Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art

Closing Performance: As Heavy as a Feather

March 8th, 2024

A Glass of Wine – Part II
Anchi Lin and Alanna Ho
February 11, 2017
Centre A

 

On the occasion of the closing of Chang En-Man’s exhibition, As Heavy as a Feather, Anchi Lin will be performing Part II of her work A Glass of Wine with Alanna Ho.

A Glass of Wine – Part I is a video work with excerpts from a conversational exchange between Anchi Lin and Chang En-Man that occurred last November in Vancouver. The discussion revolved around the artists’ shared perspective on their Taiwanese identity, indigeneity, displacement and Canada. A Glass of Wine – Part II will be a live performance between Anchi Lin and Alanna Ho. The performance continues Lin’s extensive research on Chang’s exhibition, reflecting on the multi-faceted experiences of identity, colonial history and dynamics between Settler and Indigenous communities. Lin’s performance is a response to a book Chang included in her exhibition, The Taste of Ina, which collects the stories of young outcast Taiwanese Indigenous kids and the traditional recipes that were passed down to them by family.

A Glass of Wine – Part II will see Lin and Ho attempt to prepare a traditional familial dish from The Taste of Ina while experimenting with sounds, creating a space to examine the fluidity of identity by drawing on each performer’s personal histories.

 

 

Anchi Lin is an artist of Taiwanese heritage who lives and works in Vancouver. Her work negotiates and interfaces with concepts such as language, identity, and cultural norms. Her heritage has served as a catalyst for her exploration of these concepts. Lin received a BFA in Visual Art from Simon Fraser University School for the Contemporary Arts.

Alanna Ho is an emerging visual artist, musician, composer and interdisciplinary performer. She is the founder of Rainbow Forecast Project, a non-profit community initiative. This project aims to share children’s stories and generate contemporary art engagement by collaborating with their own creative ideas to produce large scale works.

 

Discussion: Josh Hon – Dead Water Convulsion

March 8th, 2024

A conversation between Leung Chi Wo and Josh Hon

Friday, July 8, 2016 | 3:30 pm

2270 Sauder Industries Policy Room

SFU David See-Chai Lam Centre for International Communication, 515 W Hastings

 

Guest curator Leung Chi Wo and artist Josh Hon explore the art and political scene of Hong Kong in the 1980s in this presentation. Hon, as a pioneering artist of the 1980s left Hong Kong at the peak of his career to move to Hope, British Columbia timed specifically after the Tiananmen Square Massacre of 1989. Historically, many other Hong Kong citizens also left Hong Kong for North America at this time.

Hon’s multi-varied work of painting, theatre and installations as well as his own identity as both Hong Kongese and Canadian will be discussed.

An english subtitled episode of Art Magazine: “Art & Politics” will also be screened, a Hong Kong TV program that prominently featured Josh Hon.

This conversation is taking place in conjunction with Josh Hon’s exhibition, Dead Water Convulsion—Hong Kong—1980s, currently on display at Centre A until July 23.

 

Screening and Artist Talk with Josh Hon

Saturday, July 16, 2016 | 4pm

Centre A, 229 East Georgia Street
This Saturday, we will be screening an English subtitled episode of RTHK’s Art Magazine ‘Communication’, a 1980s Hong Kong TV program that prominently featured Josh Hon. Following the screening, Josh Hon and Hong Kong Exile’s Natalie Tin Yin Gan will have a conversation about Hon’s work and communication with Centre A’s current exhibition, Dead Water Convulsion–Hong Kong–1980s, as the backdrop.

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Josh Hon was one of the most known artists in the 1980s in Hong Kong but faded out from the art scene in the early 1990s when he immigrated to Hope, British Columbia. However, with his cross-disciplinary practice from theatre performance to multi-media installation, he still remains as one of the most well-remembered artists of his time in Hong Kong art history. His one-man show at the Hong Kong arts centre was critically acclaimed and cemented his role as a key pioneering figure in the Hong Kong arts scene. Hon’s brief career in the 1980s is an example of the first generation of Hong Kong artists who made use of a global art language without a burden of the Chinese tradition. This recollection of his artistic practice and his life in Hong Kong establishes the notion of memory in the study of Hong Kong art prior to any historical writing.

Leung Chi Wo is a Hong Kong visual artist and currently teaches at the School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. His works mainly range from photography, installation, paintings and videos. Leung was also one of the co-founders of Para/Site Art Space in Hong Kong—which was established in early 1996 and was the first exhibition-making institution of contemporary art in Hong Kong.

For this exhibition, Leung is acting curator and researcher of Josh Hon: Dead Water Convulsion—Hong Kong—1980s.

 

For this exhibition we are particularly indebted to Melissa Karmen Lee, the David Lam Centre Fellow and Centre A Board Member. Special thanks to the David Lam Centre, Simon Fraser University, City University Hong Kong, and the School of Creative Media.

