Swarm: Creating an Art-centric Buzz
Vancouverites will take to the streets this weekend to capture the spirit of Swarm, an annual celebration of artist-run culture involving 30 downtown venues.
After Labour Day, kids have the first week of school to viscerally remind them that fall has begun.
Similar—but decidedly more fun—for Vancouver artists is the Swarm festival, Lotusland’s annual celebration of artist-run culture. Held at the beginning of September since 1999, it helps everyone from abstract painters to photoconceptualists ring in the new art year.
This year, the party is broken up over 3 days in 3 different zones: Mount Pleasant, Downtown/Gastown and Hastings/Commercial Drive. The events span more than 30 venues, from the traditional artist-run centres to alternative spaces, established institutions and commercial galleries.
The artist-run centres in particular—who by and large organize the event—are showing a strong roster of new shows. Gallery Gachet, for example, hosts an exhibit on spaces of housing by Vancouver- and Vienna-based artists Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber. Vivo Media Arts Centre (formerly Video In) showcases a project curated by Kika Thorne on politics, featuring artists Allora and Calzadilla, Siebnen Versteeg and Bani Abidi. Western Front kicks off a show on the theme of north with works from Shuvinai Ashoona, Nadia Myre, Allen Packer and Tania Willard. And Artspeak hints at an intriguing redesign from Christian Kleigel, as well as a retrospective on New York City’s Printed Matter assembled by AA Bronson.
There are also interesting works in those alternative spaces, like Charlotte Matthews’s installation of more than 300 canned food items at Click Clack Empire. A group show including works from Paul Butler, Melanie Rocan, Tim Barber and Mark DeLong at an artist studio space, Les Gallery, also looks promising, as does a trio of Winnipeg paper artists showing at Malaspina Printmakers. And if you miss the evenings altogether, there’s always a 24-hour installation by Vancouver photographer Brian Howell at On Main.
Taken all together this weekend, these exhibits are sure to set the Vancouver’s fall scene buzzing.
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