www.the-national-institute.org
Opening Reception: Saturday September 18, 2004, 3 – 5 PM
Closing date: Sunday October 17, 2004

Starting on Saturday, September 18th, the Art Gallery of Sudbury will be transformed into a branch of the National Institute for the Arts, a chain of artists’ residences situated in vacant hospital buildings across the country, known informally as The Institute™.

The work takes the form of a web-based installation integrating found elements from Sudbury itself as well as the prints, plaques, songs and texts of the travelling exhibition. Contributing to the web site are leading artists, writers and civil servants invited by Vera Frenkel to shape the personalities of The InstituteTM residents with whom visitors to the gallery can interact. A government scheme to retrain unemployed cultural bureaucrats as caregivers provides these residents with both special care and occasion for mischief.

As Gallery Director Celeste Scopelites says. “To enter the Art Gallery of Sudbury during this exhibition will be like entering The Institute™. Couches, reading tables and lamps alongside projected web-sites will invite viewers to interact with the characters who reside within the artwork. We’re very excited to bring this unique exhibition to Sudbury and especially to have Vera Frenkel here as a guest artist. Throughout her career, Frenkel has pushed the envelope of what we call art; her work challenges the viewer to be involved and has no fear of engaging us with tough ethical questions.”

Frenkel’s multidisciplinary projects have made her one of the most respected and influential artists in Canada and elsewhere. Her work has been seen at documenta IX, Kassel; the Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz; the Setagaya Museum, Tokyo; the National Gallery, Ottawa and the Venice Biennale. Her work was the featured Spotlight at the Images Festival of Film, Video and New Media, and has been seen at the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris; the Georg Kargl Gallery, Vienna and most recently at the Freud Museum, London, where it was the centrepiece of an international symposium on her work held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. The Institute™, following its Sudbury stay, will open in November at the Art Gallery of Carleton University, Ottawa.

Generous support towards this exhibition and its bilingual catalogue was provided by the Canada Council for the Arts, Carleton University Art Gallery, Hart House of the University of Toronto, the Ontario Arts Council and the Art Gallery of Sudbury. The Art Gallery of Sudbury would also like to thank Vianet Solutions and the Travelway Inn for their support.

For more information on the exhibition and the artist please contact:

Lise Leclair / 705) 675-4871 Ext. 227 / lleclair@artsudbury.org






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