Reopening Celebration

February 20th, 2024

Reopening Celebration

Friday, March 1, 2024

5 – 8 PM

Centre A

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Join us to celebrate Centre A’s reopening at our newly renovated space!

The Reopening Celebration will feature new products in our Boutique for sale, the launch our collaborative zine, Space(s) in Chinatown, with Yarrow Intergenerational Society for Justice, Hatch Art Gallery and UBC AMS, as well as the opening of our latest exhibition, Unseen Garden, by Chris Hamamoto & Federico Perez Villoro, curated by Diane Hau Yu Wong. Drinks will be available for purchase.

All of Centre A’s share of consignment proceeds during the Reopening Celebration will be donated to Islamic Relief Canada to send aid to Gaza.

We will be sharing some of the new products available for purchase on our Instagram page leading up to the event.

No RSVP. Masks required. We hope to see you there!


Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Gallery closure

January 8th, 2024

We are now closed to the public until March 2024 for renovation, which will help us better serve our future visitors. We look forward to seeing you soon!

Book Launch: Ghosts From Underground Love

October 27th, 2023

Book Launch: Ghosts From Underground Love

Lam Wong

Saturday, November 4, 2023

4 – 6 PM

Centre A

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No registration required.

Join us at Centre A for the official book launch of Lam Wong’s Ghosts from Underground Love. The book launch will include an artist talk and in conversation with Lam Wong and Rhys Edwards. 

Proceeds to support Centre A and Canton-sardine.

Lam Wong’s solo exhibition of the same name, Ghosts From Underground Love, at Canton-sardine features a series of all-young female portrait paintings that Wong has started working on during his Griffin Art Projects residency in summer 2019. His new works depict the powerful emotions of bravery, passion, love, desire, fear, and hope of young women concealed in the underground network of secret lover letters during their prison times under authoritarian surveillance, institutional oppression, and unjustified punishments.

Focusing on his concern for love and suffering, two fundamental conditions of human existence, Wong is again turning his attention to investigating the constructs of emotion and trauma. Inspired by and based on Laura Nys’ research on “Emotional Refuge” and the love letters of juvenile delinquents during the early 20th century in Europe. These are portraits of young lost ghosts, tortured by love, scarred and burned, undimmed by courage, forgotten… now eternally immortalized.

The book will be available for purchase for a special discounted price of $50 (Regular Price: $55) 

Details about the book: 

  • Hardcover, 144 pages, full colour
  • Texts by Dr. Laura Nys, Rhys Edwards, Steven Dragonn, and Lam Wong
  • Published by Canton-sardine 
  • Limited edition of 300

This project is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts.

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Lam Wong (b.1968, in Xiamen, China) is a visual artist and curator who immigrated from Hong Kong to Canada during the 1980s and studied design, art history and painting in Alberta and British Columbia. Wong works with painting, installation and performance to engage with themes such as the perception of reality, the role of art and the relationship between time, memory and space. He sees artmaking as an ongoing spiritual practice and his work draws upon his knowledge of Western art history and his interest in Taoism and Buddhism. Wong’s creative approach is often concerned with blending Eastern philosophies and challenging the notion of painting.

Lam Wong has been based in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Coast Salish territories since 1998. He has recently exhibited his work and performed at Campbell River Art Gallery, Canton-Sardine, Centre A (Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art), Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Griffin Art Projects, Unit 17, Western Front, Walter Phillips Gallery, and Vancouver Art Gallery.

Rhys Edwards is an artist, writer, and curator. His writing has appeared in Canadian Art, The Capilano Review, C Magazine, and BC Studies. He graduated with a degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of British Columbia in 2014, and he lives and works in Vancouver, BC, on unceded Coast Salish territories.


Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Keefer St.mp3 & Centre A Tote Bag Launch

September 21st, 2023

Keefer St.mp3 & Centre A Tote Bag Launch

Friday, November 10, 2023

7 – 10 PM

Centre A

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Purchase your tickets for Keefer St.mp3, HERE.  

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We invite everyone to Keefer St.mp3 & Tote Bag Launch, Centre A’s end-of-year party that will be held simultaneously to our first-ever launch of our tote bags. Before we say our winter holiday goodbyes as we close our gallery for space renovations, we will be hosting a Y2K-themed party with our Tote Bag launch, where we have prepared a variety of throwback materials for you to customize your very own Centre A Tote Bag.

For the party, we also invite ticket holders to submit up to five of your favorite early 2000s music to contribute to the Keefer St.mp3 shared playlist that will be responsible for the tunes, all night long. 

For the tote bag launch, we will have a station where you can customize your tote bag with a range of patches, rhinestones, and markers to your liking. Regular tote bag price will be $30.  

There will be drinks, sangria, snacks, as well as a special Keefer St.mp3 cocktail that awaits. 

Keywords for dress code are: Y2K, 2000s, and throwback. 

