Author: tempadmin

SUM AiR—ilvs strauss

Jul 24 – Aug 9, 2024

We’re pleased to welcome our SUM gallery artist-in-residence (SUM-AiR), ilvs strauss, to SUM gallery, July 26 – Aug 9, 2024. Over the coming weeks, ilvs (pronounced “elvis”, pronouns she/her) will be developing her project, “everything i heard over the course of the day all at once”: a multimedia performance project that is part informative lecture, part love letter, and part immersive concert. In addition to her SUM-AiR residency, ilvs will be leading a free Open House event on August 9 and a QLab workshop on August 10 — read on for more info.

ABOUT ilvs strauss

ilvs strauss (pronounced “elvis”, pronouns she/her) is an analytical chemist turned multi-disciplinary performance artist and theatre technician living and making work in the unceded and ancestral lands of the Coast Salish People. Born in California, raised in Portland, and working in Seattle before relocating to Vancouver, ilvs has worked extensively in the fields of dance, sound art, poetry, multimedia and visual art, and has also worked as a technical director, lighting designer, and strategic facilitator.

Open House: ilvs strauss
Friday August 9, 5 – 7pm

Join us at SUM gallery on Friday, August 9, from 5pm – 7pm, as we celebrate ilvs strauss’s residency with an Artist-in-Residence Open House. This will be a unique opportunity to meet ilvs and experience her most recent work-in-progress, an integrated media performance piece focused on Sound.

Bring your ears for a guided journey through a labyrinth of intentional sound, audible and otherwise. Along the way, we’ll flip through the catalog of basic human needs, delve into an inquiry re: the advent of language, and watch a video of the letter ’n’ being typed repeatedly in a word document, amongst other things. A discerning, bilingual listening party that raises the questions: What is it we hear? What is it we want to hear?

(Oye, mi español no es 100%, so I used Google Translate. Espero que makes sense. -ilvs)
Únase a nosotros en la galería SUM el viernes, 9 de agosto, de 5 p. m. a 7 p. m., mientras celebramos la residencia de ilvs strauss con una jornada de puertas abiertas para artistas en residencia. Esta será una oportunidad única para conocer a ilvs y experimentar su trabajo en progreso más reciente, pieza de performance de medios integrados centrada en el sonido.

Traiga sus oídos para un viaje guiado a través de un laberinto de sonido intencional, audible o no. En el camino, hojearemos el catálogo de necesidades humanas básicas, profundizaremos en una investigación sobre: la llegada del lenguaje, y veremos un video de la letra ‘n’ escrita repetidamente en un documento de word, entre otras cosas. Un grupo de escucha bilingüe y perspicaz que plantea las preguntas: ¿Qué es lo que escuchamos? ¿Qué es lo que queremos escuchar?

This Open House is free to attend but registration is recommended. Register HERE. 

Workshop: QLab Basics for Creators
Saturday August 10, 2 – 4pm

Come learn the basics of QLab with our SUM gallery artist-in-residence, ilvs strauss! QLab is a multimedia playback software package used in theatre and live entertainment around the world. In other words, it’s the program you use to play sound in your show. It is an essential tool for theatre makers, dancers, live performers and creators of any kind. 
In this workshop, you will learn how to import music tracks, how to program a QLab file to play your audio track replete with layers and fades, how to export a show-ready QLab bundle, and other tricks too numerous to list!

You should bring these things:
– your Mac laptop (note: QLab is not compatible with PCs)
– at least one music file (any format, ideally on your laptop)

If you have QLab already, great! If not, we’ll go over how to download it – there’s a free version available that is quite robust. No previous experience required. Come if you already know a few things and want to sharpen your skills! Register for the workshop HERE.

Go Home Yuppie Scum—Preston Buffalo

Apr 11 – Jun 6, 2024

Taking its title from graffiti that appeared on empty/sold Vancouver houses and lots in the 1980s as part of the local anti-gentrification movement, Go Home Yuppie Scum is an irreverent take on the “Welcome to Vancouver” View-Master reels popular in the 1960s to 1980s, which featured 3D images of Vancouver landmarks as a means of enticing tourists to visit. 

By making use of vintage View-Masters and modern stereoscopic viewers stationed around the interior of SUM gallery, Buffalo creates a series of stereoscopic reels that showcase the city from a very different perspective: crumbling, graffiti-adorned structures in the Downtown Eastside, disused rail lines, and thickets of overgrown flora, all eerily devoid of inhabitants. Buffalo applies infrared filters to much of his photographic work, transforming familiar Vancouver scenes into vibrant alien landscapes. The result is a series of urban snapshots that subvert the stereotypical “Beautiful British Columbia” postcard tropes by presenting quasi-dystopian scenes that are unsettling, otherworldly, and beautiful.

This exhibition is part of the 2024 Capture Photography Festival Selected Exhibition Program.

