What Happens When Nothing Happens
What Happens When Nothing Happens
Exhibition presented at Rotor Gallery, Göteborg, Suède, et à la galerie FOFA, Montréal. + publication d'exposition
2009
What Happens When Nothing Happens is a collaborative curatorial project that presents a selection of artists’ works that reveal what happens before, during or after projects: unedited and unrealised ideas, sketches, texts, sounds, scribbles, drawings, trials and failures —pendant explorations, transitory ideas and ephemeral works that together form the creative process.
Artists :
Chantal Durand
Fake it Til' you Make it
Tamara Henderson and Jon Knowles
Jacinthe L-Lessard
Anna Jane McIntyre
Diane Morin
Taien Ng-Chan
Lina Persson
Meghan Price
Jerry Ropson
Karen Elaine Spencer
Christin Wahlström.
On exhibit in the gallery are works that demonstrate a thought process and material exploration that takes place when the notion of productivity and finality is still very ambiguous or inexistent. Research situated within the walls of the artist’s studio that may or may not ever be fully materialised. This exhibition explores the realm of the selected artists’ ideas, suspended in a time before they become resolved and made subject to the structures of interpretations and power which exist outside the boundaries of the individual artist.
Evolving from our own artistic practices, Emily Mennerdahl and myself, this curatorial project is enlightened primarily by an inquiry into methods of creativity and a questioning of contemporary artistic practices in a time when art relates so much to the formalities of research and academia. The Independent Study Group was founded in Gothenburg, Sweden, in 2008 whilst working together at Valand School of Fine Arts. Our main goal as an artist collective is to offer another scene for discussions and presentations of contemporary artworks in a nomadic matter whilst accentuating the importance of process. This exhibition was shown in part in Gothenburg in May 2009 then presenting only Montreal based artists. For this exhibition at FOFA it was crucial for us to present the Montreal artists alongside some new works by Swedish artists. Therefore ten artists are from Montreal and two from Sweden.
The artists participating in What Happens When Nothing Happens vary in media, approach and practice - some are collaborations, others imply personal research alongside more conceptual or process based artists. However all the works are strongly rooted in multifaceted and well-developed art practices where methods of production often interlace and dialogue in their shapes, mediums and forms. Together, the works transform the gallery into a temporary space for transitory ideas.