Kathy Slade
Slade is an artist based in Vancouver, Canada, who works across disciplines in a variety of media including textiles, sculpture, sound, performance, film, video, print, and publication. Through her practice, Slade points to moments and events in literature, art history, and popular culture from which to reimagine particular temporalities and existing texts, to create looping structures, and to produce remakes that play on repetition and the doublet of original and copy.
Slade was recently commissioned by the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia to create a textile multiple to address depictions of the woman reader as an artistic genre. This resulted in a series of jacquard woven blankets that will be presented in the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT on view at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery in 2018. A large painted version of her poster work I WANT IT ALL I WANT IT NOW was exhibited at the Walter C. Koerner Library at UBC alongside GLUT. In July of 2018 her film Tugboat (2007) was included in the exhibition It’s Never Too Late to Speculate as part of the series Kunst im Fluc at the Fluc in Vienna.
Other recent projects include: a solo presentation titled Blue Monday at Cullinan Richards project space 4COSE in London, UK (2017); It was a strange apartment; full of books…, a collaborative print installation with poet Lisa Robertson, which was shown at Galerie Au 8 rue saint bon in Paris (2013), at Malaspina Printmakers (2012), and the Audain Gallery (2015) in Vancouver. As guest curator of Mashup: The Birth of Modern Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016) Slade curated a selection of artists’ publications and wrote a short essay on Lawrence Sterne and John Baldessari.
Slade is Co-director, with Brady Cranfield, of The Music Appreciation Society, a fictitious society that brings visual art and popular music together through panel discussions and listening events, performances, artworks, and publications. Also with Brady Cranfield, she is part of the art band Cranfield and Slade. They have released two LPs on coloured vinyl. These artist record editions are concept albums intended to be considered as both objects and sound carriers. 12 Sun Songs (2009) is a collection of pop song covers about the sun and 10 Riot Songs (2011) is made up of covers of punk songs about rioting.
Aside from her own artists’ publications such as the records and her artists’ books 52 Transactions and Love Poem, Slade publishes the work of other artists and writers. She is the Founding Editor of Emily Carr University Press where she’s published artists’ books, monographs, music projects, and selected writing by UJ3RK5, Rodney Graham, Elspeth Pratt, Dan Graham, Jeff Derksen, and Rita McBride. She is also Associate Editor for JRP|Ringier in Zürich. With her partner Kay Higgins, Slade is Editor and Publisher of Publication Studio Vancouver where she has published books with artists such as Dan Graham, Myfanwy MacLeod, James Hoff, Mina Totino, and poet/EGS student Allison Grimaldi Donahue.
Slade is the founder of READ Books at Libby Leshgold Gallery where she holds the position of Head of Publication and Communication. She teaches studio courses and seminars on topics such as art and text, artists’ books and art writing. She is an Adjunct Professor at both.
Slade was recently commissioned by the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery at the University of British Columbia to create a textile multiple to address depictions of the woman reader as an artistic genre. This resulted in a series of jacquard woven blankets that will be presented in the exhibition Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT on view at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery in 2018. A large painted version of her poster work I WANT IT ALL I WANT IT NOW was exhibited at the Walter C. Koerner Library at UBC alongside GLUT. In July of 2018 her film Tugboat (2007) was included in the exhibition It’s Never Too Late to Speculate as part of the series Kunst im Fluc at the Fluc in Vienna.
Other recent projects include: a solo presentation titled Blue Monday at Cullinan Richards project space 4COSE in London, UK (2017); It was a strange apartment; full of books…, a collaborative print installation with poet Lisa Robertson, which was shown at Galerie Au 8 rue saint bon in Paris (2013), at Malaspina Printmakers (2012), and the Audain Gallery (2015) in Vancouver. As guest curator of Mashup: The Birth of Modern Culture at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2016) Slade curated a selection of artists’ publications and wrote a short essay on Lawrence Sterne and John Baldessari.
Slade is Co-director, with Brady Cranfield, of The Music Appreciation Society, a fictitious society that brings visual art and popular music together through panel discussions and listening events, performances, artworks, and publications. Also with Brady Cranfield, she is part of the art band Cranfield and Slade. They have released two LPs on coloured vinyl. These artist record editions are concept albums intended to be considered as both objects and sound carriers. 12 Sun Songs (2009) is a collection of pop song covers about the sun and 10 Riot Songs (2011) is made up of covers of punk songs about rioting.
Aside from her own artists’ publications such as the records and her artists’ books 52 Transactions and Love Poem, Slade publishes the work of other artists and writers. She is the Founding Editor of Emily Carr University Press where she’s published artists’ books, monographs, music projects, and selected writing by UJ3RK5, Rodney Graham, Elspeth Pratt, Dan Graham, Jeff Derksen, and Rita McBride. She is also Associate Editor for JRP|Ringier in Zürich. With her partner Kay Higgins, Slade is Editor and Publisher of Publication Studio Vancouver where she has published books with artists such as Dan Graham, Myfanwy MacLeod, James Hoff, Mina Totino, and poet/EGS student Allison Grimaldi Donahue.
