RENÉE POISSONMEETING THE GROUND JANUARY 22 – MARCH 4, 2016

JANUARY 4 – 22 installation and performance residencyJANUARY 22 – MARCH 4 exhibitionJANUARY 22 opening event artist talk 6pm / performance and reception 7pmMARCH 5 closing event publication launch + performance 2pmADJUNCT PROGRAMMING:JANUARY 22 – MARCH 4 FALLING is a community exhibition featuring local school groups, along with ongoing participatory art-making in response to Meeting the Ground. WORKSHOPS WITH MARGO MCLOUGHLIN:JANUARY 31 MEETING THE GROUND OF LIFE AND DEATH (adults) 1 – 4pmFEBRUARY 1 STORYTELLING AND MINDFULNESS (children/youth) FEBRUARY 28 DANCING WITH THE MESSENGERS (adults) 10am – 4pmFEBRUARY 29 STORYTELLING AND MINDFULNESS (children/youth) FEBRUARY 6 + MARCH 5 Make Art Saturdays drop-in, all ages art-making 11am – 1pm

Renée gratefully acknowledges the support of:Creative Collaborators/Performers: Susan Cook, Ann Marie Lisch, Nicole Crouch, Trudy BeatonCommunity Performers: Kaya Kehl, Denise Lawson, Shelly Hollingshead, Susan Youds, Quinn Choreographic Consutation: Holly BrightPhotographer: Alun MacanultyTechnical Consultant: Carrie TannantThe CVAG staff team along with the volunteers assisting with the project: Kevin, Tom, Iris, Alun, Quinn, Jenette, Becci, Don, Dianne

RENÉE POISSON

MEETING THE GROUND

RENÉE POISSON

MEETING THE GROUNDIn the midst of meeting the ground I am experiencing a quiet revolution. I don’t know where I am, whether I am in the process of gradually falling to the ground, or floating away in the great stream. I don’t know if I am less afraid of death. For sure I am more alive. I sense a wider spread of tingling energy touching beyond what I can see. And that was my wish, the impetus for this investigation. I didn’t want my fear of death to stop me frombeing alive and flourishing right now. I knew running away and denial wouldn’t work; facing my fear and looking at death seemed risky. I might be overcome by the darkness. I might not be able to continue my life and be happy, if I let death get huge.

The revolution turns me from my old choice of isolation and self-sufficiency towards an unfolding of myself. Throughout my years of art making I worked alone, defending my creative privacy with a life, or death urgency. Alone, I could try anything. For the previous years of this project, I filmed myself falling any-where I could find soft and private ground. I continue to do this.

Meeting the Ground now involves collaboration in several directions.Five of us have been constructing a movement piece to embody the physicality of the investigation. People who came to help with filming became part of the films. Ideas and approaches are no longer only mine. Word thoughts are swept away by a stream, which now has a star role. The setting and the action have become bigger than myself, or what I had imagined.

– Renée Poisson, 2016

RENÉE POISSON – FINDING LIFE IN THE PREPARATION FOR DEATH

I first met with Renée for a studio visit in the spring of 2014. Through the con-versations that followed over the past two years, an exhibition has emerged. Her multifaceted arts-based research has expanded and continues to evolve. Informed by the dialogue between artist, curator, performance participants and contributors, the work has gained momentum and refinement in relation to the gallery space and possibilities that flow from presentation.

Meeting the Ground is Renée Poisson’s interdisciplinary project taking place in CVAG’s contemporary spaces and on the street front plaza. The project is com-prised of sculptural elements, printed matter, video projection, collaborative performances and a creative residency. Renée’s research is immersive, with an emphasis on dissolving identity through her ongoing experience of walking towards death, as an ordinary aging person. She uses the repeated practice of deliberate, uncontrolled falling, and video documentation to record and examining the movements.

Meeting the Ground makes space for contemplations on death and imperma-nence. Aware that there is no escape, the artist inhabits and explores “this body country, a territory of possibilities, unknowns and unavoidable intensities.”

Facing her fear of death, the artist considers the resistance and release of the body in relation to falling onto and into soft ground. Experiencing fear in the body, Renée investigates its rapport with fear in mind. Renée describes her practice of intentional falling as “a way to approach figuratively that instance between life and death. Finding the body in the fall, is to find life in the preparation for death.”

– Angela Somerset, curator for the Comox Valley Art Gallery

Meeting the Ground is the second curatorial project in a three-part exhibition series entitled In this body: journeys in places of meeting, preceded by Farheen Haq’s exhibition Being Home.

In this body invites conversation about the myriad of ways in which the artists en-counter and deal with interpersonal dynamics, history, culture, behaviors, architec-ture, landscape and politics, and how these influences inform our changing sense of self. The artists and their collaborators share affinities for creating and activat-ing occurrences of ‘being in this body,’ as they confront and negotiate complex experiential terrain residing at the intersection of art and the everyday.

