The Contemporary Art Gallery at 555 Nelson Street, Vancouver is having an opening reception on 26th January that is going to showcase an exhibit by Kathy Slade called, “As the sun disappears and the shadows descend from the mountain top.” In 2009, Slade received the VIVA award from the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts and she is currently a teacher at the School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. For this exhibition, Slade took inspiration from a philosopher named Friedrich Nietzsche and conducted a research trip, where she travelled to Sils Maria, Switzerland and she followed the same path (literally) that the philosopher had taken before her. She went along the shore of Lake Silvaplana where she came across a giant pyramid-shaped rock that the philosopher had once called “my truly abyssal thought.” Kathy attempts to reimagine the philosophers encounter with this place through her own work.
In the exhibition, Kathy Slade, showcases a gigantic tapestry that represents the rock to scale and she also showcases a series of graphite rubbings that helps with visualizing the rocks surface. The story behind this exhibition is an interesting one that explore with different themes with relation to a landscape.
This will give you a better idea of her work: https://cagvancouver.org/exhibition/kathy-slade
There is a chance to explore this exhibition with Kathy Slade herself, as the Contemporary Art Gallery is hosting an event called “In Conversation” with Kathy Slade and Lisa Robertson on January 31st. This provides people who are intrigued with Kathy’s exhibition to have a chance to hear the approach that she took for this exhibition in person, and it provides the opportunity to ask her questions about the inspiration and thought process behind this exhibition. There is also a good chance that attending the event will be a great opportunity to connect with artistic intellects and meeting people with similar artistic interests.