Photo: Rendering by Go2 Productions of a monumental projection to be presented by Sandeep Johal on the Georgia Street façade of the Vancouver Art Gallery in September as part of Façade Festival 2019.
August 28th, 2019, Vancouver, BC – Burrard Arts Foundation in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery presents Façade Festival 2019, a free, outdoor public art and cultural event featuring commissioned works by contemporary artists, both established and emerging, taking place from sunset to midnight each night September 8th to 14th, 2019.
Every evening during the festival, bold artworks will be projected over the Vancouver Art Gallery’s Georgia Street façade, covering the building with dynamic, site specific art. This immersive art installation utilizes the innovative format of projection mapping to create a highly engaging, spatial experience for the public. It also provides an opportunity for the community to gather and enjoy art in a communal, accessible format reminiscent of an outdoor movie screening.
“Facade Festival speaks to the pervasiveness of digital forms in modern life and contemplates the role that new technologies play in contemporary art while engaging the public in a grand architectural intervention,” said Kate Bellringer, Director and Curator of Burrard Arts Foundation. “Selected artists developed their work with special consideration to the site of the Vancouver Art Gallery, our city’s unique character and the historic building itself.”
This year, a selection of BC contemporary artists have been commissioned to create ten new works of art specifically for this festival. The works were chosen by a committee made up of local arts community professionals. Burrard Arts Foundation has partnered with projection-mapping specialists Go2 Productions to help the artists use this technology to create artistic projections mapped to the Vancouver Art Gallery’s iconic architecture.
Façade Festival 2019 showcases the work of Dana Claxton, Khan Lee, Drew Young, Sandeep Johal, Lindsay McIntyre, Howie Tsui, Bracken Hanuse Corlett, Justine Chambers, Josh Hite, Natalie Purschwitz and Hyung-Min Yoon. The diverse lineup includes artists working in a wide range of mediums at different stages of their careers. The artists’ areas of focus include painting, photography, film, and installation, although digital media artists were emphasized in this year’s roster.
Works by two artists will premiere each night from September 8th to 12th and on September 13th and 14th, the public will have the chance to enjoy an encore presentation of all projections. In addition, the final evening of Façade Festival will feature a special projection mapping experience by Go2 Productions.
A Façade Festival artist talk, Façade Festival Artist Panel: Digital Media Temporality in Public Space, will be hosted by the Vancouver Art Gallery on Saturday, September 14th at 3:00 PM. The talk, led by several of this year’s artists, will be a moderated dialogue centred around how concerns of space and time play into the festival’s unique format. It is open to the public with limited seating available. Attendees are encouraged to arrive early.
Facade Festival 2019 is a partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery and technical partner Go2 Productions, generously supported by the City of Vancouver, the Department of Canadian Heritage, Tourism Vancouver, QuadReal Property Group, the Downtown Business Improvement Association, Can-Design, Savoury City, and Viva Vancouver.
Schedule and Presenting Artists
When: September 8th–14th, 2019, 7:30 PM –12:00 AM each evening
Where: Georgia Street side of the Vancouver Art Gallery, 750 Hornby Street
Sunday, September 8th: Dana Claxton & Khan Lee
Monday, September 9th: Drew Young & Sandeep Johal
Tuesday, September 10th: Lindsay McIntyre & Howie Tsui
Wednesday, September 11th: Bracken Hanuse Corlett & Josh Hite/Justine Chambers
Thursday, September 12th: Natalie Purschwitz & Hyung-Min Yoon
Friday, September 13th: Encore of all artists’ works
Saturday, September 14th: Façade Festival Artist Panel: Digital Media Temporality in Public Space, 3:00 PM at the Vancouver Art Gallery, free and open to the public
Saturday, September 14th: Special projection mapping experience by Go2 Productions and an encore of all artists’ works, 7:30 PM to 12:00 AM
About the Artists (interviews available with each)
Dana Claxton
Dana Claxton is a critically acclaimed exhibiting artist and film/video maker. She works in film, video, photography, single and multi-channel video installation and performance art. Her practice investigates beauty, the body, the socio-political and the spiritual. Her work has been exhibited internationally, and held in public and private collections including the Vancouver Art Gallery, National Gallery of Canada, Art Bank of Canada and the Winnipeg Art Gallery.
Justine Chambers and Josh Hite
Justine A. Chambers is a dance artist living and working on the unceded territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. In her work, she privileges what is felt over what is seen, by working with her body as an imperfect recording device to develop a cumulative embodied archive. Josh Hite works with video, animation, sound, performance and photography, often creating reorganized archives of particular spaces, objects or behaviours.
