RIVERSIDE PARK

plúk̓wem (gather) is a collaborative public art project designed and created by participants in the Arbour Aboriginal Artists Collective Youth Workshops, led by Chris Bose (Nlaka’pamux /Secwepemc) and supported by the Kamloops Art Gallery.

450/460 Victoria Street

Patrick Bernatchez’s artistic practice is one of developing groups of works in projects realized over long periods of time, analogous to a work in progress. It draws upon varied traditions and aesthetics including mannerism, baroque, pop culture, horror movies, science fiction, even fantasy and the supernatural. This eclectic approach delves into our notions of collective and individual identity in a world increasingly shaped by capitalist culture, particularly as reflected in social pathologies and types of obsessive-compulsive behaviour such as hyper-consumption. The films in the Chrysalides Trilogy explore and depict themes of vanity, decline and alienation, revealing a disconcerting, timeless portrait.

RIVERSIDE PARK

The Deep Dark is a site-specific light installation intended to illuminate the interspaces between our sacred (and natural) environments and cultural constructs of darkness. Drawing from interviews with participants from various Banff Centre residencies where the work was initially installed, faculty, and staff were asked: why do we fear the dark? Is darkness a presence or an absence? What separates real fear from imaginary fear? Subsequently, each viewer is invited to participate in a solo night walk, alone in communion with the natural surroundings and their own thoughts. Utilizing domestic imagery (doorways) as a literal entry point, the installation imposes artificial light into the wild darkness─light by which the darkness grows darker and disillusions the night.

PADLOCK STUDIOS, 175 2nd Avenue

Kelsey Braun’s work Fragmentation is a multi-channel audio and video installation that references the fluctuating nature of memory, its documentation, projection and reception by way of an investigation into the relationship between identity, memory and environment. It explores how one’s perspective and identity are shaped by the surrounding environment and everyday experiences.  Fragmentation encompasses a combination of sound recordings made by the artist and her late father from the 1980s as well as abstract images that are projected across the gallery space and are refracted by mirrors. The projection and refraction of imagery establishes the possibility for a multitude of narratives.

RIVERSIDE PARK

Tales in the Trees presents a conversation, primarily visual with some auditory components, between a campfire and a gust of wind, that takes place within a tree, in a popular public space. The project is based on theories of how trees communicate, with other trees, and sometimes other species and natural phenomena. Arboreal communication, for the most part has a chemical basis, with information transmitted through root systems,  dependent on soil types, geological formations and moisture content. Trees occasionally will use wind to scatter leaves and seeds to send messages, but these tend to be for long-term communication,  relying  on  the chemistry of decomposition or new growth.  Phenomena such as fire or wind can appear to communicate, to a limited degree, with trees, fire through chemical means, and wind through auditory vibrations (or the arboreal approximation of sound). However, some theories suggest that trees merely use these phenomena as  conduits for their own forms of expression. 

KAMLOOPS ART GALLERY EXTERIOR WINDOWS

Through photography and video installation, Montreal-based artist Pascal Grandmaison explores techniques for capturing the image and scrutinizes the conditions under which it is produced. His practice re-imagines the photographic medium and its historical precedents to produce images anew. Grandmaison states that, for him, “the camera is just a tool through which the light passes.” Light and the process of capturing the image are intrinsically connected to time, a central focus in Grandmaison’s work.

DISSOLUTION I and NOSTALGIE 2 are part of the Kamloops Art Gallery’s onsite exhibition All membranes are porous on view until December 31. Grandmaison’s dual projection DISSOLUTION I suggests a fluid and abstract reference to the body by way of a manufactured means of child’s play (the soap bubble). NOSTALGIE 2 situates the human hand directly into a rich, fertile natural landscape. Both works are contemplative studies that oscillate between abstraction and figuration, referring to the complex relationship between our bodies and the world around us.

118 Victoria Street

PayDirt offers a visual representation that furthers Lindsay’s interest in interacting with light, colour and sound by transforming a space with multiple projected images and audio. By placing the projected images in strategic places Lindsay creates windows or portals into the landscape featured. Manipulating the left and right audio channels, Lindsay creates a conversation between the sounds of nature and the interruptions of heavy machinery. Using subtle animation paired with the audio, PayDirt presents a possible outcome for the site of the proposed Ajax mine after it has been exhausted of its precious metals. Lindsay is a recent graduate of the Thompson Rivers University Fine Arts program.

RIVERSIDE PARK

Taking the form of social science fiction, Pitching Tents in Terra Nullius imagines the fall of civilization and the near extinction of the planet─thirty years or so into a not-too-distant future. Pitching Tents in Terra Nullius looks to raw materials and basic conditions—of stories and of survival—to consider opportunities for meaningful exchange amid territorial disputes.

