SWARMing on the Rise

"SWARM is Vancouver's annual gallery-hop, meet-and-greet, and art party extravaganza. Over two nights, almost 20 artist run centres, collectives and galleries will all open their doors to celebrate the vibrant, diverse practices and practitioners showing in Vancouver. Over the past five years, SWARM has evolved into the premier showcase for local galleries and the artists they show, as well as the must-see event for Vancouver art lovers. This year SWARM6 promises an exciting program of exhibitions, events, screenings and performances- a multifaceted glimpse into contemporary art in the city".

This year, SWARM will happen on two nights:
Thursday, September 8 for the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, and
Friday, September 9 for the Downtown venues.

Thursday's highlights are sure to include Flip the Page; Paintings by Fiona Ackerman, and mixed media by Nadia Moss. Nadia has done artwork for some of my favourite bands of all time including God Speed You! Black Emperor and A Silver Mount Zion Memorial Orchestra and Tra-La-La Band. Part of what is great about these two bands is that they convey a unified aesthetic of haunting, dystopic, post-industrialist visions of hope and despair, owed in part to the hand cut cardboard silk-screened packaging. Fiona Ackerman is Vancouver based painter who produced last year's succesful Collision.

At the newly minted Jem Gallery, Maryam Erfani Presents The Polaroid Project, a series of Polaroids by the artist as she wakes up in the morning (and thus before she comes into Cuppa Joe for her coffee!). "The crude aesthetic result of the series, captured through both the Polaroid medium and the time that the images are recorded, produces work that is both intriguing and repellent."

The Video In has a couple of things going on: editSix: a video project by the CueUp Collective
The RGB Lab: an installation by Jacky Sawatzky
G.A.B: a performance installation by Emma Hendrix and Malcolm Daniel

editSix is a mash-up of digital images; a sort of parlour game where each artist contributes threads of video to create a single tapestry of "organically integrated expression".

The RGB Lab is an experiment where participants will go forth and film their perceptions of blue, green or red and then add them to a computer program which then highlights what it perceives as blue, green, and red.

On Friday, Swarm covers the downtown area. I am looking forward to MERCURY THEATRE III: THE SUB-STATION by Intermission Artists Society wherein the artists will examine the 27 floor substation at Cathedral Park (corner of Dunsmuir & Richards) via live-mixed film, performance, and improvised original sound score.

The Lobby Gallery at the Dominion Hotel is featuring a selection of colour prints from Martin Thacker's photographic series of Yacht Studies. Cool and sterile surfaces of ocean going pleasure craft evoke "the prairie winter landscapes of the artist's childhood" and "tend towards the inert uniformity of the mathematical entropic sublime", whatever that means.

And at Helen Pitt: (I'll just let them tell you.) "The Great Scattered Remnants is a collaborative, growing environment, constructed by Scott Evans, Emi Honda and Jordan McKenzie, long-term collaborators from Victoria. Using a wide variety of specifically chosen found objects and post-consumer detritus, as well as lo-tech electronics and sound, the artists create a fictive site that splices traditional notions of nature with the surrealist synthetics of our popular, often apocalyptic, imagination. Referencing science fiction, psychedelia and the pictorial tradition of landscape art and Natura Morta, The Great Scattered Remnants is a place where plastics repair themselves, the artificial acts naturally and where we sweat glycolic acid and grow our own acrylic nails. Half dream world, half sociological critique, this exhibition transplants the artists' subconscious into the physical space of the gallery through a complex network of stream-of-conscious installations."

Rad.

Also, there is a SWARM after party on Saturday with Duchess says from Montreal, Channels 2&3, AndrewAndrewAndrew, Paul Devro, and My!Gay!Husband! From what I understand it will be a cabaret style event, with each act playing a short set and switching off with each other. Visual greatness by Dan Siney. 1320 E Hastings at Clark.

Stoked.