Bracken Hanuse Corlett
Bracken Hanuse Corlett is an interdisciplinary artist hailing from the Wuikinuxv and Klahoose Nations. He began working in theatre and performance in 2001 and eventually transitioned towards his current practice that fuses painting and drawing with digital-media, audio-visual performance, animation and narrative.
Sandeep Johal
Sandeep Johal is a Canadian visual artist whose colourful geometric forms and intricate black- and-white line work is aesthetically and conceptually inspired by her South Asian heritage. Sandeep believes in the power of art to create awareness around issues related to cultural identity, gender equality, and human rights. Her art practice is an expression of her social and cultural concerns, particularly gender justice.
Khan Lee
Khan Lee was born in Seoul, Korea. He studied architecture at Hong-Ik University, before immigrating to Canada to study fine art at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Through sculptural and media practices, his work attempts to exhibit results of experimentation with form and process in order to express inherent relationships between material and immaterial content.
Lindsay McIntyre
Lindsay McIntyre is a film artist from Edmonton of Inuk and Settler descent. Her process-based practice is largely analog in nature and deals with themes of portraiture, place, form and personal histories.
Hyung-Min Yoon
Hyung-Min Yoon is a visual artist working between Vancouver, Canada and Seoul, Korea. She received her BFA at the Korea National University of the Arts and her MFA at Chelsea College of Art & Design in London. Her research and text-based art practice draw inspiration from literature and early art history.
Natalie Purschwitz
Natalie Purschwitz seeks out spaces between art, design, performance and daily life. Through her visual art practice she considers how materials connect with ideological production and quotidian experiences and in this way, her research lies at the intersection anthropology, mythology, materiality and form.
Howie Tsui
Vancouver-based artist Howie Tsui (TsuiHoYan/徐浩恩) was born in Hong Kong and raised in Lagos, Nigeria and Thunder Bay. He works in a variety of media to construct tense, fictive environments that subvert canonized art forms and narrative genres, often from the traditional Chinese literati class.
Drew Young
Vancouver-based Drew Young studied at The Victoria College of Art and received his diploma in Illustration and Applied Arts (IDEA) at Capilano University. Young is an internationally exhibited painter with shows and projects in LA (Thinkspace Gallery), HI (POW!WOW!), SF (Gauntlet Gallery), Denver (Abend Gallery), Tokyo (Amp), London (Rook and Raven), NYC (Re:Form Projects), Bogota (Come Together) and featured by Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, Booooooom.com, Supersonic Electronic and BlueCanvas.
For more information, please visit facadefest.com | #FacadeFest
About Projection Mapping
Projection Mapping is a cutting-edge technology and art form that turns any three-dimensional object into a dynamic projection surface, or “canvas”. The scale and versatility of this new medium is still being explored, but what’s clear is the format’s ability to present unprecedented displays of bold creativity. This technology allows the artists to isolate each architectural element with their own captivating artistic expression to visually transform the Vancouver Art Gallery.
With components of art, architecture, film, and multimedia, the broad appeal of Projection Mapping is immense. With similar events around the world drawing crowds that number in the millions, global public interest in this burgeoning technology and art form is undeniable, and the boundaries of the creative practice are being pushed in more and more innovative and exciting directions with each progressing year.
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Media Contact
Larissa Dundon
larissa@larissadundon.com
604.649.5506
About Burrard Arts Foundation (burrardarts.org | @burrardarts)
Burrard Arts Foundation creates more opportunities for the public to experience art. Through special projects that foster creativity in the public realm, and by supporting the talented artists who call Vancouver home, BAF promotes excellence in contemporary art in Canada. BAF projects and programming prioritize at every turn a low-barrier, inclusive mode of arts presentation with a special focus on professional development for early-career artists.
About the Vancouver Art Gallery (vanartgallery.bc.ca)
Founded in 1931, the Vancouver Art Gallery is recognized as one of North America’s most respected and innovative visual arts institutions. The Gallery’s ground-breaking exhibitions, extensive public programs and emphasis on advancing scholarship all focus on historical and contemporary art from British Columbia and around the world. Special attention is paid to the accomplishments of Indigenous artists, as well as to the arts of the Asia Pacific region—through the Institute of Asian Art that the Gallery founded in 2014. The Gallery’s programs also explore the impacts of images in the larger sphere of visual culture, design and architecture.
The Vancouver Art Gallery is a not-for-profit organization grateful to the support it receives by its members, individual donors, corporate funders, foundations, the City of Vancouver, the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts.
The Vancouver Art Gallery is situated on the ancestral and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh) Nations, and is respectful of the Indigenous stewards of the land it occupies, whose rich cultures are fundamental to artistic life in Vancouver and to the work of the Gallery.
