Grunt gallery’s 30th anniversary year is about revisiting histories, and acknowledging the unique mix of influences that have shaped us as an institution. The social life of our neighbourhood figures large, and this year we feature projects that extend into the community, and artists who work in and through the networks of relationships surrounding us. Vancouver-based artist Zoe Kreye’s practice has consistently engaged with these (often intangible) elements of social interaction, and her project addresses a defining aspect of the Main Street corridor: change. FutureLoss, as the name suggests, anticipates a state of longing. This state – related to the inevitability of loss – has no clear sensibility, but underpins so much in our affective and cultural lives: melancholy, nostalgia, memory, love. Over the spring, the artist will engage directly with shop owners, organizers and residents in discussions around what it means to hold space in a shifting landscape. Space, on this strip and in this city, is currency, and Kreye’s practice reaches through the overarching narratives of real estate, gentrification and speculation to consider the poetics of an individual’s connection to place. What bodies exist here? What corners? And in between these - what would the absence of one or the other look like? Kreye’s practice quietly proliferates: she will meet with participants in their own spaces, and work with them to create discrete objects and impressions in plaster. These works–abstract, raw, wrinkled, angular– will be combined to form a collective sculptural utterance, a statement from the community that is both abstract and earnest. Not quite documentary, but certainly infused with real bodies and things, FutureLoss is a portrait of this neighbourhood, and the spaces between our sense of connection, and the certainty of change. Find project updates at futureloss.ca