Sliding Scale: $15 – $25

Pay it forward: Create a donation to Centre A for an X amount of tickets. We’ll pool the tickets and provide it to individuals or organizations of your recommendation. (If you’re donating through CanadaHelps, please write a memo on the notes.)

Regular Cover: $25

Friends of Centre A: Free entry

Tote Bag Launch Price: $10 (includes customization material) 

All else, email us at [email protected], and we’ll add you to the list of pooled tickets, generously provided by our Friends and supporters.

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*Become a friend of Centre A today to have the cover fee waived! 

*Centre A Tote Bags will be available for purchase at the event.


Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.

Intimacy and Distances: Artist & Curator Talk

September 2nd, 2023

Intimacy and Distances: Artist & Curator Talk

Saturday, September 16, 2023

2 – 4 PM 

Centre A; 205 – 268 Keefer St., Vancouver, BC, V6A 1X5 

No RSVP required.

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Join us in person at Centre A for an artist talk in conjunction with our current exhibition, Intimacy and Distances, with Tokyo-based interdisciplinary artist Maiko Jinushi and guest curator Makiko Hara. The artist and curator will be joined by artist Akira Takaishi. Takaishi’s solo exhibition, Place Far Away From Anyone or Anywhere, at CSA Space is happening in collaboration with Centre A. 

Find out more about Intimacy and Distances here.

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Artist Biography:

Maiko Jinushi, born 1984 in Kanagawa, Japan. Lives and works in Tokyo. Jinushi obtained her MFA in Painting from Tama Art University in Tokyo, Japan, and recently participated in a residency at the Jan van Eyck Academie in Maastricht, the Netherlands in 2019-20. 

Her work has evolved from drawings and novels on themes of personal tales, to the creation of a new form of literary experience that comprehensively combines elements including video, installations, and performances. 

Her recent solo exhibitions include “MAM Project 031: Jinushi Maiko” (Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2023), “Brain Symphony” (Hospitale Project, Tottori, Art Center Ongoing, Tokyo, 2020), “Sound of Desires” (Hagiwara Projects, Tokyo, 2018). Recent group exhibitions include “Universal / Remote” (Contemporary Art Museum Kumamoto, Kumamoto, 2023), “Till We Meet Again IRL, Best Wishes, Asia-Art-Activism (Co-curated by Annie Jael Kwan, Arianna Mercado, Cuong Pham and Howl Yuan)” (Online, 2020), “The Yebisu International Festival for Art & Alternative Visions” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, Tokyo, 2019), “The Ecology of Expression -Remaking Our Relations with the World” (Arts Maebashi, Gunma, 2019), “Zero Gravity” (Matadero Madrid, Madrid, 2015), “Koganecho Bazaar 2014” (Koganecho area, Kanagawa, 2014). 

Artist Website: http://maikojinushi.com 

Akira Takaishi (born/resides in Japan, b.1985) has been creating land art, installations and implicit paintings showing distorted spaces using twisted perspectives. Through them, Takaishi focuses on hole-shaped structures as convoluted reflections of societal structures and individual identities, at times somewhere to escape into, and at the same time, be trapped by. Takaishi has had numerous solo and group shows, and recently also curated a group show ‘Subterraneans’ at Gallery ?M, Tokyo (2021).

Artist Website: http://www.akiratakaishi.com 

Curator Biography:

Makiko Hara is an independent curator, lecturer, writer, and art and cultural consultant based in Vancouver, BC. Makiko Hara received The Alvin Balkind Curator’s Prize in 2020. From 2007 to 2013, she was the Chief curator / deputy Director of Centre A —Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art. She has worked with many visual artists on a variety of international projects as an independent curator, including: ScotiaBank Nuit Blanche, (Toronto, Canada, 2009), AIR YONAGO, Tottori Geijyu Art Festival (Yonago, Japan, 2014-15), Fictive Communities Asia-Koganecho Bazaar (Yokohama, Japan, 2014), Rock Paper Scissors, and Cindy Mochizuki, (Yonago City Museum of Art, Tottori, Japan, 2018). Hara was appointed to the Advisory director of the International Exchange Center, Akita University of Arts, Akita, Japan in 2017-2020. Hara is a co-founder of Pacific Crossings, BC based curatorial platform since 2018 that has initiated and organized numerous conversations, residency and online /off line cultural exchange across the pacific. Hara founded My Kitchen Anthropology Museum in 2020 in response to the Covid 19 Pandemic lockdown, and held Hank Bull and Marcia Crosby solo exhibitions. Recently Hara was a guest curator for Vancouver Art Gallery’s Offsite and curated Lani Maestro (2022-23) and Pedro Reyes (2023-24).   

Maiko Jinushi photo credits: Marisa Shimamoto. Akira Takaishi photo credits: Guenter Zorn.


Accessibility: The gallery is wheelchair and walker accessible. If you have specific accessibility needs, please contact us at (604) 683-8326 or [email protected].

Centre A is situated on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples. We honour, respect, and give thanks to our hosts.