Luc Courchesne, Barcelona 03/02/15 - 1 (Downtown), 2003, Duratrans film, fluorescent light, acrylic and steel. Purchase, Chancellor Richardson Memorial Fund and Canada Council Acquisition Assistance Fund, 2005 (48-010). Photo credit: Cheryl O'Brien
Exhibitions
Crowd Conscious
Contemporary Feature and The Davies Foundation Galleries
12 May - 30 September 2007
Crowd Conscious playfully postulates sentience as an emergent property of inter-subjectivity through artworks that straddle heightened conditions of self-awareness and mass psychology. The core conceptual thread of this show is our awareness of group behaviour, whether in a sports stadium, factory, pool hall, protracted war, or protest march. Crowd Conscious considers our capacity to act together, and the counter inclination to reflect and record individual experience. It twins the desires for group affiliation and for anonymity - touching on the increasingly popular desire for anonymous affiliation - while delineating selected axes of power.
The exhibition includes recent additions to the Art Centre's holdings of contemporary art by 16 artists: John Abrams, Stephen Andrews, Shary Boyle, Napoleon Brousseau, Edward Burtynsky, Sheila Butler, Sue Coe, Luc Courchesne, Adrian Göllner, David Gordon, Barb Hunt, Germaine Koh, Euan MacDonald, Landon Mackenzie, Sherwin Tjia and David Urban.
Jan Allen will offer a tour of the exhibition as part of the Art Matters series on Thursday 7 June at 12:15 pm. In addition, guided tours of Crowd Conscious will be offered each Thursday at 12:15 pm from 31 May to 16 August.