Co-presented by FADO Performance Art Centre and SAVAC
Precarity renders theĀ acquisition, care and disposal of an object into an emotionally loaded, calculative problem. The lifecycle of an object depends on its size, utility, affective potential and value. Where do you store grandmaās fine china in a tiny rented apartment? How long do you hold on to the unique piece of metal that you dumpstered for an art project ten years ago? Does your sculpture have more value sitting on a plinth in a gallery, or on a shelf in storage?
Weather to StoreĀ is a durational performance in three acts, purposely presented in no particular order. In each act a collection of objects is arranged and manipulated in a different way, and in three distinct spaces: a gallery, the outdoors and a self-storage container. The sequence of time, the utility of the objects and the designated spaces that these objects and actions occupy are displaced and dis-jointed, meditating on and revealing how context influences the various object’s shifting and impermanent value.Ā
SAVAC (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) is a non-profit, artist-run centre in Canada dedicated to increasing the visibility of culturally diverse artists by curating and exhibiting their work, providing mentorship, facilitating professional development and creating a community for our artists. SAVAC was founded to be an organization staffed by people of colour, committed to supporting the work of artists of colour.
ACT 2: Storage
May 14ā19 & 22ā23 @ 12pmā5pm
Bachir/Yerex Presentation Space, 401 Richmond Street West
In the second act of Weather to Store, a gallery space is reframed as a typical storage locker. The artist and her exhibition take up residence in the gallery and perform āstoringā in situ. The artist stacks, re-orders and rearranges the art objects in the gallery-turned-storage over the course of the residency. The various configurations reveal the process through which objects are ascribed value in storage. Audience is invited to come and go during gallery hours.
ACT 1: Gallery
May 24, 2018 @ 6pmā8pm
70 Geary Lane
Weather to StoreĀ continues outside. The artist converts a patch of space outdoors into a gallery and mounts an exhibition, delineated by tape lines drawn on the ground. The dimension of the designated space corresponds to a typical medium-sized self-storage space. The exhibition isĀ comprised of unfinished, raw materials presented and sold as art objects along with functional objects hindered from exercising their potential utility.
ACT 3: Outside
Planet Storage, 1655 Dupont Street
October 11ā21, 2018
Weather to Store ends in a self-storage facility. The artist moves her objects for the last time into a storage locker. Opting out of preservationist logics of climate-controlled storage spaces, the artist performs the laborious process of weathering them artificially as an additive and depreciating performative gesture. Presented by SAVAC in partnership with Art Spin.
Ā© Kristina Guison, Weather to Store (Act 2), 2018. Photo Henry Chan.