Gray SchoolGRAY School (1) proposes itself as a centre for education around creative and intellectual exchange, the contextualization of a publication as well as a referent to the formative years of pedagogy: grade school.

GRAY School (1) will be a space for an exhibition, lectures and workshops while also acting as the catalyst for GRAY Publications’ third issue. Since GRAY is a publication that documents fashion, garment and agency we will be working with artists, writers and lecturers who do not necessarily deal with fashion through form, but engage with the field through its many tensions. GRAY School (1) will include contributions from Tobin Gibson, Holly Goldsmith-Jones, KT Kilgour, Zoë Kreye, Willem Jan Smit, and Brent Wadden.

CLOSING RECEPTION MAY 15, 2013 8PM

GRAY School (1) will also inaugurate a new addition to UNIT/PITT Projects’ public program – On Economy: A Sunday Service. Each Sunday this three-hour event will provide an opportunity for anyone to engage with the texts of others. Starting with a workshop of editing texts brought into the space – On Economy: A Sunday Service will move on to a discussion surrounding a piece of literature selected from GRAY’s curriculum.

Each service will be held with a discussion wherein exchange or economy is implicit. GRAY will be sourcing texts around the topics of: “social spheres”, “attitudes”, “objects”, “monetary values”, “written language”, “the potluck”, “the gift” and “the sacred object” throughout its weeks of operation. On Economy: A Sunday Service will bring together guest speakers to engage with texts such as:

Education. London: Whitechapel Gallery, 2011.

Aranda, Julieta, Brian Kuan. Wood, and Anton Vidokle. What Is Contemporary Art? Berlin: Sternberg, 2010.

Baudelaire, Charles. The Painter of Modern Life. London: Penguin, 2010.

Bishop, Claire, Artificial Hells. 2012.

Castellane, Victoire De., and Louise Neri. Victoire De Castellane: Fleurs D’excès. Paris: Gagosian Gallery, 2011.

Eisenstein, Charles. Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition.

Flood, Richard et. al. Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century

Gide, André, and Dorothy Bussy. The Immoralist. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1948.

Groys, Boris. Going Public. Ed. Julieta Aranda et al. Sternberg Press. 2010.

Heilbrun, Charles and Charles M. Gray, The Economics of Art and Culture, 2nd Ed.

Hyde, Lewis. The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World.

Kraus, Chris. Where Art Belongs. Los Angeles, CA: Semiotext(e), 2011.

Leopardi, Giacomo, and Giovanni Cecchetti. Operette Morali: Essays and Dialogues. Berkeley: University of California, 1982.

Mill, John Stuart. On Liberty. Random House: New York. 1993.

Orwell, George. Books v. Cigarettes. London: Penguin, 2008.

Plato. The Republic. Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1955.

Stein, Gertrude. Tender Buttons. Los Angeles: Sun & Moon, 1991.

Schumacher, E.F. Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered.

Scott, Walter. Wendy. Montreal, self-published, 2011.

Tanizaki, Jun’ichirō. In Praise of Shadows. London: Vintage, 2001.

Wessels, Walter J Economics, Barron’s Business Review Books 5th Ed.

Westwood, Vivienne. 100 Days of Active Resistance Bologna: Damiani Editore, 2011.

Whistler, James Abbott McNeil, The Gentle Art of Making Enemies.

Yayoi Kusama Paris: Louis Vuitton, 2012.

Tobin Gibson is a recent BFA graduate from Emily Carr University of Art + Design and is an MA candidate for the Critical Writing in Art and Design program at the Royal College of Art. He has contributed texts to Robin Seir’s solo exhibition at studio1.1 (London, UK) and Anatomize Obfuscation at The Commons (Vancouver, BC). Gibson engages with event and publication-based projects that discuss art, design, anthropology and philosophy through topics of dirt, agency, painting and product design.

Holly Goldsmith-Jones, born and raised on the North Shore, graduated with a BFA from Emily Carr University of Art + Design with a focus in Critical and Cultural Practice. She has spent time studying at the School of the Art Institute, Chicago. She is interested in economies, dress, teamwork and all that is local as a place of motivation.

KT Kilgour was born in Aberystwyth, Wales and immigrated to Canada as a young child. In 2009, KT graduated from the Textile Arts program at Capilano University where she studied traditional textiles. To develop her ideas she moved on to study at Emily Carr University of Art + Design with a focus in textile sculpture. Her current practice bridges theories of craft, fashion and feminism through labour, process, perception, embodiment and technology.

Zoë Kreye ‘s artwork looks to engage the public in relations beyond aesthetics, with the goal of building inclusive, bottom-up associations that have the potential to be catalysts for change within dominant social systems. Often looking outside the realm of art, her projects take the form of clubs, rituals, workshops, adventures, discussions and social sculpture. In 2009, she completed a MFA in Public Art & New Artistic Strategies at the Bauhaus University Weimar, and in 2010 she cofounded the Berlin artist collective Process Institute.  She produces collaborative community arts projects, independently, collectively, and within institutional structures in Berlin, Montreal, Vancouver, New York and Istanbul. Currently she teaches Studio Arts and Social Practice at Emily Carr University of Art & Design.

Willem Jan Smit was born in Eindhoven, Netherlands and traveled to Vancouver to study at Emily Carr University of Art + Design. His work is a mash-up of contemporary icons, graphics and sensations pared down to realize the monochrome inside or a single geometric form. Pixels, fibres, light, physical space, subtle intervention and digital technology are considered to produce what is minimal and energized. Willem will be moving back to the Netherlands this spring to pursue his practice.

Brent Wadden graduated from the Nova Scotia School of Art & Design in 2003 and is currently based in Berlin and Vancouver. He has upcoming solo exhibitions at Peres Projects (Berlin) and Sorry We’re Closed (Brussels) and most recently exhibited at Independent (New York), NADA (Miami) and FIAC (Paris). Wadden’s work connotes rhythm and chance of daily life through painting, textile, and the slippage between two and three dimensionality.

 

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