Pandora’s Box

April 6th, 2018 – May 5th, 2018

Opening reception: Friday, April 6th, 6-9pm

Curated by d. June Conley, this exhibition takes as its starting point identical white styrofoam boxes with lids, that once housed the curator’s medicine. Eleven artists have been invited to work with these containers as they consider the myth of Pandora’s Box and mythmaking generally. Messy and explosive assemblages, meticulous process-based textiles, and thoughtful performances form parts of the collective outcome.

In her article “Plain Sight” (published in the New York Times in November 2017), Carina Chocano posits that we live in an unstable reality in which two parallel “truths” coexist: one visible but fabricated, the other hidden but real. Budget reallocations, implied consent, alt-right politics, locker-room talk, mental health strategies, racially charged motivations, collateral damage: all these fraught turns-of-phrase contain within them this doubleness, which threatens to break down and break loose at any moment. It is this break down, Chocano says, that marks an apocalypse in the etymological sense: the act of “uncovering” and exposing the things we had all agreed not to see. After all, we can only keep the lid on things for so long.

The artists in this exhibition address this apocalyptic moment and the blurring of categories that results when we no longer know what belongs where. Letting the truth out is scary and also potentially exhilarating. In the space cleared in the wake, both transformation and healing can occur. As the ancient Greek myth suggests, once the lid
is lifted, all that remains is hope.

Artists include: Afuwa & Aerlyn Weissman, d. June Conley, aly de la cruz yip, Lara Fitzgerald, Bernadine Fox, Ken Gerberick, Pierre Leichner, Heather Pelles, Leigh Selden and Diane Wood.

To see pictures from this exhibition, please visit our Flickr account: https://www.flickr.com/photos/gallerygachet/albums/72157667946502218

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    Gallery Gachet is a unique artist-run centre located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Gachet is a collectively-run exhibition and studio space built to empower participants as artists, administrators and curators.

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    Front door - 32" width
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    Door - 35" width
    Toilet clearance:
    8'' left side
    29'' front
    Support bars on left and behind toilet

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