Public Programs 2011

Simon Starling graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1992. He makes objects, installations, and pilgrimage-like journeys which draw out an array of ideas about nature, technology, and economics. In 2005 he won the Turner Prize.

This is the true story of Maruge (Oliver Litondo), a former Mau Mau freedom fighter, now in his 80s, living in rural Kenya. Hearing that the Kenyan government has offered an opportunity for free primary school education to the country’s children, Maruge shows up at the local school, where he meets head teacher Jane Obinchu (Naomie Harris). Against the opposition of parents, other teachers, and government officials, Maruge enters a classroom for the first time in his life.

Join the artists in the thematic residency Something in the Water; A Search for the Turn of the Backwash with Adam Chodzko for an open studios event.

Martin Clark has been artistic director at Tate St Ives since 2007, leading the development and delivery of the exhibitions and displays program, as well as the wider public program including interpretation and learning. Previously, he was curator of exhibitions at Arnolfini, Bristol (2005-2007), and curator and exhibitions tutor at Kent Institute of Art and Design (now University College of the Creative Arts) (2002-2005).

Vancouver-based artist Kevin Schmidt’s photographic and video-based practice is an investigation of transcendent possibility in a culture where “all that is solid melts into air.” He has received considerable national and international recognition, with recent solo exhibitions in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, and Berlin. Schmidt is a Fleck Fellow in residence.

Adam Chodzko is an artist based in Whitstable, Kent. His art explores the interactions and possibilities of human behaviour. Working across media, from video installation to subtle interventions, and with a practice that is situated both within the gallery and the wider public realm, his work explores and invents a collective imagination through the poetics of everyday life. By wondering how, through the visual, we might best engage with the existence of others he reveals the realities that emerge from the search for this knowledge.

Based on true events, Oranges and Sunshine tells the story of Margaret Humphreys (Emily Watson), a British social worker who discovered the mass forced migration of 130,000 poor children to Australia in the mid-20th century. A secret that the British government kept hidden for years, it led Humphreys to uncover the truth and reunite hundreds of children with their parents.

Tour the studios and meet the artists in The Soiree Retreat — A bit of a Chekhovian situation thematic residency with Ragnar Kjartansson, Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir, and Davíð Þór Jónsson.

Wardrobe specialist Barbara Markert from The Banff Centre’s Theatre department will lead a fun party where children will create costumes for one of the most exciting nights of the year – Halloween! Bring your imagination; all other materials will be provided. Please contact Walter Phillips Gallery to register.

Katharine Stout will give a presentation on the Turner Prize, the prestigious and much debated award set up by Tate in 1984 to celebrate the cutting edge in new British art. In her lecture, Stout will discuss the role the Turner Prize has played within the institutional context of Tate Britain as well as its relationship to the contemporary arts scenes in London and abroad. She will also give a brief introduction to the Drawing Room, which she co-founded in 2002 to be the only public, non-profit, gallery in the UK and Europe dedicated to the investigation and presentation of international contemporary drawing.

Following a now-legendary performance in January 2010, Icelandic artists Ragnar Kjartansson, Davíð Þór Jónsson, and Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir reprise the Country & Western Hour, a durational performance with songs of heartache, hardship, and sorrow.

A self-described radical post-romantic, Ragnar Kjartansson’s experiments in visual art, music, and theatre have garnered international recognition. He was selected to represent Iceland at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009). Davíð Þór Jónsson is one of Iceland’s leading jazz musicians, and has collaborated with artists ranging from obscure troubadours to stadium bands. Ásdís Sif Gunnarsdóttir’s works vary from large video installations and performances, to spoken word poetry and photography. In addition to producing videos and art works for Icelandic pop musicians such as Trabant and Ólöf Arnalds, she also created the feature film High Reality (2009). In 2009 Kjartansson and Jónsson produced the video installation The End — Rocky Mountains, with support from The Banff Centre.

A co-presentation between The Club Series and Visual Arts.

