Weekly Selections
Fallow at the Charles H. Scott Gallery
Vancouver, Canada / It’s a rare opportunity in Vancouver to traipse over an artwork in a public gallery. In Germaine Koh’s solo exhibition, Fallow, at the Charles H. Scott, visitors are encouraged to lend their footprints to a transplanted urban tract carpeting the gallery floor.
In the initial version of the piece, first shown in 2005 at the Berlin Künstlerhaus, the artist uprooted turf from “the death strip,” the space between the two initial Berlin “walls,” which were installed in 1961 and 1962 at the height of the cold war. Riddled with traps and mines, many East German citizens died in that void trying to escape to West Germany. By transplanting a piece of the strip to the Künstlerhaus, Koh presented visitors the opportunity to resignify a grown-over-scar in the historical landscape. At the same time, she transformed the gallery from a site of contemplation to one where the form and function (and by extension meaning) is active.
In Vancouver, the work will obviously take on a different meaning. The gallery has not revealed the exact origins of the tract, but here, in the midst of grand scale gentrification and preparation for the Olympics, we can infer that what appears to be an innocent, vacant lot takes on another meaning within a politically contested territory.
Fallow runs 4 Feb – March 8, 2009 at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Emily Carr University. Opening 3 Feb. at 7:30pm.
About this Preview
First published in February 02, 2009 by Amy Zion.
notes
image: Germaine Koh, Fallow Courtesy of Charles H. Scott Gallery
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Weekly Selection Archives
- Nine Lives: Visionary Artists from L.A. at the Hammer Museum Los Angeles, California
- Global Kiosk at the Sala d’Art Jove Barcelona, Spain
- Fallow at the Charles H. Scott Gallery Vancouver, Canada
- Doings or Not at Hobusepea Gallery Tallinn, Estonia
- John Bock at REDCAT Los Angeles, California
- Ann-Sofi Sidén at Bonniers Konsthall Stockholm, Sweden
- Kori Newkirk at Laxart Culver City, California