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A computer-generated image by St. John's, NL. artist Liz Solo addresses the corporate aspect of the modern Olympic games. (Image contributed)
By Chris Stanford
A Kelowna art gallery is ground-zero for an online exhibit that is allowing artists to express their feelings and thoughts about the Vancouver Olympic games.
REACT 2010 was created by the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna and it went online this week to coincide with the opening of the games this Friday. With more than two dozen already showing their works in various mediums for all the world to see, the exhibit deals with the controversial games and their funding, not to mention the ever-present commercial aspect that surrounds the athletic and cultural events of the 2010 Winter Olympiad.
“It’s really exciting,” said Jennifer Pickering, the Alernator’s artistic and administrative director, who first conceived of REACT 2010 several months ago as a means to stimulate thought and a dialogue about the controversial event. “We’ve got a lot of artists from the Interior, from Kelowna, Penticton and Kamloops. We also have a number of artists from Vancouver as you can imagine,” she added.
With a $10,000 grant from the Central Okanagan Foundation in hand, Pickering and co-curators Jason Baerg of Toronto and Arthur Schwimmer of Kelowna put put a call out for submissions and artists from all across the country have responded with works, both critical and supportive of the games,
“It’s and opportunity to really explore, and we’ve set it up as bit of game,” said Pickering. Twenty-five artists were signed up to show their work before the website went online, and Pickering hopes that number will increase even during the games.
“I wanted to make a statement about the Olympics that wasn’t entirely negative or deconstructing the critical,” said indigenous artist Chris Bose of Kamloops. “But I wanted to show people the Other side of the Olympics coming from native perspective.”
Bose’s work in the show is a large composite photographic image, full of iconic totems like the Olympic rings juxtaposed with more earthy images, with a flaming Vancouver cityscape along the bottom, all set over background of a satellite image of the lower mainland.
While he was invited to take part in the official Olympic cutural festival, Bose declined the offer and has instead chose to offer his perspective on the REACT 2010 site.
While the symbolism inherent in his piece is hard to ignore, other works are perhaps more ambiguous and offer up each contributor’s unique perspective on what the Olympics are and what they mean to us all. Local Kelowna artist Roja Aslani created and photographed an installation inn her bathroom comprised of various permutations of the Inuit inukshuk image that is the logo for the 2010 games, including one made up of toilet paper rolls.
Another offering from a Vancouver media artist places the corporate image of Ronald McDonald deep in the heart of an urban jungle looking very much like the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.
Either way, the viewer is left to make their own determinations about each piece and the comment it makes about the Olympics, which is as the creators of the exhibit intended.
“Now that the site is launched, we’re really inviting all the artists and all of the community to come in,” said Jennifer Pickering.
To see the exhibit go to React 2010.com
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Tags: alternator gallery, Olympics, REACT 2010
