A Collective Response

Gallery Gachet presents the exhibition A Collective Response, featuring The Gallery Gachet Collective’s response to the current cultural landscape in Vancouver. The exhibition showcases each artist’s reaction to the arts funding cuts through their own art-making practice, celebrating and reinforcing the importance of art as a critical means for achieving a healthy and flourishing society.

A Collective Response aims to focus on the critical role of art in society, in particular as a way of responding to contemporary issues. Vancouver is currently undergoing a massive upheaval, and these changes affect all its citizens profoundly. Gallery Gachet’s Collective Membership feels strongly about the importance of community engagement and asserting a response to these changes, and they believe that art provides a powerful and significant channel for dialogue.

Based on the idea of Documenta (an international contemporary art exhibition held in Kassel, Germany every five years), The Collective will transform Gallery Gachet into a ‘free speech zone’ offering both commentary and critique of issues relevant to art and life in Vancouver at this specific historical juncture. Thematically, the work addresses the massive funding cuts that most arts organizations have received in BC, as well as political priorities and how these precedents impact our cultural climate. The Gachet Collective believes in the expression of art and culture as a human right, and as a means for achieving social, cultural and economic justice.

The link between A Collective Response and Documenta is one of intention and spirit. Documenta is known as an exhibition that explores the intersection between contemporary art and the current critical issues of the time, inviting people from all over the world to convene, assess the situation, and enact a dialogic process. Documenta began in the early 1950’s, and was developed as a response to the “degenerate art” politics of the Third Reich. In contrast to other international exhibitions that emerged from the “World Fair” models, the tradition behind Documenta is one of theoretical grounding, and a sense of urgency in regards to the role and meaning of art in society.  Inclusivity and dissolution of elitism are founding values of the festival; these beliefs are also woven into the core of The Collective’s ideology and integral values that are unanimously held by The Collective.

A Collective Response will feature multidisciplinary works from Gachet’s twenty-one collective members, and represents not only the distinct response of each individual member but also the unique energy and drive behind The Gachet Collective as a whole.

Artists featured: Benitto, Sharon Burns, Sharon Smith, Kara Lee, Stephen Long, Jay Peachy, Karen Ward, Bernadine Fox, Bruce Ray, Dylan Wolney, Quin Martins, W.N. (Bill) Pope, Laurie Marshall, Robert Gardiner, Leef Evans, Diane Thorn, Cherise Clarke, Lisa Walker, Ariel Kirk-Gushowaty, Geoff Greene and Youngsin Lee.

To see pictures from this exhibition, please visit our Flickr account https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/sets/72157625171626376