Directed by Terrence Malick (Days of Heaven, The Thin Red Line), The Tree of Life follows one man from boyhood, delving into intimate and cosmic questions. Growing up in Texas in the 1950s, Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) grows into a discontented man. He’s struggling to reconcile his complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt), questioning the existence of faith, and imagining the origin and meaning of life. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival.

September 30: For youth (ages 7+) and families. Offered in conjunction with the opening of Banff Culture Days.

October 20:For adults at all levels of artistic interest and experience.

November 24: For seniors at all levels of artistic interest and experience.

December 22: Hour-long Winter Solstice drawing session open to anyone in the community.

January 6: Drawn to Nature Exhibition Opening Reception.

Walter Phillips Gallery, in collaboration with the Banff Park Museum National Historic Site, presents Drawn to Nature: a series of monthly drawing sessions held in the museum. Participants of all ages and levels of experience will be welcomed into the museum after hours to explore various still-life sketching techniques in an informal drawing session inspired by the rich history of the museum’s collection. Four sessions will be offered once-monthly beginning in September, each geared to entice and delight a particular audience. The series will culminate in January, with a community exhibition of participants’ work at the Banff Public Library.

Advance registration is required. Please contact Walter Phillips Gallery at 403-762-6281. All materials will be provided.

Please note that washrooms in the museum are not wheelchair accessible — participants needing special access will have to use the public washrooms in the park.

French curator, art critic, and author of theoretical essays on contemporary art, Nicolas Bourriaud was co-founder of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and the Gulbenkian curator of contemporary art at Tate Britain, London, where he curated the Tate Triennial: Altermodern (2009). His writings have been translated into over 15 languages, and include publications such as Radicant, Postproduction, and Relational Aesthetics.

Supported by the Consulate of France in Calgary
and l'Institut français.

Austrian music aficionado Edek Bartz, co-editor of Secret Passion — Artists and Their Musical Desires, brings his signature conversations on artists’ musical obsessions to The Banff Centre for a discussion with Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson.

Francisco Camacho was born in 1983 in Bogota, and lives and works in Amsterdam. His politically engaged projects have been presented in numerous solo and group exhibitions in North and South America and in Europe. In 2011 Camacho completed an intervention as part of 12 Gestures, a project initiated by The Public School, Los Angeles, and the Kadist Art Foundation, Paris. Also in 2011, he created a community based project for the Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven.

Banff-based artist Amy Ball will lead a creative kite building workshop for all ages. Participants will build and decorate a sled kite using beautiful hand-dyed Washi papers from Japan. The sled kite’s sturdy design and simple construction make it a fun and rewarding project for the novice flyer. Weather permitting, the workshop will also include a kite flying session.

The truly essential artists’ needs are tranquility and camaraderie. In the crisp Canadian autumn, three Icelandic artists who have been working together and apart with performance art, cinema, and music throughout their career will elaborate on their activities.

Katherine Ylitalo will present a day of events in The Butterfly Garden, a public art work created by Canadian artist Mike MacDonald. Ylitalo will discuss ancient and modern gardens of the world through examples presented in paintings, sculpture, frescoes, textiles, ceramics, and architecture, to offer insight into the pleasures, ideals, social history, and practicalities of gardens. This will be followed by a tour of The Butterfly Garden. Guests will then be invited to spend the rest of their afternoon drawing in the garden with instruction from Ylitalo.

Partnering for the second year, Walter Phillips Gallery will host a one-day building workshop for kids who are enrolled in the Artisans Camp and the Fine Arts Camp as part of the Town of Banff Kids Summer Series. Registration is through the Town of Banff.

Children entering grades 1-3: Using natural found materials collected on a morning walk, participants will be led in the construction of their own creative birdhouse. Local bird species and their habitats will be discussed along with how we relate to our environment.

Children entering grades 4-6: Led by Matthew Walker, sculpture facilitator with the Visual Arts department at The Banff Centre, campers will use their imagination to plan and construct a shelter in the woods on the Banff Centre campus using materials gathered from the forest floor. Participants will explore their relationship to the landscape as a material for making.

