Unpacking Art: Lunchtime Talks on Works in the SFU Art Collection
Bryan Myles
Manager and Acting Director,
The Bill Reid Centre
THU, JAN 19 / 12:30PM
SFU Gallery, Burnaby
“I must ask you to join me in the disorder of crates that have been wrenched open…to join me among piles of volumes that are seeing daylight again…so that you may be ready to share with me a bit of the mood – it is certainly not an elegiac mood but, rather, one of anticipation.”
– Walter Benjamin “Illuminations”
Are you curious to learn more about the SFU Art Collection? Are you wondering what’s hidden in the storage vault or what’s hanging on the walls in offices around campus?
An art gallery is not only responsible for the physical display and wellbeing of art objects, but also for the intellectual care for art’s ideas and histories. Within this set of responsibilities lies the need to make space for innovative thinking where knowledge can be generated, tested and shared.
With this in mind, SFU Gallery is pleased to present a new monthly speaker series, Unpacking Art. Each talk will focus on a single work from the SFU Art Collection and will “unpack” this work out of storage and “unpack” its significance. This series encourages participation from audiences that are new to visual art and to the SFU Art Collection. The speakers are not artists, art historians or affiliated with art galleries, but are interested thinkers from the SFU community. The purpose of the talks is to unpack the artworks, literally and theoretically, with a renewed and varied point of view each month.
The invited speakers in this inaugural series invite dialogues that blur boundaries between disciplines, providing an opportunity that encourages multiple perspectives. An exploration of the collection will be the starting point for conversations that stem from the speakers’ backgrounds in postcolonial studies and library science, among others.
Participation in Unpacking Art is free and open to everyone. No advance preparation or registration is necessary. Bring your lunch.
IMAGE: Bill Reid, Bear Mother, Dogfish Woman, 1991 (detail). Plaster on marble pedestal. SFU Art Collection. Gift of Allan and Faigie Waisman, 2002.