Getting a buzz at SWARM

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      SWARM has grown into a hive of activity that, true to its name, is getting hard to contain. Launched eight years ago as a way to showcase the fall exhibits at the city’s artist-run centres, it’s evolved into a three-night free-for-all that encompasses three neighbourhoods, dozens of galleries, and almost every conceivable art form.

      This year’s event runs Thursday through Saturday evenings (September 4 to 6), with the focus on Mount Pleasant venues the first night, downtown and Gastown haunts on the second, and Commercial Drive galleries on the third.

      Adding to the buzz this year will be Mobile Swarm, based out of Gallery Gachet and promising to kick-start word-of-mouth interest. On Friday night, as part of the Fearless City project that puts wireless technology into the hands of marginalized Downtown Eastside residents and artists, Fearless participants will post text messages from SWARM visitors about exhibits on screens at most shows.

      Gallerygoers can text 604-825-1277 on the night of the event; Fearless is using Mobile Muse SMS gateway technology, and each message will have a two-letter prefix to represent the gallery they’re texting from. (More info is at Fearlesscity.ca.) Fearless will not only be on hand to lend its cellphones to the event but will also use a shopping cart to roll a mobile screen between venues and catch SWARMers out on the street.

      Still trying to get a handle on the multimedia, multidimensional, multivenue mayhem? Go to swarm2008.com/ for maps, times, and other details. Meanwhile, scan the small sampling below of three artists worth checking out on your wanderings this weekend.

      New Paintings

      By Andrew Salgado. At the Interurban (1 East Hastings Street), opening Thursday (September 4)

      The painting depicts a young man wiping a gush of blood from his nose with a clenched fist, his face a trembling mix of shock and anger. Andrew Salgado’s self-portrait wasn’t just the emotional reaction to a real-life hate-fuelled attack on him—its provocative title is Bloody Faggot—it also led to a series that explores violence and vulnerability.

      “Part of it was that I was switching to oils and they have a more graphic quality—you could really feel the idea of flesh and humanity with them,” the affable 25-year-old explains. “What’s more human than emotion and flesh and brush strokes?”

      Among the resulting works on view at the Interurban are candid portraits of friends and a staged depiction of a masked man wielding a gun. As SWARM visitors circle the 2,000-square-foot gallery, the last image they’ll come upon is another emotion-laden self-portrait.

      Ironically, three years after that first attack, just after completing his series, Salgado was beaten up by homophobes again, this time by eight guys who knocked several of the artist’s front teeth out. But don’t assume the show is all doom and gloom: even after this traumatizing episode, Salgado somehow maintains a sense of humour that finds its way into almost all his works.

      “The last portrait is a pretty aggressive image, but there’s a comical element of seeing someone without their teeth; it looks kind of silly,” he says. “People see that, and then they go up and realize what’s really going on. I like that.”

      Salgado will donate five percent of sales and the proceeds from a silent auction on Thursday night to Spread the Net, the charity founded by Belinda Stronach and Rick Mercer that fights malaria by providing bed nets to African children.

      The Green Collection

      By Charlotte Matthews. At the Clack Clack Empire (524 Shanghai Alley), opening Friday (September 5)

      Vancouver artist Charlotte Matthews started collecting cans of food out of necessity. “When I moved out of my home to go to art school, my grandmother gave me boxes and boxes of canned food,” she says, then adds with a laugh: “I think she was worried that I would starve to death.”

      Looking at all those cans stacked neatly above her cupboard got Matthews analyzing the labels and the way manufacturers use colour as a marketing tool. Her array has since grown to more than 300 cans from around the world, with The Green Collection made up of—you guessed it—just the ones in that hue, stacked in a giant, grocery-store-style pyramid.

      Matthews hopes the juxtaposition of so many different brands will get the viewer contemplating the designs and the colours too: look for the way North Americans use green as a sign of health and nutrition, while Asians prefer to use it only for meat labels—sardines in tomato sauce, anyone? And that idea of the starving artist, the one that so worried her grandma, is bound to come across with the verdant stockpile of nonperishables.

      No surprise that, over the six years she’s collected her tins, Matthews’s obsession has led to trouble with baggage-allowance rules. “Travelling, I accumulate so much weight in my luggage,” says Matthews, whose tins come from as far away as France and Japan. “It’s become a bit ridiculous.”

      Wherethepunks

      By Dina González Mascaró. At JewellerBau/Gallery42 (2408 Main Street), opening Thursday (September 4)

      The inspiration for interdisciplinary artist Dina González Mascaró’s latest project came when the punks who lived in seven houses on her street were getting the boot. With a camera and video recorder, she documented the destruction of the Kingsway-and-Broadway-area houses where condos will soon be built.

      “I really liked them,” she says of her former neighbours. The Argentine-Canadian adds: “Culturally, Vancouver for me is a little bit boring, and I really liked having them in the neighbourhood. They would do concerts and things. Vancouver is becoming a city where these little groups can’t live anymore—and it’s the same for artists too, because it’s getting very expensive.”

      The resulting exhibit features not only photos of diggers and bulldozers ripping into the skeletons of the old houses, but a video loop documenting the same destruction. The silversmith has also crafted tiny sculptures of the punks out of sterling and bronze.

      “Yesterday they had faces, but today I decided to take the faces off them,” says the artist of her now purposely anonymous menagerie. The project is part of an ongoing undertaking to paint and photograph the rubble and renovation on Vancouver’s streets. “It’s all about change—the change in the city we’re living in,” she says.

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