Please contact the Town of Banff to register.

Message Factory, a mail art station in Bison Courtyard, invites visitors to create mailable artworks to send to their friends and family. Banff-based photographer Sarah Fuller will assist participants in the creation of postcard-sized cyanotypes — prints made by a photographic developing process that uses the sun’s natural light to create blue-hued images — and the Banff Snail Mail Society will make available three analogue typewriters from its collection with which participants can compose individualized messages.

Join Walter Phillips Gallery staff for a one-hour tour of public artwork at The Banff Centre campus, including Mike MacDonald’s Butterfly Garden, prints by Walter J. Phillips, and new commissions by Mark Clintberg and Brian Jungen.

Anthony Huberman is a curator and writer based in New York, where he is currently the director of The Artist’s Institute and a distinguished lecturer at Hunter College. Previously, he worked as chief curator of the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, curator of the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, and curator of SculptureCenter, New York, and has organized a wide variety of independent projects around the world. He also directed the education and public programming at MoMA PS1, New York, where he initiated WPS1, the museum’s radio station. He has written for magazines such as Artforum, Afterall, Dot Dot Dot, Flash Art, and Mousse, among others, and is a contributing editor to Bomb magazine.

Learn to make your own artist book using classic book binders’ materials and techniques with Banff-based artist Kate Jackson. Jackson will discuss the significance of the artist's book, show some rare and unique examples from the library’s collection, and will assist participants in binding their own traditional cloth bound book. The workshop is free and all materials will be provided.

To register please contact the Walter Phillips Gallery at 403.762.6281

In 2006 Dexter Sinister (David Reinfurt and Stuart Bailey) established a workshop and bookstore with the same name in New York, and have since explored aspects of contemporary publishing in diverse contexts. As well as designing, editing, producing, and distributing both printed and digital media, they have also worked with ambiguous roles and formats, usually in the live contexts of galleries and museums. These projects generally play to some form of site-specificity, where a publication or series of events are worked out in public over a set period of time. Dexter Sinister intend to slowly dissolve all such activities into one single institution, The Serving Library. This overarching project is founded on a consideration of how the role of the library has changed over time — from fixed archive, through circulating collection, to point of distribution. As much about The Library as social furniture as it is a specific model, the project ultimately returns to its point of departure: as a place for learning.

Join Walter Phillips Gallery for the much-anticipated unveiling of the public commission The ghosts on top of my head by acclaimed artist Brian Jungen. Events surrounding the unveiling will include an artist presentation and a public reception.

The ghosts on top of my head is a gift of Doug, Linda, Sarah, and Ian Black, for Canada Plaza, Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation.

When the sun goes down, mythology surfaces in the rituals and anxieties of modern life — in beautiful sunsets no less than deepening shadows of despair. At night when the sun seems to travel below the earth, sleep, too, brings its tossing and turning as we journey through strange continents of being. Michael Taussig is professor of anthropology at Columbia University, New York, and at the European Graduate School (EGS) in Switzerland. His talk addresses twilight, the witching hour, known to filmmakers as “the magic hour” when light transforms itself and the basis of the image, such that other worlds are possible.

Running parallel to Pierre Huyghe’s exhibition A Journey That Wasn’t, which investigates ideas of reality and unreality in film, this workshop will explore the history and aesthetics of film as a medium for material manipulation and alteration. Calgary-based artist Caitlind Brown will lead a workshop on experimental techniques used to create animated images on 16mm film. Drawing and scratching on film are direct and easy techniques used to create animated images. Participants will learn about the history and aesthetics of simple animation, have an introduction to celluloid, review how the “moving image” works, view a selection of works by local artists, and make a collaborative film with optical sound.

To register please contact the Walter Phillips Gallery at 403.762.6281

May 31, 4 p.m.

