ARCHIVES BY ARTISTS, curated by my old friends Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher (under the banner name DisplayCult) opens tonight at Galerie UQO in Gatineau, Quebec.
The opening begins at 5pm, and the exhibition continues until April 12th, 2025. It features multiples by Joseph Beuys, Ilya Kabakov, Charlette Moorman, and others.
Here’s the press release:
"Institutions commonly act as the repository for documents, images and archives. What happens when artists assume that role, and turn the archive into a creative medium? Archives by Artists presents a diverse range of strategies used by artists to explore and imaginatively reconceive the archive. Their works contain items typically found in an archive, such as photos, postcards, letters, maps and newsclippings, but also unconventional items such as smells and sounds. These eclectic archives illuminate the artists' own art and practice, reflect upon the notions of community and social networks, revisit historical events, examine timely themes about memory and preservation, as well as question the nature and dynamics of the archive itself. Archives by Artists presents not only visual artists who have deployed the archive as a medium in their practice, but also printmakers, poets, performance artists, dancers, musicians and filmmakers.
At Galerie UQO, ten vitrines reveal different aspects of artist-based archives. These works appropriate the look and feel of the archive to make it a capacious platform for reflection, expression and critique. The exhibition's roster includes Canadian and international artists, with works from the 1960s to today: Ioannis Anastasiou & Majka Dokudowicz, Aiden Bettine, Joseph Beuys, Christian Boltanski, Nick Cave & Bob Faust, Amanda Chestnut, William N. Copley, Camila Estrella, Dora García, Ilya Kabakov, Joseph Kosuth, Kiran Kumār, Lefevre Jean Claude, Kiwi Menrath, Charlotte Moorman, Tammy Nguyen, Sophie Nys, Jürgen O. Olbrich, Bárbara Oettinger, Carlos Soto Román, Dieter Roth, Vicky Sabourin, Vilma Samulionytė, Camille Turner & Yaniya Lee, Danh Vō, and Laurie Young. Besides artists' multiples, the exhibition features videos, wallworks, and an installation with a free take-away. Each week selected multiples will be available for visitors to examine, providing the opportunity for personal, hands-on engagement.
While curating and writing about the “archival turn” in contemporary art has covered installations, books, performances and videos, the medium of multiples has been generally overlooked. Archives by Artists positions multiples as a particularly apt vehicle to contemplate and mobilize conceptions of the archive. Each archive-multiple incorporates an assortment of rearrangable items, highlights the experience of tactile, sensory knowledge, and circumvents tendencies toward static placements or fixed meanings. Similar to delving into an actual archive, the multiples in this exhibition generate unpredictable encounters in a process that fosters complex associations between the items. The activity of sorting through and negotiating the components of the multiples endow the viewer with an intimate access and invites them to perform both as a researcher and artist’s collaborator.
In the space of this exhibition, the archive-multiple is presented as a platform to experiment with methods of documentation, collection and preservation to test alternatives and launch critiques. The works align with the ongoing discussion in public and institutional archives pertaining to issues of decolonization and inclusion. The artists’ archives here become vital sites for tracking transformations in the materiality of history, art and heritage. Archives by Artists underscores artistic agency in both research and creation, where the centrifugal function of archives and the centripetal practice of multiples meet in constructive tension.
This exhibition is part of an overall research initiative by Mélanie Boucher and Marie-Hélène Leblanc on museums, exhibitions and collections. It is jointly produced by Galerie UQO, l’Équipe Art et musée (FRQ 2022-2026) and CIÉCO Research and Inquiry Group’s New Uses of Collections in Art Museums Partnership (SSHRC 2021-2028). The exhibition is also supported by the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Université du Québec en Outaouais, and York University.
The installation PaperPolice (2025) by Jürgen O. Olbrich includes books from the library of Yves Lacroix (1939-2017). A founding member of UQAM, Yves Lacroix was a writer and professor in the Department of Literature, specializing in comic strips and the works of Pierre Perrault. He was one of the first professors to teach comics in Quebec.
A parallel exhibition is presented at the library of the Université du Québec en Outaouais, Lucien-Brault pavilion, from March 12 to April 12, 2025.
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Launch of Entretiens #7: Archives, Multiples and the Research Collection
Edited by Galerie UQO, March 12, 5 p.m. Launch price: $15
Entretiens #7 is a publication that features an interview with Jim Drobnick and Jennifer Fisher on collecting as a form of research in the curating of Archives by Artists. Entretiens is a series that brings together partners from various disciplinary fields to discuss the institutional and artistic issues faced by Galerie UQO. Galerie UQO’s mandate is to contribute to the advancement and dissemination of art knowledge, and its publications directly supplement the discourse on contemporary art.
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Curator biographies
Jim Drobnick (OCAD University) and Jennifer Fisher (York University) form the curatorial collaborative DisplayCult, a framework for creatively merging disciplines, media and audiences to propose prototypes for display and aesthetic engagement. Curatorial projects include Portraits as Portals (Art Windsor-Essex and Agnes Etherington Art Centre), NIGHTSENSE (Nuit Blanche, Toronto), MetroSonics (National Gallery of Canada), Aural Cultures (Walter Phillips Gallery), Odor Limits (Esther M. Klein Art Gallery) and Vital Signs (Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery), among others. They founded and edit the Journal of Curatorial Studies. www.displaycult.com
For more information:
Marie-Hélène Leblanc, Director/Curator, Galerie UQO
Marie-Helene.Leblanc@uqo.ca
(819) 595-3900, poste 2677
Jessica Minier, Coordinator, Galerie UQO
jessica.minier@uqo.ca
(819) 595-3900, poste 2327
Galerie UQO
Université du Québec en Outaouais
Pavillon Lucien-Brault, 101 rue Saint-Jean-Bosco
Gatineau, QC, J8X 3X7 Canada
galerie.uqo.ca
Hours: Tuesday to Friday: 10 am to 6 pm, Saturday: 12 noon to 4 pm”.
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