RIVERSIDE PARK

Plänterwald is filmed on the site of a former German Democratic Republic amusement park built in 1969 and abandoned after unification. Its rollercoaster and ferris-wheel sit motionless at the edge of the city of Berlin. After being closed to the public for almost a decade the rides and fairground structures─once providing a distraction from everyday realities─are left to a gradual process of decay and overgrowth. Paradoxically this derelict site is patrolled and protected by security guards who on the one hand attempt to maintain its separation from the public sphere and contemporary life yet on the other hand position it in the present social and economic conditions.

207 Seymour Street
TNRD BUILDING NORTHEAST CORNER WINDOW

Drive Thru uses kitsch and nostalgia to explore the role of convenience within our local food systems. Advertisements, news segments, and promotional videos from local and online media archives juxtapose themes of transportation, suburban sprawl, industrial food production, and media consumption. Drive Thru asks us to consider our own history and relationship with an undeniable necessity: food.

Interpretive Dance for Ordinary Tasks provides alternative solutions to face the challenges of our everyday lives.

OFFICE OF SURREALIST INVESTIGATIONS, 135 Victoria Street

Collaborative Corpse is a series of projected exquisite corpse drawings on the windows of the Office of Surrealist Investigations. Office of Surrealist Investigations is a collaborative art studio taking the form of a film noir private investigator’s office within which participants are invited to collaborate in Surrealist activities.

RIVERSIDE PARK

Set 500 years in the future, Quickeners tells the story of Human Atavism Syndrome (H.A.S.), an obscure disorder afflicting a tiny portion of the Quantum Human population, making them desire and feel as their Human Being predecessors once did. A species wirelessly interconnected to The Hive, Quantum Humans have evolved to operate solely on pure rational thought and they have achieved immortality. Quickeners is set against a cinéma vérité aesthetic, reworking archival documentary footage from a gathering of Pentecostal Christian snake handlers to illustrate the story. As the film unfolds, an authoritative Quantum Human narrator comments on what we witness: indecipherable testimonials, sermons, songs, prayers, convulsive dancing, speaking-in-tongues, serpent handling and ecstatic states that Quantum Humans define as “Quickening.”

VACANT LOT, 131 Victoria Street

Dancers In The Dark is a simple, participatory project. The public is invited to contribute dance moves and poses in form of short video clips. These clips are then assembled into a sequential collage, then played back the same evening as a laser-projection.

RIVERSIDE PARK

Reflecting Mark Twain’s famed quote, “The past does not repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes,” Several Circles is a project that investigates the many “revolutions” that link the 19th century riverboat steam-engine with the 20th century automobile combustion engine: two forms of rotary-driven mechanical power that bookend a hundred year arc of American industry.

The work is set to a thundering soundtrack of Detroit techno, a uniquely American form of folk music. Invented in the ’80s in Motor City with the advent of imported drum machines, the music’s foundation on electronic rhythm eerily parallels the replacement of labor itself by machines in the factories and assembly lines that surrounded the makeshift clubs of early techno.

RIVERSIDE PARK

The second episode of 2084 is the latest in a three-part science fiction show, directed by Pelin Tan and Anton Vidokle. Filmed on location in Tripoli, Lebanon, this video is set in a future where the Artists’ Republic, an artist-run city-state, has collapsed and art has become a thing of the past. Despite the demise of art, artists inexplicably continue to exist, albeit as animals. These new animal-humans are trapped in a cement dome where they ponder questions of labor, economy, religion, art and literature, while trying to come to terms with their new condition.

290 3rd Avenue 

Lure is a light installation utilizing screen-printed wallpaper and black lights. The display is meant to generate thoughtfulness towards the shortening of days and the symptoms of SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder) or “winter blues.” This includes depression, irregular sleeping patterns and overeating; symptoms that many people struggle with in varying degrees. In many cases, sufferers of SAD are prescribed light therapy. The window display at Barnacle Records is aglow with graphics of fictional microorganisms generating luminescence for pedestrians at night. These creatures are heavily influenced by the biological research and drawings of Ernst Haeckel, a German biologist, philosopher and artist.

TNRD LIBRARY WINDOWS

This collection of images and written contributions is a Kamloops Art Gallery initiative to capture a visual representation of the cultural diversity that exists in BC and in the Thompson Nicola Regional District. The KAG asked people in the region to submit photos and text to represent a diverse perspective on who we are. The project is a means to break down barriers, change preconceptions and share a commonality that we are all residents of this region.

VACANT LOT, 131 VICTORIA STREET

Tania Willard’s work is presented in conjunction with #callresponse, a Canada Council {Re}Conciliation initiative. #callresponse supports the work of Indigenous North American women and artists through five site-specific art commissions that incite dialogue and catalyze action between individuals, communities, territories and institutions. The project poses possibilities that ground art in responsible action, value-lived experience and demonstrates ongoing commitment to community building, responding to re/conciliation as a present day negotiation and ongoing consequence of colonial trauma. Running at the same time as Luminocity, Willard’s Only Available Light will be a part of an exhibition at grunt gallery in Vancouver, opening October 28 alongside selections from each commissioned project.