Emily Carr and Rennie Collection Speaker Series

Brown is famed for his evocative large-scale oil paintings, which explore and rework images from a diverse expanse of art history. Spring boarding from his influences (ranging from science fiction panoramas, Renaissance still lifes and classical portraiture), his signature abundant, smooth and swirling brushstrokes mark his work with a still air of strangeness reminiscent of early European Surrealists. His subjects are at once dead and alive, oscillating between homages to artists who came before him and melancholy evidences of their mortality. His meticulous, carefully rendered surfaces challenge the Modernist notion that expressiveness in painting is inseparable from speed. Revolutionary eras of art history collide with stylistic brawn in Brown’s work, resulting in eerie and dramatic testaments to his predecessors and a steadfast testament to the fact that painting is not yet, in fact dead. Rennie Collection is pleased to announce the first exhibition in Canada of work by Glenn Brown and Rebecca Warren. This also marks the first time these two Turner Prize-nominated artists have shown together. Seven paintings and a sculpture by Brown are presented in tandem with a series of Warren’s clay and bronze sculptures.

Emily Carr University and Rennie Collection are pleased to present an artist talk by American artist Robert Beck/Robert Buck, on the occasion of his first Canadian exhibition from March 2 to June 8, 2013. A catalogue will accompany the exhibition, with an essay by James Voorhies. In 2008, Robert Beck changed his surname by a single vowel to Buck. This act of artistic self-nomination, a work of art itself, was precipitated by what he had achieved through his work as Beck, which was often autobiographical in content and persistently diverse in form. As an alias, Buck appealed to the artist for its precision and associations: stag, son, cash, to throw off. Robert Buck lives and works in New York City and the deserts of the American Southwest. A graduate of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, Film and Television Program, Buck completed the Whitney Museum of American Art’s Independent Study Program in 1993. His work has been exhibited internationally, including a 2007 solo show at the Wexner Museum of Art in Columbus, OH, and is part of museum collections across the US. He was a 1999 Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award recipient. Buck’s work is represented by CRG Gallery, New York City, and Stephen Friedman Gallery, London. Rennie Collection has evolved over a number of years to focus on works related to identity, social injustice, appropriation, painting and photography. In 2009, renovations were completed on the oldest building in Vancouver's Chinatown to display the collection to the public. Rennie Collection at Wing Sang holds two exhibitions a year with supporting catalogues and events.

Andrew Grassie was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1966 and currently lives and works in London. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Tate Britain; Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh; and Sperone Westwater, New York. He is represented by Maureen Paley in London and Johnen Galerie in Berlin. Rennie Collection has evolved over a number of years to focus on works related to identity, social injustice, appropriation, painting and photography. Bob Rennie has garnered an international reputation as a dedicated collector, amassing one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Canada. In 2009, renovations were completed on the oldest building in Vancouver's Chinatown to display the collection to the public. Rennie Collection at Wing Sang holds two exhibitions a year with supporting catalogues and events. Rennie Collection Speaker Series | Andrew Grassie Wednesday September 26, 2012 | 7 pm Emily Carr University Lecture Theatre | Room 301, North Building

he Rennie Collection Speaker Series and Emily Carr University of Art + Design are pleased to present a public lecture by Dr. Cliff Lauson, Curator, Hayward Gallery at Southbank Centre, London, UK. Dr. Lauson's recent exhibitions include Tracey Emin (Love Is What You Want), Ernesto Neto (The Edges of the World) and Ron Terada (Ron Terada: Who I Think I Am). In addition to publishing texts in each of these exhibition catalogues, he has written for Art Monthly and contributed to Vitamin D: New Perspectives in Drawing. He wrote on Vancouver art and artists, in discussion with Lawrence Weiner and Dan Graham, for Fillip. Dr. Lauson is a former Assistant Curator at Tate Modern (2005 -2009) and the Education and Public Programmes Coordinator at UBC Museum of Anthropology (1998-2003). He received his BA, in English Literature from The University of British Columbia in 2001, his MA in 2004 and his PhD in 2009 in the History of Art from University College London. Lauson is presently working with artist David Shrigley for the upcoming Hayward Gallery exhibition David Shrigley: Brain Activity from February to May 2012, and is writing the catalogue essay for the Damian Moppett exhibition at the Rennie Collection at Wing Sang (opening November 26). Dr. Lauson will be speaking about his curatorial experiences and providing an update on what is happening in the London art scene. Rennie Collection, one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Canada, has evolved over a number of years to focus on works related to identity, social injustice, appropriation, painting and photography. In 2009, renovations were completed on the oldest building in Vancouver’s Chinatown to display the collection to the public. Previous exhibitions have included Mona Hatoum, Richard Jackson, Amy Bessone and Thomas Houseago, and Martin Creed. Rennie Collection at Wing Sang holds two exhibitions a year with supporting catalogues and events. To book a tour, and to find out further information go to www.renniecollection.org Rennie Collection Speaker Series | Dr. Cliff Lauson Wednesday, November 23, 2011 | 7pm Lecture Hall | Room 301, South Building