Slade is the founder of READ Books at Libby Leshgold Gallery where she holds the position of Head of Publication and Communication. She teaches studio courses and seminars on topics such as art and text, artists’ books and art writing. She is an Adjunct Professor at both.
Wherever you go, you will be a city | Billboard Project | Kathy Slade
June 27 - July 31, 2020
Billboard at Princess and East Hastings Streets, Vancouver, BC.
Mónica Reyes Gallery is pleased to present Wherever you go, you will be a city., a billboard project by Kathy Slade. The billboard depicts a bright blue sky with fluffy clouds that are partially framed by various shades from the green foliage of treetops. While Slade’s billboard is site-specific, the image it depicts could be from anywhere in the city, a suburb, or the countryside. It is a cinematic-like scene that suggests daydreaming, of looking up at the sky on a summer’s day.
The sentence “Wherever you go, you will be a city” is presented like a subtitle for an English translation of a foreign film. While not from a film, the text here is a translation that stems from Hannah Arendt’s reading of Thucydides and the Classical Greek idea of πόλις, the polis. In The Human Condition (1958) Arendt writes, “The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people acting and living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.” Arendt’s hope is to return to this older notion of the polis not as a traditionalist but to critically re-present this idea from the past for the sake of a better future.
Kathy Slade works across mediums and has produced textile works, prints, sculpture, film, video, performance, music projects, and publications. Slade has upcoming solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany (2020), The Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2022), and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge (2022). Her recent solo exhibitions include: A Dream and a Drive (with Amber Frid-Jimenez), Monica Reyes Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2019); This is a Chord. This is Another., Surrey Art Gallery (2018); I WANT IT ALL I WANT IT NOW, Walter C. Koerner Library, Vancouver (2018); and Blue Monday, 4COSE, London, UK (2017). Slade’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as: It’s Never Too Late to Speculate; Fluc, Vienna, AU (2019); Uses of History, studio e, Seattle, WA (2019); The Ashtray Show West, Belmacz Gallery, London, UK (2018); and Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery Vancouver, BC (2018). Slade teaches in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and is a doctoral student at the European Graduate School.
The Billboard Project extends the public’s access to local artists and treats viewers to approachable, yet thought-provoking contemporary art on the billboard adjacent to the Mónica Reyes Gallery on Princess Avenue just south of East Hastings Street in the historic and diverse neighbourhood of Strathcona.
The sentence “Wherever you go, you will be a city” is presented like a subtitle for an English translation of a foreign film. While not from a film, the text here is a translation that stems from Hannah Arendt’s reading of Thucydides and the Classical Greek idea of πόλις, the polis. In The Human Condition (1958) Arendt writes, “The polis, properly speaking, is not the city-state in its physical location; it is the organization of the people as it arises out of acting and speaking together, and its true space lies between people acting and living together for this purpose, no matter where they happen to be.” Arendt’s hope is to return to this older notion of the polis not as a traditionalist but to critically re-present this idea from the past for the sake of a better future.
Kathy Slade works across mediums and has produced textile works, prints, sculpture, film, video, performance, music projects, and publications. Slade has upcoming solo exhibitions at Kunstverein Braunschweig in Germany (2020), The Contemporary Art Gallery in Vancouver (2022), and the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge (2022). Her recent solo exhibitions include: A Dream and a Drive (with Amber Frid-Jimenez), Monica Reyes Gallery, Vancouver, BC (2019); This is a Chord. This is Another., Surrey Art Gallery (2018); I WANT IT ALL I WANT IT NOW, Walter C. Koerner Library, Vancouver (2018); and Blue Monday, 4COSE, London, UK (2017). Slade’s work has been included in group exhibitions such as: It’s Never Too Late to Speculate; Fluc, Vienna, AU (2019); Uses of History, studio e, Seattle, WA (2019); The Ashtray Show West, Belmacz Gallery, London, UK (2018); and Beginning with the Seventies: GLUT, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery Vancouver, BC (2018). Slade teaches in the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University and is a doctoral student at the European Graduate School.
The Billboard Project extends the public’s access to local artists and treats viewers to approachable, yet thought-provoking contemporary art on the billboard adjacent to the Mónica Reyes Gallery on Princess Avenue just south of East Hastings Street in the historic and diverse neighbourhood of Strathcona.
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KATHY SLADE
shares this exerpt of the video "Please Please Please" presenting an empty Vancouver street coupled with this melancholy song, as her response to the gallery’s request to artists for their perspectives on the COVID-19 situation. The video “Please Please Please” (dvd projection, 11 minutes, 2003), which depicts a point of view shot as the artist walks from her studio to the Or Gallery (where the work was originally shown). For the soundtrack, Slade performs a cover of The Smiths’ “Please Please Please,” accompanied by Dan Bejar @destroyer_band on guitar and piano. March 27, 2020 |
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