Sarah Robayo Sheridan Curator’s Talk

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Sarah Robayo Sheridan is director of exhibitions and publications at Mercer Union, A Centre for Contemporary Art, Toronto. She holds an MA in curatorial practice from the California College of the Arts, San Francisco, where she completed research on the visual culture of sleep. In 2009, she was nominated for the Young Curators Invitational, Ricard Foundation, Paris. She has previously worked at Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto; the Toronto International Film Festival Group; and held research internships at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco. Her writing has appeared in arts magazines and she was a contributor to the anthology 100 Video Artists (Exit Books, Madrid, 2010) and João Maria Gusmão and Pedro Paiva (Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, 2010). She recently served as one of the commissioning curators for Scotiabank Nuit Blanche (2010), Toronto.

May 24, 4 p.m.

Imre Szeman Artist’s Talk
Liberalism after Neoliberalism

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

In the wake of the 2008 financial crash, many believed that new political and economic forms would arise from the ashes of neoliberal globalization. And yet the world today seems to be just as it has been for the past three decades – defined by all manner of economic and social injustices, with no sense of how it might become better. Szeman will draw on his recent book After Globalization.

May 21, 9–11:35 a.m.; 1:30–4 p.m.

Optical Illusions and Moving Pictures

Canmore Children's Festival

For over eleven years the Canmore Children’s Festival has been engaging and entertaining young audiences through performances and hands-on arts activities devised to delight, challenge, and educate. Embracing this year’s theme of Wow! Walter Phillips Gallery presents Optical Illusions and Moving Pictures, a workshop inviting young minds to explore the funny, scary, magical world of visual perception. Banff-based artist Stephanie Nadeau will guide participants along an illustrated journey through the variously visible phenomena of eye-brain interaction, ultimately leading them in the creation of their own flipbooks and thaumatropes.

Made popular in the Victorian era, thaumatropes are comprised of a card illustrating a different picture on either side, such as a bird on one side and a cage on the other. The two images appear to combine into one when the card is twirled rapidly, thus illustrating the persistence of visual impressions. As well as being tools of amazement and wonder, these toys illustrate important perceptual phenomena and demonstrate the fundamental concepts behind cinematography and animation.

Stephanie Nadeau received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and holds a BA in psychology from the University of Western Ontario, London, and an associate’s degree in printmaking from the Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto. Her work has been included in a number of group exhibitions including ANTI Contemporary Arts Festival (2009), Kuopio; Mapping the Self (2007), Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and Emerald City (2006), Rider Mobile Art Project, Chicago. She is also co-curator of the Humboldt Moving Picture Show, an annual experimental video festival in Chicago.

May 19, 4 p.m.

Lauren Berlant Artist’s Talk
On the Desire for the Political

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Lauren Berlant, George M. Pullman Professor of English at the University of Chicago, examines instances of contemporary art rooted in traditions of silent protest and noise politics whose aim is to redirect the intensities that can bind a public affectively to the political. Her focus will be on artworks that perform a withdrawal and what they reveal about the state of popular politics in the contemporary United States.

May 17, 4 p.m.

Michael Hardt Artist’s Talk
Falsify the Currency! Foucault and Crisis

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Duke University literature professor Michael Hardt explores the work of philosopher Michel Foucault to comment on current forms of crisis. Foucault’s analysis of the ancient Cynics and his essays on the Iranian Revolution in 1978 and 1979 open up an analysis of the current economic and financial crisis and recent events in Tunisia and Egypt. How might Foucault help us to imagine a kind of biopolitical militancy that would institute new forms of life in the context of contemporary political conditions?

May 12, 4 p.m.

Pedro Reyes Artist’s Talk
The Manufacture of Surplus Realities

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Mexican artist and architect Pedro Reyes discusses four of his recent projects: Baby Marx, a film where puppets explain the history of ideas in politics and economics; the Urban Genome Project, a mobile forum that maps the decision-making process in cities; Mutantes, the translation of literary texts into other mediums, ranging from algebra to cooking; and Palas por Pistolas, a campaign in which voluntary donated weapons were melted into shovels to plant trees.

