This unique exhibition will treat visitors to a far-reaching look at the work and thought of interdisciplinary artist Vera Frenkel, recipient of the 2006 Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.



Curator Sylvie Lacerte’s insightful synthesis brings archives and artworks together to reveal a little-known side of Frenkel’s remarkable creative process. Collaborating closely with the artist, Lacerte has selected three pivotal works, juxtaposing around them documents that both precede and follow their creation and dissemination. Delving into the artist’s personal archives and the Vera Frenkel fonds at Queen’s University, Lacerte will share with the public a wide array of elements including photographs, designs, sketches, posters, and correspondence.



Frenkel’s innovative use of technology has shaped a socially-engaged practice with a pronounced impact on art in Canada and abroad. Centering on issues such as censorship, displacement and loss, the learning and unlearning of cultural memory and the bureaucratization of experience, her work has been seen at documenta IX (Kassel), Setagaya Art Museum (Tokyo), National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa), Museum of Modern Art (New York), Tate Britain (London), the Venice Biennale, and Freud Museum (London) among others. Recipient of honorary doctorates from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and Emily Carr University, Vancouver, Vera Frenkel is also laureate of numerous prizes such as the Canada Council Molson Prize, the Gershon-Iskowitz Prize, the Bell Canada Award for Video Art and the 2007 iDMAa Award. Frenkel has been inducted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She is currently at work on a commission for the inaugural exhibition of the new Ryerson University Art Gallery, Toronto.



 

Sylvie Lacerte is an art and museum theorist and independent curator. Her book La médiation de l’art contemporain (2007) was a finalist for the 2007 Prix de l’essai Spirale Eva-le-Grand. She was coordinator for the DOCAM Research Alliance (Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage) at the Daniel Langlois Foundation. She is lecturer at UQÀM and visual art specialist for the Politique d'intégration de l'art à l'architecture et à l'environnement of the Quebec Gouvernment. She has been art director of Spirale magazine since 2009.



The exhibition is accompanied by an 84 page catalogue, edited by Sylvie Lacerte, and featuring essays by Anne Bénichou, Alain Depocas, Vera Frenkel, Heather Home, Sylvie Lacerte, and Stephen Schofield. Signed copies will be available at the opening.

​

A specially designed exhibition Web site now being prepared by the Daniel Langlois Foundation will be launched on October 2, 2010.

http://www.fondation-langlois.org/Vera-Frenkel/ 

​

SBC Gallery of Contemporary Art wishes to thank the Canada Council for the Arts, the ministère de la Culture, des Communications et de la Condition féminine, the Conseil des arts de Montréal, and the Phyllis Lambert Foundation. The Gallery and Sylvie Lacerte extend great appreciation to Heather Home, archivist at Queen’s University, the Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and Technology, and the Leonard and Bina Ellen Gallery, Concordia University. Sylvie Lacerte greatfully acknowledges the Canada Council for the Arts (Assistance to Professional Independent Curators) for its support of this exhibition and publication.