REGister for Opening REception

Preston Buffalo, a Two-Spirited Cree artist originally from Treaty 6 Territory, currently resides in the unceded Coast Salish Territories of British Columbia. His interdisciplinary practice involves the exploration of personal Indigenous iconography and symbolism, utilizing photography, alternative photo processes, and digital illustration. Motivated by the challenges faced by Indigenous communities, Preston’s work touches upon themes such as mental health, cultural and linguistic loss due to displacement, the impact of the residential school system, and the process of assimilation. His overall objective is to create visual expressions that encourage new perspectives on Indigenous art, emphasizing its significance in contemporary society and its contribution to an ongoing dialogue.

DRAG BINGO @ Carnegie Centre

Mar 4, 2024 | 5:30 – 8pm

Hosted by Continental Breakfast & Jas Minh

This Monday, March 4, we team up once again with the Carnegie Community Centre to present a very special Drag Bingo, hosted by Continental Breakfast and Jas Minh! Monday night bingo is a much-loved highlight of the Carnegie Centre’s many activities and we’re thrilled to bring the Queer Joy for this event.

Presented in partnership with Queer Arts Festival + SUM gallery

A Generosity of Abundance—Valérie d. Walker and Jack Page

Feb 22 – Apr 5, 2024
OPENING RECEPTION: FEB 22, 6 to 8 pm
PERFORMANCE by JACK PAGE & THEO BLUE: MAR 16, 2 pm

As our community navigates a world of unprecedented environmental and political upheaval – all transpiring against the backdrop of a lingering pandemic –Transmedia Fibres-rooted artist and Indigo Griot Valérie d. Walker has responded by transforming SUM gallery into a sanctuary of Queer Joy: a place where “Queer reality is infused with self love and the power of environmental transformation.” Walker, whose work is shaped and informed by her African Diasporic, Scottish, Japanese, and Indigenous Hawaiian heritage, has envisioned A Generosity of Abundance as an immersive exploration of the restorative power of Water. Finding inspiration in the metaphysical transformations caused by traversing a Labyrinth, Walker’s large-scale indigo-dyed fibre pieces invite the viewer to explore and flow along an uninterrupted sensorial path towards meditative and therapeutic relief, much like water’s uncanny ability to seek out a path of least resistance; while fibre-art sculpture/installations create interior “indigo refuges”. 

In keeping with the spirit of Queer, joyous transformation, on March 16 the exhibition expands to include the work of Vancouver artist Jack Page, whose practice encompasses illustration, altered book art, papermaking, printmaking, photography, musical performance art, and Dis/Ability, Mad/Neurodiverse and 2SLGBTQIA+ community-based projects. His multimedia triptych, Flowers for MeToo, speaks to how all genders experience gender violence, especially trans and nonbinary people, using gold leaf to mark the healing body as divine and flowers as a form of healing and transforming trauma. Like Walker, who is well known for her enviro-conscious dye work, Page’s material art practice focuses on minimizing waste by incorporating used, natural, and foraged materials, and upcycling waste products, such as paper and medical waste.

Register for the opening

Running from February 22 to April 5, A Generosity of Abundance spans two key events in the QTBIPOC calendar: Black History Month (February) and International Transgender Day of Visibility (March 31). To this end, the exhibition is punctuated by an opening reception on Thursday, February 22, from 6 – 8pm and a musical performance piece by Jack Page and guitarist Theo Blue on Saturday, March 16 at 2pm.

Join artist Valérie d. Walker for a discussion with April Sumter-Freitag and Addena Sumter-Freitag on Queer Black history in Vancouver.

Join us at SUM gallery on Saturday, March 9 at 2pm for Black Every Day of the Year: a special discussion panel featuring A Generosity of Abundance artists Valérie d. Walker, Addena Sumter-Freitag, and April Sumter-Freitag. As seventh- and eighth-generation Black Canadians, Addena and April Sumter-Freitag hold a special place in Canadian Queer Black art and history; with Walker, they will imagine, joyously laugh, celebrate Historical Black Strathcona, and create Afro-Futuristic visions that extend well beyond Black History Month. The afternoon includes a special screening of April Sumter-Freitag’s short film, Out, Black + Proud in BC, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year.

Register for the Panel

A musical performance piece by Jack Page and guitarist Theo Blue, Flowers for MeToo speaks to how all genders experience gender violence.

Join us at SUM gallery on March 16 for a special musical performance by Jack Page and Theo Blue, marking the expansion of our exhibition, A Generosity of Abundance.

As we transition from Black History Month to International Transgender Day of Visibility, our duo exhibition featuring the work of Valérie d. Walker and Jack Page expands to include Page’s beautiful triptych, Flowers for MeToo. We celebrate the arrival of Jack’s work with an in-gallery performance of the song Flowers for MeToo, composed and performed by Jack, with his musical collaborator Theo Blue.

Be among the first to experience the final manifestation of our exhibition and hear this intensely personal performance by Page and Blue.

Register for the Performance