May 10, 4 p.m.

Althea Thauberger Artist’s Talk

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Althea Thauberger is based in Vancouver. Her internationally produced and exhibited work involves interactions with a group or community that result in performances, films, videos, audio recordings, and books. Her work has been presented at the 17th Biennale of Sydney; National Gallery of Canada; The Andy Warhol Museum; Vancouver Art Gallery; Berkeley Art Museum; and Seattle Art Museum, among many others.

Image: Althea Thauberger, La mort e la miseria (Death and Poverty) (2008). Image courtesy the artist.

April 4, 7 p.m.

Reel Time Film Screening: The Illusionist

Lux Cinema, 229 Bear Street, Banff, $12
Call The Banff Centre Box Office at 403.762.6301 to reserve

Following on the heels of his brilliant 2003 hit, Les Triplettes de Belleville, director Sylvain Chomet returns to the Festival with The Illusionist, another beautifully drawn and poignant work of animation. Based on an unproduced script by Jacques Tati, the film follows forlorn and timeworn Tatischeff, a shabby but dignified magician trying to find an audience in a world of 50s rock and roll and consumerism.

March 7, 7 p.m.

Reel Time Film Screening: Another Year

Lux Cinema, 229 Bear Street, Banff, $12
Call The Banff Centre Box Office at 403.762.6301 to reserve

Another Year is a deeply absorbing look at a couple who seem to have gotten it right and a bunch of people who haven’t, and a son who could go either way! In this wry and affectionate character study of a mostly middle-aged group of people, director Mike Leigh’s grip on the material is unfailingly confident and his actors all deliver highly charged and beautifully shaded performances.  

February 18, 3–6 p.m

When the Winter is Winter and the Summer is Winter
Community Collaborative Drawing Project

Glyde Hall, The Other Gallery
Free

Montreal-based artists Jim Holyoak and Matt Shane will collaborate with youth from local elementary, middle, and high schools, as well as members of the public to create an immersive and collaborative drawing installation. Challenging preconceptions that a gallery’s function is limited to the presentation of art, the collaboration will be energized by a shared experience of exploration and experimentation. Adults and children from the public are invited to participate with the artists on Friday, February 18, from 3 to 6 p.m.

The Walter Phillips Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canadian Art Foundation.

February 8, 4 p.m.

Creative Residencies Presents
Daniel Pinchbeck’s Artist Talk
Art at the Edge of Time

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Daniel Pinchbeck, New York-based author of Breaking Open the Head, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, and Notes from the Edge Times, will explore the role of the artist in a time of prophecy and archetypal transformation, and the phenomenon of crop circles as an exercise in sacred geometry.

February 7, 7 p.m.

Incendies

Lux Cinema, 229 Bear Street, Banff, $12
Call The Banff Centre Box Office at 403.762.6301 to reserve

To encounter a film of heart-wrenching tragedy, mythic proportions, and sweeping visual majesty is rare, but such are the riches of Denis Villeneuve’s Incendies. After last year’s multiple Genie Award-winning Polytechnique, Villeneuve continues his acute examination of women in devastating situations facing complex and harrowing circumstances.

February 1, 4 p.m.

Creative Residencies Presents
Alonso Mendez Artist’s Talk
Centering The World: The Astronomy of Creation in Ancient Maya Cosmology

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Alonso Mendez is a San Cristobal de las Casas-based artist. In 1997, he joined the archaeological projects in Palenque first as a project artist with the Palenque Mapping Project and subsequently with the Proyecto Grupo de las Cruces and the Proyecto Arqueologico Palenque. His presentation will examine astronomical alignments in relation to creation mythology and provide insights into some of the principles of Maya space. The writing and images expressed in the texts of Palenque offer a unique window into the indigenous American worldview and cosmology.

January 27, 7 p.m.

