Jolie Bird: 1597; Harmonious Frequencies
May 7 - July 29, 2018
Project Space
‘1597; Harmonious Frequencies’ is a performance-based installation to be implemented in the Project Space over the course of twelve weeks. Working within a clean and minimal space, the artist will create an 8-foot diameter representation of the Fibonacci Sequence, which references the golden ratio found throughout nature. The pattern is made up of 1,597 dots configured in two sets of spirals that radiate in opposite directions. Each dot is created by wrapping a golden thread around itself and adhering it to the wall. The performance of labour and the arrangement of the artist’s tools are precise and considered; the monotonous nature of the action is physically challenging and requires self-discipline to achieve a consistent and high level of craftsmanship throughout the project.
Kapwani Kiwanga: A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)
February 3 - May 6, 2018
In this new body of work, Kapwani Kiwanga delves into disciplinary architecture and deconstructs the physical and psychological qualities of different built environments including schools, prisons, hospitals and mental health facilities.
The exhibition Kapwani Kiwanga, ‘A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)’ is organized and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. The exhibition is curated by Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator, The Power Plant. It was sponsored by TD Bank Group.
Support for the development and production of new works for the exhibition provided by Esker Foundation.
DaveandJenn: Paradise for an in-between time
January 29 - April 29, 2018
Project Space
DaveandJenn, also sometimes, known as David John Foy and Jennifer Saleik, have been working together since 2004. Their varied practice weaves a long view of both human and natural histories together with the more closed off realms of private spectacles and inner landscapes. For Esker’s Project Space, DaveandJenn will install a multi-layered, saturated, and shimmering oasis in the middle of Calgary’s winter, where predators stalk and prey glow in the hot sun.
Veronica Verkley: Second Nature: FERAL
October 30, 2017 - January 21, 2018
Project Space
This work by Veronica Verkley, reads as a time-lapse shot over several years, but in reality, it is a stop motion animation shot over many months, with the ruin and decay painstakingly animated by hand. From destruction, there emerges a transformative beauty: the house becomes uninhabitable to some, but in its decay, it becomes refuge for others.
Postcommodity: A Very Long Line
September 16 - December 22, 2017
‘A Very Long Line’ is a four-channel video installation that employs the image and idea of the fence demarcating the U.S.-Mexico border between Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. Camera pans of the Sonoran Desert shot through the border fence blur past viewers on all sides, at varying speeds, amid a jarring, dissonant soundtrack composed by the artists.
Mary Anne Barkhouse: Le rêve aux loups
September 16 - December 22, 2017
Guest curated by Jennifer Rudder
The artistic practice of Mary Anne Barkhouse is deeply engaged with environmental and indigenous issues and incorporates in a central role a visual iconography of animals. Barkhouse situates her work between the two worlds of the human and the natural and employs the beaver, raven, wolf, and coyote as symbols of the ability to adapt, persist, regenerate, and repair throughout endless environmental incursions. Her skilled handling of traditional sculptural materials such as wood, bronze, porcelain, metal, and glass bring both a refined sensibility and serious tone to her often-playful installations. The works reflect on our skewed experience of nature as a resource for human needs rather than as an ecosystem with its own intrinsic value.
Making Treaty 7: Finding Common Ground
July 31 - October 22, 2017
Project Space
July 31 – September 10, 2017
Jill Allan, Chris Cran, Amanda Fox, Micheline Maylor, and Keegan Starlight
September 11 – October 22, 2017
Derek Beaulieu, Tamara Lee-Anne Cardinal, Micheline Maylor, Andrew Tarrant, and George Webber
This Project Space exhibition is a rotating presentation of works produced in response to the Making Treaty 7 Cultural Society’s Common Ground Dinner Series. Based on the Making Treaty 7 methodology, this dinner series explored the theme of The Land through eight sub-themes: Energy, Agriculture, Education, Law, Culture, Borders, Safety and Security, and Medicine.
Jason de Haan: Oh for eyes! At night we dream of eyes!
May 28 - August 27, 2017
Calgary-based artist Jason de Haan has developed an interest in proposing and undertaking projects in which particular environments, natural conditions, and massive time scales complete, animate, and determine his multidisciplinary practice. The work most clearly deals with fleetingness, vulnerability, and the fragility of the natural world in a way that considers the limits of human perception and influence. The tangible traces of the monumental passage of time, like the interval it takes light from the most distant stars in our galaxy to reach earth – a staggering 3.8 billion years – or the polishing of a stone from thousands of years of touch, are evidence that we are merely a twinkle in a larger and longer conversation.
Anton Vidokle: The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun
May 28 - August 27, 2017
The second film of Anton Vidokle’s trilogy on Russian cosmism looks at the poetic dimension of solar cosmology of Soviet biophysicist, Alexander Chizhevsky. Shot in Kazakhstan, where Chizhevsky was imprisoned and later exiled, the film introduces Сhizhevsky’s research into the impact of solar emissions on human sociology, psychology, politics and economics in the form of wars, revolutions, epidemics and other upheavals. The Communist Revolution Was Caused By The Sun aligns the life of post-soviet rural residents and the futurological projects of Russian cosmism to emphasize that the goal of the early Soviet breakthroughs aimed at the conquest of outer space was not so much technical acceleration, but the common cause of humankind in their struggle against limitations of earthly life.
Laura Dutton: Night Comes On
May 1 - July 23, 2017
Project Space
‘Night Comes On’ is a video installation comprised of sixty 8” LED screens housed in and among ninety-nine black wooden boxes. Each screen contains a looping video depicting human activity within a domestic window frame, as seen from the exterior of a building. The source footage used for this work came from wide shots of glassy apartment buildings in downtown Vancouver, shot at night during a firework festival, which prompted many residents to peer out of their windows. Arranged in the exhibition space, the stacks of screens and boxes reference an active urbanscape environment – a city in motion.