Everything Everyday
October 2, 2010 to January 16, 2011
Stephen Shore
Twentieth St. and Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA, 6/21/74 1974-2003 chromogenic print Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery Gift of Alison and Alan Schwartz |
The ‘everyday ’ is a constant and meaningful presence. It is the fundamental rhythm
of our lives and yet, within the history of art, it has rarely been the subject of sustained
examination by artists. Only in the past fifty years with the emergence of a strong interest
in pop culture, found objects, autobiographical narrative and blogs, has the consideration of
quotidian life become a common subject in art. The works in the exhibition are in a diverse range of media and are drawn primarily from the Gallery’s collection and augmented with loans from artists’ and private collections. The exhibition is organized around three themes: Everyday Actions, Everyday Objects and Everyday Encounters. Everyday Actions includes works that consider those simple, sometimes mindless tasks we perform regularly; works in Everyday Objects take ordinary items as their subjects; and Everyday Encounters examines those common interactions that occur in daily life. Despite the presupposed banal nature of the subject matter, the artists in this exhibition manage to provoke surprising and poetic interpretations of the everyday in their work. Everything Everyday includes works by Arabella Campbell, Hadley+Maxwell, LAIWAN, Mona Hatoum, Gathie Falk, Ruth Scheuing, Khan Lee, Euan Macdonald, Aganetha Dyck, Diane Borsato, Gabriel Orozco, James Welling and others. Everything Everyday is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Bruce Grenville, senior curator. |