Saturday 21 December
-12°C and Scattered Clouds
Another milestone: Agnes is closed to the public as we prepare for Agnes Reimagined. Stay tuned for plans for off-site programming!
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Through spoken-word audio, filmed performances and specimens, contents of the Trade Catalogue of Everything are revealed. Displayed as objects of appropriation and speculation, these are samples from a USB-ready “commercial” list addressed to extraterrestrial beings. With reference to NASA’s 1977 Voyager Golden Record, The Golden USB captures land, water, air, plants, animals, and fragments of nature, along with human culture, industry and invention. In considering the prospect of interstellar trade, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens raise timely questions about the limits of commodification, including the ownership of the Earth and its life forms. This exhibition is curated by Sunny Kerr, Curator of Contemporary Art.
The collaborative duo Ibghy and Lemmens is the inaugural Stonecroft Foundation Artist-in-Residence, hosted in collaboration with Queen’s Film and Media. Read about their residency here. The artists visited Kingston for research and production phases, beginning in mid-March. They have collected “entries” from a diverse group of artists, technicians, poets and scholars to create this new Canada-focused chapter of their ongoing project. In early September and mid-October, they will return to Kingston to elaborate on the exhibition’s themes.
A publication will follow the exhibition, reflecting Ibghy and Lemmens’s oeuvre to-date and featuring essays by Lorna Brown and Sunny Kerr.
Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens, The Golden USB (2014-ongoing). Installation: multiple channel video, sound, sculpture, text, dimensions variable. Installation view, 13th Biennial de Cuenca, Cuenca, Ecuador.
Installation view of The Golden USB: Marilou Lemmens and Richard Ibghy. Photo: Paul Litherland
Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens have developed a collaborative practice that spans across multiple media, including video, performance and installation. Their work explores the material, affective and sensory dimensions of experience that cannot be fully translated into signs or systems. For several years, they have examined the rationale upon which economic actions are described and represented, and how the logic of economy has come to infiltrate the most intimate aspects of life.
Most recently, their work was presented in solo exhibitions at the Jane Lombard Gallery, New York (2017), Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, Canada (2017), Louise and Reuben Cohen Art Gallery, Moncton (2017) the International Studio & Curatorial Program, New York (2016), YYZ Artists’ Outlet, Toronto (2016), Esker Foundation Contemporary Art Gallery, Calgary (2016), Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Montreal (2016), VOX – Centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal (2014), Trinity Square Video, Toronto (2014), Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles (2012) and G Gallery, Toronto (2012).
They have participated in a number of group exhibitions including at venues such as the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, Vancouver (2017), XIII Bienal de Cuenca, Cuenca Ecuador (2016), Blackwood Gallery, Mississauga (2016), Art Gallery of Guelph, Guelph (2016), Postmasters Gallery, New York (2016), 14th Istanbul Biennial (2015), La Biennale de Montréal (2014), Manif d’art 7: Quebec City Biennial (2014), Herbert Read Gallery, Canterbury (2014), La Filature, Scene Nationale and La Kunsthalle, Mulhouse (2013), Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden, Norway (2013), Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow (2012) and 10th Sharjah Biennial (2011).
Their writings have been published in Le Merle, C-magazine, New Social Inquiry, and Pyramid Power. They have published two artist’s books Tools that Measure the Intensity of Passionate Interests (2012) and Spaces of Observation (2012). Recently, they contributed a catalogue essay for the publication accompanying La Biennale de Montréal (2014). The artist duo lives and works in Montreal and Durham-Sud, Quebec.
More info: www.ibghylemmens.com
