David Rokeby @ Interactive 05, November 3 through 7, 2005
David Rokeby @ Interactive 05, November 3 through 7, 2005
Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 255 Front Street West (entrance on Bremner Blvd), Toronto
Hours: Friday and Saturday 12 – 8 p.m., Sunday and Monday, 12 – 7 p.m.
This must be the place @ InterAccess, held over until December 4, 2005
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, 9 Ossington Avenue, Toronto
Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 – 5 p.m.
InterAccess is pleased to present David Rokeby at Interactive 05, a special offsite presentation during the Toronto International Art Fair, and part of our highly popular inaugural exhibition This must be the place. Come out to the Art Fair from November 3 to 7 and see Taken by award-winning artist David Rokeby.
David Rokeby’s installations have been exhibited extensively in the Americas, Europe and Asia. In 2002, Rokeby was awarded a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, Canada’s highest honour in visual art, and the Prix Ars Electronica Golden Nica for Interactive Art. David Rokeby represented Canada at the Venice Biennale of Architecture in 2002, and in 2004, he represented Canada at the Sao Paulo Bienal in Brazil.
In Taken, Rokeby creates an archive of public space that is at once chaotic and ordered, playful and threatening. A computer observes the public space of the Convention Centre through a video camera and projects two kinds of records of that space side-by-side onto two screens. This installation is presented at Interactive 05 with kind support from Charles Street Video. Taken reflects Rokeby’s fascination with surveillance, movement and public space and complements his site specific work Guardian Angel, part of InterAccess’s inaugural exhibition This must be the place, held over due to high demand until December 4, 2005.
This must be the place is a celebration of InterAccess’s grand reopening in a new and renovated location in the heart of Toronto’s Queen West gallery district at 9 Ossington Avenue. InterAccess has been home to new media art and artists for nearly 25 years. This exhibition brings together four important new media artists in Canada – Vera Frenkel, David Rokeby, Nell Tenhaaf and Norman White – who have a history with Canada’s first gallery and production centre dedicated to electronic art.
The works featured in This must be the place are by senior artists with international reputations who continue their involvement with InterAccess at a grassroots level. This exhibition looks anew at these historical works within the environment of InterAccess’s new space — two floors and over 3,000 square feet for producing and exhibiting media works, representing the “full circuit” of media production and the historical importance of artist-run media production centres within Canada.
The artworks included in This must be the place were produced during the four decades between 1974 and 2003 and have been seen only rarely. Vera Frenkel’s String Games: Improvisations for Inter-City Video is a teleconferencing performance from 1974, the documentation of which has been transferred to DVD especially for InterAccess and this exhibition. Norman White exhibits The Music Lesson, a work from 1984 publicly shown only once. Nell Tenhaaf presents Swell, a recent interactive sculpture never before exhibited in Toronto. David Rokeby’s Guardian Angel, a surveillance-based work previously created for InterAccess’s old gallery space in the 401 Richmond building, is presented here as a site-specific work for our new location at Ossington and Queen.
This exhibition is accompanied by a brochure featuring an essay by Caroline Seck Langill.
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12 – 5 p.m. Exhibition continues through November 7, 2005, as InterAccess proudly presents an additional site-specific work by David Rokeby as part of “Interactive ‘05,” November 4 through 7 at the Toronto International Art Fair, Metro Toronto Convention Centre, 255 Front Street West.
Visit the place online – www.interaccess.org – for the most up-to-date information on great events happening throughout the fall.
This must be the place is generously supported by Charles Street Video, V tape, Creemore Springs Brewery and Dr. Jamie’s Events. InterAccess gratefully acknowledges the support of the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Trillium Foundation.
Media inquiries: Contact Jennifer Cherniack, 416-599-7206 or email
InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre
9 Ossington Avenue
Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M6J 2Y8
Telephone 416-599-7206
Facsimile 416-599-7015
www.interaccess.org www.interaccess.org
General inquiries: communications@interaccess.org
Gallery hours: Tuesday through Saturday, 12-5 pm
Admission is free.