.centrea.org, [email protected]
Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 11 am – 6 pm, Sunday, Monday & Holidays closed.

Strawberry Jam is an exhibition featuring four female artists who is each inspired by the potential of sound as visual art.

This exhibition opens with an elaborate telematic concert on March 26, using the Internet as a platform, exchanging improvised sound among three locations, with Echo Ho and Joomi Seo in Vancouver, crys cole in Winnipeg and Sheng Jie in Beijing. The concert will be live streamed from Centre A and available for viewing at http://www.ustream.tv/centrea

Four commissioned artworks are onsite at Centre A.  Echo Ho’s installation Resembling Shan Shui in Neolithic China engages a multi-disciplinary narrative approach that incorporates a sound track, a ping-pong pool controlled by sound system, and a red lamp to represent the uniquely hybrid urban landscape in China today. crys cole’s video Sweeper is a meditation on the banal domestic act of sweeping. Sheng Jie’s experimental film Big Can, making its international premiere, is based on an improvised performance in an abandoned water tower by artists such as Otomo Yoshihide, Sachiko M, Hong Qile, Jun-Y Ciao and Sheng Jie herself. Joomi Seo’s eight-channeled sound installation explores the nature of recorded audible materials and its relationship with the pictographic notation work as a device consisting of its own independent formation of language.

Artists’ interviews and conversations will be documented and published on Centre A’s website during the exhibition.

Click here to see photos from the concert

Biographies

Echo Ho
Echo Ho is a Cologne-based artist who grew up in Beijing. After studying technical arts in film and television in Hongkong, she moved to Germany in 1998 and studied at the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Audiovisual and Media Department under Prof. Anthony Moore and Prof. David Larcher. Since 2007, she has held the position of Artistic and Scientific Officer of Video and Electronic Media at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne. Her work spans a wide range of video, sound art, installations, audiovisual live improvisation and inter-media performances. She examines cultural developments in the context of trends of globalization, the narration of the body and metamorphosis of the urban and non-linear expressions to establish structures. Her performative works experiment with approaches, such as network music, to enable communication across heterogeneous collectives. In addition to audio-visual languages, Ho’s work engages classical linear methods by using real-time computer-based tools such as PureData and SuperCollider.

crys cole
crys cole was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada in 1976. A self-taught sound artist, cole began exploring experimental music in the 1990s. She pursued Interdisciplinary studies in Fine Art at Concordia University 2002-2006. She has performed live extensively in Winnipeg, Vancouver, and Montreal including venues such as cre8ery (2009), Ace Art Inc (2009), VIVO Media Arts Centre (2009), Access Gallery (2008), BLIM (2005), and Or Gallery (2003). In June 2009, cole made a two-week tour in Paris, Berlin, Cologne and Brussels, performing solo and in collaboration with Rinus Van Alebeek, Julie Rousse, Clare Cooper and Christine Senaoui. Recently she has also toured in Italy with Oren Ambarchi (AU) + Massimo Puppilo (IT). She’s currently the artist director of Send+Receive Festival in Winnipeg.

Sheng Jie (gogoj)
Sheng Jie was born in China in 1975. She studied classical Western music at an early age and was trained as a violinist. She has studied at Beijing College of Art and Design (BFA), China Central Academy of Fine Arts, Edinburgh Art College (Film & TV department), and received her MFA from Ecole supérieure des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg, France. Now working and living in Beijing, she has performed and exhibited extensively worldwide, including Beijing, Shanghai, Hongkong, Paris, Berlin, Newcastle. She is the founder of “Shan AV Lab”, a platform dedicated to art education and communication. Her works range from sound, video, performance, installation, painting and photography. By using minimalistic images and low frequency audio material, Sheng leads the audience into a gap between reality and illusion, where contradiction and harmony coexist like parallel lines.

Joomi Seo
Joomi Seo is a multi-disciplinary artist who immigrated to Canada from Seoul, Korea in 1999. Her current interest lies in sounding instrument in the context of performance art and writing musical scores comprising graphic and text-based components. Seo’s on-going research is built on a historical base through the artists, musicians, and composers – from Fluxus to New Music. After receiving her BFA from Emily Carr University, Seo is currently an MFA candidate at the University of British Columbia. She has performed at various venues including Western Front (NOW concert, 2008), Centre A (How to Feed a Piano, 2008), LIVE Biennale Cabaret (2009), and Candahar Bar (Clamour and Toll, 2010).

Debra Zhou
Born in Shanghai and immigrated to Canada in 1999, Debra Zhou is the curatorial resident and gallery coordinator at Centre A. Zhou has been involved in various local and international projects with Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Yishu Journal, ISSofBC (Immigration Service Society of BC), VIVO Media Arts Centre, Reel Asian Festival, and 221A Artist Run Centre. Zhou curated exhibition Politics of Romance as part of LIVE Biennale 2009. She’s a current recipient of Canada Council Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts.

Debra Zhou gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts through Assistance to Culturally Diverse Curators for Residencies in the Visual Arts.

Special thanks to UBC ICICS (Institute of Computing, Information, and Cognitive System) & School of Music.

Centre A gracefully acknowledge the generous support of its patrons, sponsors, members, partners, private foundations, and government funding agencies including the Canada Council for the Arts, the British Colombia Arts Council, and the City of Vancouver through the Office of Cultural Affairs.

For more information, please contact:
Debra Zhou
[email protected]

604-683-8326