On Collecting at the National Gallery of Canada
Marc Mayer and Kitty Scott in Conversation

Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation, Room 201
Free

Join Marc Mayer, director of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, in conversation with Kitty Scott, director of Visual Arts at The Banff Centre, as they discuss his approach to collecting contemporary art. Mayer was previously director of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal; deputy director for Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; director of The Power Plant, Toronto; and curator at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo. He has curated solo exhibitions on the work of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Judy Chicago, Stan Douglas, Shirley Wiitasalo, Kim Adams, Candida Hofer, Bill Viola and, most recently, Thomas Nozkowski. Mayer has contributed to numerous publications.

January 25, 4 p.m.

Creative Residencies Presents
Adam Chodzko Artist’s Talk

Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation, Room 301
Free

Adam Chodzko is an artist based in Whitstable, Kent. Using a wide variety of media — from video to performance to fly-posters to drawing — his work explores a collective wondering: How can we engage with the existence of others? How else might we relate? And what reality emerges from the search for this knowledge? Chodzko’s art proposes new relationships between our value and belief systems, between the community and private spaces that generate these systems, and between the documents and fictions that describe and guide them. His art practice operates in the tight, poetic spaces he evolves between documentary and fantasy, conceptualism and surrealism often engaging reflexively and directly with the role of the viewer.

January 18, 4 p.m.

Creative Residencies Presents
Adrian Stimson Artist’s Talk
Between the Winds: Prophesy, Reality, and Indigenous World View

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Adrian Stimson is a member of the Siksika (Blackfoot) Nation in Southern Alberta and an interdisciplinary artist. His work explores ideas of punishment, identity, and the re-signification of post-colonial history. Stimson obtained a BFA with distinction from the Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary; an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon; and recently completed the artist in residence program Living Artfully at the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon. Select exhibitions include Face the Nation (2008), Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton; Putting the Wild Back into the West (2008), La Centrale, Montreal; Marisa Portolese: Adrian Stimson (2008), IPS Gallery, Montreal; and Honouring Tradition: Re-framing Native Art (2008), Glenbow Museum, Calgary.

January 13, 4 p.m.

Anthony Burnham Artist’s Talk

Kinnear Centre for Creativity and Innovation, Room 201
Free

Montreal artist Anthony Burnham will address current interests and concerns regarding his practice, specifically the work presented in the exhibition Even Space Does Not Repeat. By constructing sculptures, which act as still lifes, he weaves personal, art historical, and formal narratives into specific situations in which the painting becomes responsible for representation. These final paintings represent the refined moments and precise details in a measured practice of deconstruction and construction.

January 11, 4 p.m.

Creative Residencies Presents
Ashley Neese Artist’s Talk
A Dialogue On Love

Jeanne and Peter Lougheed Building, Room 204
Free

Ashley Neese is a multidisciplinary artist who grew up in Atlanta. Her recent work explores the subject of love in contemporary art and life; reflecting on what it means to love, and how as artists we can express our love in effective ways. In 2005 she completed her MFA at California College of the Arts. Her projects have been executed and exhibited in the Rosenberg Gallery, New York; San Jose Institute for Contemporary Art; Nuit Blanche, Toronto; TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary; and Koh-i-nor, Copenhagen. Recently, she launched Open Heart, an ongoing project and publication about love, in which she spent six months writing love letters in Berlin.

January 10, 7 p.m

Reel Time Film Screening: Mao’s Last Dancer

Lux Cinema, 229 Bear Street, Banff, $12
Call The Banff Centre Box Office at 403-762-6301

From internationally acclaimed Australian film director Bruce Beresford comes the inspirational true story of a small boy’s extraordinary journey from poverty to international stardom. Mao’s Last Dancer captures the intoxicating effects of first love and celebrity, the pain of exile, and ultimately the triumph of individual endeavour over ideology. Filmed in China, the US, and Australia and with a brilliant performance from Chi Cao as Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer is an exhilarating exploration of what it means to be free.