TEN at Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP

Artists: Kim Kennedy Austin, Charles Campbell, Steven Cottingham, Vanessa Dion-Fletcher, Chantal Gibson, Maegan Hill-Carroll, Lyse Lemieux, Glenn Lewis, Shoora Majedian, Ryan Quast, Marina Roy, Nicolas Sassoon, Evann Siebens, Nico Williams

Exhibition title: TEN 10th Anniversary Exhibition

Venue: Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP, Vancouver, Canada

Date: January 14 – February, 2023

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP, Vancouver

As the gallery celebrates its 10th year anniversary, it has spent the past few months inspecting its history, re-evaluating its intentions and assessing the output of the artists with whom we have worked with most closely and the artistic propositions they have brought forward in response to the contemporary moment. It has been a dynamic, complex and exhausting decade, in general, all around the world (how to fix all these problems? also: the more things change, the more they stay the same!), and the art WAAP has shown has reflected that in kind.

An overarching idea has run through the program through its years, as artists have tried to interpret into art ideas and objects what is going on in the world at large. For instance, what kind of aesthetics can be posited to reflect our world in a shifting climate scenario, particularly given Canadian art history’s heavy lean on landscape art tradition and Vancouver’s mythos as a place existing in a kind of wild rainforest? Or, how can art made in diverse multicultural Canadian society reflect humanity’s beliefs, resilience and desires in the face of uncertain conflict at large?

These ideas are perhaps best exemplified by this text by Dr. Michael J. Prokopow, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Graduate Studies, at OCADU, which was first commissioned in 2015 for a group presentation curated
at AHVA Gallery at the University of British Columbia, and revisited in 2017 in a group exhibition at Vacation in the Lower East Side in New York City. Once more, we are traversing it again now for our 10th anniversary exhibition. It may not cover all the ideas and contexts established by our decade of exhibitions, but it skirts much of the ground that has been covered:

“While aggressively claiming and shaping nature in their own image, humans have likewise cultivated ideas about its difference, separateness and meanings. That a poetics of nature exists makes sense (and perhaps increasingly urgently so). As an expansive subject matter, the depictions of, engagements with and actions upon the land by artists represents the ongoing efforts to record, critique and communicate the character of a northern and continental environment that is wildly varied, romanticized and changeable. To be sure, one of the more revealing themes in the Canadian landscape tradition is the determination to show the human presence on the land and its modifications, vulnerabilities and injuries.”

Please join us as we celebrate a decade of exhibition making.

TEN, 2023, exhibition view, Wil Aballe Art Projects | WAAP, Vancouver

Evann Siebens, Orange Magpies, 2017, 4K video in custom-made monitor, 6:50

Kim Kennedy Austin, NO DOUBT (Salt of the Earth #2), 2022, Drawing, gel pen on deaccessioned map (white ink) 29 x 22.5 in (73.7 x 57.2 cm)

Charles Campbell, Breath Cycle 1 Sketch, 2022, Museum board, wire, aluminum composite panel 36 x 36 x 6 in (91.4 x 91.4 x 15.2 cm)

Charles Campbell, Tree Model v 8.3 (Finding Accompong), 2021, Plywood and velcro, 11.25 x 11 x 4.25 in (28.6 x 27.9 x 10.8 cm)

Steven Cottingham, Beasts without number, 2022, Digital video, 1:09

Vanessa Dion Fletcher, Five Hoops, 2022, Quillwork on paper, 15 x 22 in (38.1 x 55.9 cm), Framed

Chantal Gibson, Queer Theory, 2022, Souvenir spoons, acrylic rack, acrylic paint, shadow box 8.5 x 36.5 in (21.6 x 92.7 cm)

Maegan Hill-Carroll, Ground twig snakes with gray, 2022, Archival inkjet print on bamboo paper in frame 16 x 11 x 1.5 in (40.6 x 27.9 x 3.8 cm)

Maegan Hill-Carroll, Hole tangle with violet and orange, 2022, archival inkjet print on bamboo paper in frame 16 x 11 x 1.5 in (40.6 x 27.9 x 3.8 cm)

Maegan Hill-Carroll, Heap hill haze, 2015, Framed archival inkjet print on bamboo paper 80 x 20 in (203.2 x 50.8 cm)

Lyse Lemieux, Six Days in an Hour, 2022, (6 panels), Flashe, black gesso on canvas 108 x 48 in (274.3 x 121.9 cm)

Glenn Lewis, The Beauty of Indifference, or Progressivelessness, 2022, High-fired stoneware clay, and underglaze colours, 14.5 x 9 x 9 in (36.8 x 22.9 x 22.9 cm)

Glenn Lewis, Multiple Articulated Fruit with Improbable Description, 2022, High-fired stoneware clay, and underglaze colours, 15 x 5.7 x 5.7 in (38.1 x 14.5 x 14.5 cm)

Shoora Majedian, Fly on the ground, 2023 Oil on canvas, 12 x 16 in (30.5 x 40.6 cm)

Ryan Quast, Battery Bomb, 2022, Gesso, interior latex, oil, enamel 0.75 x 6 x 6 in (1.9 x 15.2 x 15.2 cm)

Nicolas Sassoon, POSTER, 2018, Laser print mounted on high density foam, unique 24 x 20 in (61 x 50.8 cm)

Evann Siebens, Gesture, Arrested: Platforms, Greece, 2020, Handcut Photographic Collage on Arches Paper in five parts, edition of 1 + 1 AP, 74 x 56.5 in (188 x 143.5 cm)

Evann Siebens, Orange Magpies, 2017, 4K video in custom-made monitor, 6:50

Nico Williams, NDN Status Card ‘Peace Out’, 2020, 11/0 Delica beads, 2 x 3.5 in (5.1 x 8.9 cm)