The Comox Valley Art Gallery values the opportunity to support new site-responsive, collaborative and interactive projects by contemporary artists engaged in taking risks, extending their practice into new territory.

RENÉE POISSON has been practicing art for more than five decades. Turning away from institutional education, Renée has studied and learned directly from visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians and craftspeople. Her prolific practice is rooted in independent and collaborative projects involving sculpture, performance, drawing, video and soundscapes.

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sson MEETING THE GROUND INSTALLATION COMPONENTS

south contemporary gallery:going over single channel hd video, projection, 27 min. loop 16’ x 9’– A silent meditation on loss, the haphazardness of survival and the turbulent clarity of consciousness.Participants: Barbara Prowse, Tina Fillipino, Trudy BeatonVisual Consultant: Sally Gregson

what happens single channel hd video, monitor with headphones, 10 min. loop 16’ x 9’– A conversation between generations in images and words asks; what happens when you fall?Additional voice: Nicole CrouchAdditional photography: Barbara Prowse, Grahame Edwards

meeting the ground – falling research single channel hd video, projection, 12 min. loop 16’ x 9’– Composite moving image, sourced from the artist’s intentional falling research footage collected over the past 5 years, interwoven with elements of prints and drawings.Additional camera: Glen Sanforddetritus 1 – 5 sculptural elements, cherry wood, various dimensions– Old unknown tools and/or bones, comprised of a fallen pile of carved wooden forms, intended to be touched.

prints series in progress, 12” x 9” approx.– This hybrid series is a convergence of traditional printmaking images with video stills of the artist’s performance practice, as a means of capturing, translating and archiving the fleeting acts of falling.

window gallery and plaza:

falling six mixed media sculptural puppet forms, motors, fans, timers, audio, various dimensions– Non-literal puppet forms suspended in a falling sequence controlled by motors and timers, reference the detritus on the forest floorTechnical consultant: Carrie Tannant

George Sawchuk Room:

meeting the ground – an ongoing participatory component– The project integrates opportunities for experiential engagement, using a motion-activated videocam, monitor and tumbling mats in the adjacent contemporary gallery.

we rise we fall two performances, 18 min. 9 participants, video projection, soundscape– besides my soundscape space, water and fire, several well known musician-composers have generously offered their work for this performance:Colin Stetson – GroundswellSarah Neufeld and Colin Stetson – With the Dark Hug of TimeEvan Parker – Ak-Kor-Deer– I created the movement component of this project collaboratively with four women who have professional therapeutic knowledge of the body. Together we have made an engagement rather than a dance, anchoring our movement in our physical experience. The movement emerges from our common ground – What does it take to be upright in our world?Choreographic consultant: Holly BrightCreative Collaborators/Performers: Susan Cook, Ann Marie Lisch, Nicole Crouch,Trudy Beaton, Renée PoissonCommunity Performers: Kaya Kehl, Denise Lawson, Shelly Hollingshead, Susan Youds, Quinn

RENÉE POISSONMEETING THE GROUND JANUARY 22 – MARCH 4, 2016

JANUARY 4 – 22 installation and performance residencyJANUARY 22 – MARCH 4 exhibitionJANUARY 22 opening event artist talk 6pm / performance and reception 7pmMARCH 5 closing event publication launch + performance 2pmADJUNCT PROGRAMMING:JANUARY 22 – MARCH 4 FALLING is a community exhibition featuring local school groups, along with ongoing participatory art-making in response to Meeting the Ground. WORKSHOPS WITH MARGO MCLOUGHLIN:JANUARY 31 MEETING THE GROUND OF LIFE AND DEATH (adults) 1 – 4pmFEBRUARY 1 STORYTELLING AND MINDFULNESS (children/youth) FEBRUARY 28 DANCING WITH THE MESSENGERS (adults) 10am – 4pmFEBRUARY 29 STORYTELLING AND MINDFULNESS (children/youth) FEBRUARY 6 + MARCH 5 Make Art Saturdays drop-in, all ages art-making 11am – 1pm

Renée gratefully acknowledges the support of:Creative Collaborators/Performers: Susan Cook, Ann Marie Lisch, Nicole Crouch, Trudy BeatonCommunity Performers: Kaya Kehl, Denise Lawson, Shelly Hollingshead, Susan Youds, Quinn Choreographic Consutation: Holly BrightPhotographer: Alun MacanultyTechnical Consultant: Carrie TannantThe CVAG staff team along with the volunteers assisting with the project: Kevin, Tom, Iris, Alun, Quinn, Jenette, Becci, Don, Dianne

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CVAG gratefully acknowledges support from the Government of Canada, the Province of BC, the City of Courtenay, the Town of Comox, the Comox Valley Regional District, the BC Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts. BC Gaming, North Island College and the Comox Valley Community Arts Council. We especially thank our members, donors and volunteers.

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