Tag: Yam Lau

Sediment
13 January – 26 February 2012
at G Gallery, Toronto

Sediment, Installation view, 2012. Courtesy G Gallery

From 13 January to 26 February 2012, Toronto’s G Gallery presents the group exhibition entitled Sediment. Affiliated with Guelph University, G Gallery’s reputation for supporting experimental shows was substantiated by this latest exhibition, with an arrangement of works that deviate from standard exhibition models. Sediment originated from a call out submission written by Shane Krepakevich, one of the show’s present curators. At the project level, its topic was generally assumed to be about artist books, their ‘support structures’ and the way these operate between the status of document and self-contained artwork. But when incarnated in its physical manifestation, the exhibition grew beyond its original concept and became something more. Sediment is now best described as a show connecting the gaps between art and its many peripherals, or even, as the artists mention, a composite work of art in its own right. The following conversation was conducted between participating artist Yam Lau as well as curators Shane Krepakevich and Michelle McGeean.
 

Conversation on Sediment – an exhibition of artist’s bookwork and book support or an exercise in exhibition arrangement?
 

Yam Lau [YL]: I would like to begin by giving some context for this interview on the exhibition at G Gallery, Toronto entitled, Sediment. I’m Yam Lau, one of the artists in the exhibition and I’m sitting in the gallery with Shane Krepakevich and Michelle McGeean, the two curators of the exhibition.

Because I spent a few days setting up my piece in the exhibition, I saw how the exhibition was put together, how the whole thing unfolds. For this reason I think I have a different perspective from the other artists who only discovered the show and in particular the way their work was treated at the opening. The first thing that struck me about this exhibition is that it’s very unusual. That’s the reason I like it. Rather than an exhibition of discreet art objects, the whole thing reads as one work, one gesture. All the elements, the work, the support of the work, partitions and gallery furniture are interconnected by a kind of flow, or energy.

Maybe you can speak a little bit about this peculiar character of the exhibition. I don’t think it was how the other artists envisioned it when they were invited to participate in an artist’s book and book support project.

Shane Krepakevich [SK]: You mean that people might not have had a sense of what it [exhibition] would be based on that call for submissions? Sure, at that point I didn’t have an intention of making the exhibition as a piece (of work). That was something that came out through developing the exhibition.
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