Artist Talk | Panel discussion

Exploring trauma and the artistic process

Nov 26th, 2014 at 7 – 9 pm
Join us on Wednesday, November 26th at 7pm for an evening of conversation engaging themes of trauma and healing with the artists of Coalescence: A Body of Memories Kelly Gough and Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo and special guests David Geartner, and Lisa Prentice.

We at Gallery Gachet are grateful to invite the participation of four diverse community voices to investigate the social and cultural body, and the traumas therein, in the interest of bringing rise to collective healing.

Panelists’ Bios:

Kelly Gough was diagnosed with PTSD in 2005 and was released from the Canadian Armed forces after twenty-two years of service. Largely working with sculptural and installation practices, Gough interrogates and challenges her experiences and diagnoses concerning trauma. Using trauma as both a set of experiences and an aesthetic framework, Gough is fascinated with the repetition of seemingly ordinary objects and metals such as copper, brass and aluminum. Beginning with the sensory, obsessively deconstructing and reconstructing, Gough’s sculptural installations transform fragmented experiences and materials into ethereal landscapes.

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo’s practice portrays a non-linear narrative of personal, cultural and historical experience through mixed media drawings, installation work and stop motion animation videos. His work is concerned with post-war narratives, addressing issues of collective and personal memory, violence and the impacts of trauma rehearsed through a personal lexicon of imagery sourced from Pre-Columbian mythology, Salvadoran popular folklore, North American vernacular and visual culture appropriated in mythic form.

David Gaertner is a Research Fellow and Instructor in the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia. His research and teaching examines audience receptions of literature and art representing the experiences of survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential School System. His latest article, “Sehtoskakew: ‘Aboriginal Principles of Witnessing’ and the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission” is forthcoming from Wilfred Laurier University Press. He currently teaches Indigenous New Media and is the host of Aloud: Literature for Your Ears on CiTR 101.9fm. David lives and works with his wife and two children on the unceded, traditional and ancestral territory of the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ speaking Musqueam people.
David blogs at: http://novelalliances.wordpress.com/

Lisa Prentice is a manual therapist trained in Craniosacral Therapy, Constellation Dynamics and BodyTalk. Her work is deeply informed by her background in Fine Arts and a longstanding interest in the intersection of creativity and healing. Lisa’s clinical practice is rooted in a body-based approach to trauma that supports rebuilding and restoring each person’s innate and unique self-regulation and integrity.

Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, Kristin Rochelle Lantz, and Kelly Gough, photo by Edzy Edzed