Emily Carr and Rennie Collection Speaker Series Emily Carr is pleased to present a lecture by Martin Creed in conjunction with his exhibition of works and performances at the Rennie Collection from May 21 to October 22, 2011. It is probable that Creed is best known in Vancouver for Work No. 851 (2008) his seventy-five foot neon sentiment EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT, permanently installed at Wing Sang. The phrase should rightly be read as a glowing beacon of optimism and conciliation. A converse interpretation, however, might lead one to ask “but exactly how good is ‘alright’? By entangling the double entendre in many of his works, Creed seemingly employs binary opposites: on or off; big and small; open, then closed. When these opposites collide, as they do so often in these numerically catalogued works, what was once a simple dualism is exploded, revealing infinite ulterior facets. The door into Martin Creed’s world is much like Work No. 129: a door continuously opening and closing (1995), where we can look through it and see nothing or everything, or both, in equal parts. Creed renders the invisible tangible to spectacular effect with Work No. 329 (2004). By employing party balloons to contain precisely fifty percent of the calculated volume of a particular room, the artist provokes the viewer’s awareness of how they may negotiate the remainder. Creed craftily compounds elements again in Work No. 372 (2004-2005). A grand piano, an elegant yet burdensome instrument, normally used to play florid compositions brimful of scintillating keystrokes is transformed into a brute, thumping automaton. As the innards of the piano reverberate each time the lid comes down, the sculpture also becomes a score. Rennie Collection holds a diverse breadth of these seminal works alongside more recent endeavours. In Work No. 1000: Broccoli prints (2009-2010), a special commission to be shown for the very first time during this exhibition, the artist halves an imperceptively complex shape, a sprig of broccoli, using the exposed plane to conduct printed impressions. Creed has similarly been bisecting entire exhibitions with Work No. 850 (2008), in which convoys of human sprinters are directed to traverse spaces, such as the neoclassical galleries of Tate Britain, at timed intervals. This piece will be making its North American debut at Wing Sang. Martin Creed was born in Wakefield, England in 1968 and currently lives and works in London and Alicudi, Italy. He won the Turner Prize in 2001 and in recent years has worked on music, dance, writing, sculpture and painting. Creed’s recent solo exhibitions and projects include Moscow Museum of Modern Art; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima; Ikon Gallery, Birmingham; and the Duveen Commission, Tate Britain, London. Rennie Collection has evolved over a number of years to focus on works related to identity, social injustice, appropriation, painting and photography. Bob Rennie has garnered an international reputation as a dedicated collector, amassing one of the largest collections of contemporary art in Canada. In 2009, renovations were completed on the oldest building in Vancouver’s Chinatown to display the collection to the public. Rennie Collection at Wing Sang holds two exhibitions a year with supporting catalogues and events. To book a tour, and to find out further information go to www.renniecollection.org

As part of the Emily Carr University Rennie Collection Speaker Series, Damian Moppett (92) will provide an artist talk in conjunction with his exhibition at the Wing Sang gallery. The Rennie Collection presents this first comprehensive survey of Damian's work on now and ending April 21, 2012. Rennie Collection at Wing Sang holds two exhibitions a year with supporting catalogues and events. The work of Damian Moppett charts a self-reflective studio practice spanning photography, sculpture, drawing, painting and video, often using one medium to examine another. His expansive Watercolour Drawing Project (2004 - 2008) to be exhibited at Wing Sang in all of its breadth is a ruminative omnibus of artistic process, reference and representation. These 100+ sibling works range from prodigiously detailed portraits of his studio in flux to costumed self-portraiture to studies of the works of beloved art-historical predecessors. As this series anthologizes his diverse practice into a personal archive of imagery, it depicts a unique and romantic account of thoughtful, ascetic artistic practice. Moppett's work frames the rigors of conceptualism through the dynamic formality of his compositions and wistful consideration of his context. This belies a complex thought process paired with the compulsions of making. With Fallen Caryatid, 2008, a pivotal figurative sculpture, Moppett crystallizes his long drawn consideration of balance and gravity, begun in his Calder-influenced Stabile series of floor-bound mobiles. Though caryatids are a common architectural motif of antiquity, sculpted female figures which act as weight-bearing columns, Moppetts' version carries nothing, her fingers grasp towards the ceiling. Within the context of his surrounding œuvre, this work conveys the crux of our relationship towards history, is it burdensome, or ephemeral? Is it a phantasm we can only clutch at as its influence emanates all around us? The exhibition will also feature a new aluminum mobile work produced specially for this presentation. Hovering, yet falling, broken though intact, this work will estimate further Moppett's long time formal fascination with suspension, collapse and gravitas. The exhibition is accompanied by a supporting catalogue featuring an essay by Dr Cliff Lauson, Curator of the Hayward Gallery, London, England. Born in Calgary, Alberta in 1969 and currently living and working in Vancouver, Damian Moppett received his undergraduate degree from Emily Carr in 1992, and received his Master of Fine Arts from Concordia University, Montreal. He has exhibited widely including at The Power Plant, Toronto; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal and the Witte de With, Rotterdam.