Notice of Annual General Meeting

Access Gallery members in good standing are invited to attend the 2016 Annual General Meeting on Thursday, July 14, 2016 at 6:00pm to be held at Access Gallery, 222 East Georgia St. Please join us to review the past year’s programming, operations, accomplishments and challenges, and to discuss Access’s exciting direction for the upcoming year.

Access has seen an intensely active and vigorous year of programming featuring three solo exhibitions, three group exhibitions, several community-based partnerships and collaborations, the launch of the second year of our residency program and ten publications. Beginning with Field Studies: Rebecca Bayer & Laura Kozak, Emiliano Sepulveda, Eden Veaudry, presented in conjunction with Capture Photography Festival, we investigated radical and inventive ways that everyday landscapes might be experienced and mapped. Ian Johnston’s solo exhibition The Chamber explored contemporary cultures of excess by assembling a colossal mound of detritus in the gallery. A three-part exhibition and publication series investigated notions of distance culminated in Far Away So Close, Part III: Alana Bartol, Mike Bourschied, David Semeniuk. Part III focused on our desire to commune with the landscape, and features artists who examine the elaborate proxies we invent in our attempt to capture, represent or claim the "authentic" natural experience. Laura Piasta’s solo exhibition extended this concern for the natural world by presenting numerous bodies of work that consider strange, natural occurring phenomena (such as acoustic materials) and the artist’s signature treatment matter as a vibrant subject, rather than object. Things on the Shoreline presented Cindy Mochizuki’s community-based project, developed with children from Access’ neighbourhood elementary schools through storytelling, image-making workshops and the production of an illustrated storybook.

In addition to these programs, 2015-16 also saw Access realize the first year of it's unconventional residency program: Twenty-Three Days at Sea. Access sent artists on cargo ships, returned them home, supported them in processing their journey and realized the current exhibition Twenty-Three Days at Sea: Chapter One, Nour Bishouty, Christopher Boyne, Elisa Ferrari, Amaara Raheem. This will be followed by Three Kinds of Abstraction, UBC MA candidate April Thompson. Access’s partnership with UBC offers important learning opportunities and introductions to professional art communities and underscores the Access mandate to support emergent practices by transforming the gallery into a space of open, praxis-based learning.

As we look into our busy upcoming year, we welcome new staff members–development specialist Jehanne Marie Burns and communications intern Vicky Hung–and forge ahead with our 2nd cohort of Twenty-Three Days at Sea residents: Rebecca Moss, Micheal Drebert, Lili Huston-Herterich and Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn. We also extend continuing support to Cindy Mochizuki as we see a translation of her illustrated storybook into Japanese. These are only a few highlights of an upcoming year flush with new programming and opportunities for growth and expansion. It excites us to see our members participate in the directional development and shaping of these programs. We hope to see you there!

Members may request the minutes of the 2015 AGM in advance or to receive the minutes of the 2016 meeting if they cannot attend.

If your membership has lapsed, please consider renewing now!

Access Gallery is a platform for emergent and experimental art practices enabling critical conversations and risk taking through new configurations of audience, artists and community. Your support is crucial to our continued vitality!

Become a member or renew your membership by visiting our website: www.accessgallery.ca

Tax receipts will be issued for donations over $20.

*

Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and BC Gaming, the City of Vancouver, the Burrard Arts Foundation, and our committed donors, members and volunteers.

*