RESPONSE PROGRAM
Lunchtime Talks
Tarah Hogue and Reg Johanson
Join us for this talk and writing workshop in a convivial environment. Food and drink served! All welcome!
Friday 27 February, 12:15PM
Kéxwusm-áyakn Student Centre (LB 196), Capilano University
In 2012-13, Tarah Hogue co-curated two exhibitions about the history and legacy of Indian Residential Schools that coincided with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s National Event in Vancouver from September 18 to 21, 2013. Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery was curated by a team of seven people – including Belkin Art Gallery staff, UBC professors and recent graduates. As the youngest member of the team, Hogue was in a position of being mentored by a number of individuals, including the curatorial team as well as other organizations that were consulted such as the Indian Residential School Survivor Society, Reconciliation Canada and the First Nations House of Learning at UBC. The exhibition featured indigenous and non-indigenous artists from British Columbia and across Canada, and was cross-generational to include those who directly experienced Indian Residential Schools as well as those who are witnesses to its ongoing impact. The second exhibition, NET-ETH: Going Out of the Darkness was organized by Malaspina Printmakers and held at three locations, including Malaspina, Emily Carr University and the Urban Aboriginal Fair Trade Gallery in the Skwachàys Healing Lodge in the Downtown Eastside. NET-ETH was co-curated by Hogue and Rose Spahan, and included works made by students at ECUAD, indigenous artists living and working in the DTES as well as other professional artists. In her presentation, Hogue will discuss and compare the different experiences and curatorial directions of the two exhibitions and the varied and distinctive ways that artists respond to the residential school experience.
Tarah Hogue is a writer and curator of Dutch and Métis ancestry. She holds a BA(H) in Art History from Queen’s University and an MA in Critical and Curatorial Studies from the University of British Columbia. She has curated exhibitions at the Satellite Gallery (2011), Or Gallery (2012), and co-curated two exhibitions about the history and legacy of Indian Residential Schools in Canada, Witnesses: Art and Canada's Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and NET-ETH: Going Out of the Darkness at Malaspina Printmakers, Emily Carr University of Art and Design and the Urban Aboriginal Fair Trade Gallery (2013). In 2009, she co-founded the Gam Gallery, an exhibition space and artist studio located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Hogue is the current Curatorial Resident at grunt gallery, where she is working on exhibitions, programming and researching the topic of Indigenous feminisms. Her writing has recently appeared in Decoy Magazine and she has forthcoming texts for Artspeak, the 2015 MFA Graduate Exhibition at UBC and ArcPost, the Pacific Association of Artist-Run Centre’s online publication database.
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Journal writing can be a way in or an end in itself. The ground zero of creativity. This workshop will introduce the practice of “ekphrasis”—writing about visual art—as a prompt or beginning for journaling. What do we see?
Reg Johanson is a writer and teacher on unceded Coast Salish territory in Vancouver BC. He is the author of two books of poetry and is the editor of CUE Books. He edited a collection of Aniishinabekwe poet Annharte’s critical prose and journals, AKA Inendagosekwe, published in 2013. He teaches at Capilano University, where he is a member of the Indigenizing the Academy Committee.
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Lunchtime Talks is a series featuring guest artists and writers from the Lower Mainland focussing on art and the representation of indigenous cultures, specifically through issues raised by the Witness Blanket, a commemorative artwork displayed at Capilano University in 2014 that addresses the legacy of the Indian Residential School System. This series is part of Response, an educational program created by the Presentation House Gallery in partnership with First Nations Student Services at Capilano University. For more info contact Sydney Hart at s.hart@presentationhousegallery.org