Exhibition | Cam Andrews | Sandwich Special | Jessica Bushey | Declarations | at | Vancouver, BC

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Canada

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Cam Andrews | Sandwich Special
Jessica Bushey | Declarations
May 11 - June 3, 2017

Back Gallery Project is pleased to announce a dual exhibition of new serigraphs by artist Cam andrews and gold plated charms by artist Jessica Bushey. The exhibition will open Thursday, May 11, 2017 at 602 E. Hastings St. in Vancouver, BC and will be on view through June 3, 2017. An opening reception will be held on Thursday, May 11, 2017 from 5:00pm – 9:00pm.

Sandwich Special is a reference to the diner menu board Cam Andrews used to typeset these text pieces. Through the juxtaposition of text and brightly coloured pop images, Andrews highlights the fast, fleeting and superficial reality that is presented through "selfie culture." The text pieces paired with images are headlines that Andrews has curated from tabloids, exploring the idea that celebrity culture itself has adopted the selfie as a form of currency, to be traded and collected. Through social media platforms, the selfie allows celebrities "them" and civilians "us" to constantly create identities and promote new personas.

Declarations are text-based works that draw upon What's App exchanges that reveal the early stages of cross-cultural flirtation. Combining different mobile applications to translate, send and receive texts, Bushey explores how identities are formed and seduction is conducted within the limitations of specific technologies. Bushey is interested in the slippage that occurs and the poetry that emerges. The body of work includes 30 translated declarations, which are embossed in gold charms and also available through a mobile subscription service for a period of one month enabling the collector to experience the thrill of seduction.

Artist ( Description ):

Cam Andrews and Jessica Bushey pursue individual, as well as collaborative art practices. Their most recent collaboration was, "fugitive" an installation in the group exhibition entitled Through the Trapdoor (2014), which transformed a storage locker into a light box to explore technologies of memory. The project was the result of an invitation to artists to temporarily inhabit a storage rental building that was scheduled for demolition. Prior to that, Andrews and Bushey installed a series of large-scale photographs of convicted criminals from the early 1900's at the corner of Robson and Granville Streets. The work, titled "Rogues' Gallery" was born out of an archival police ledger and was in response to an invitation to artists to explore the history of Vancouver. The installation referenced recent Stanley Cup riots and methods used by the authorities to identify potential law breakers via social media. It also highlights early approaches to policing based on race, gender and class.

Cam Andrews is partner and creative director of Bomber Brewing. Jessica Bushey is an archives consultant with the UN Climate Change secretariat in Bonn, Germany. Andrews and Bushey have been exhibiting their artwork in Vancouver for the past twenty-years and have received numerous grants and awards, including Canada Council for the Arts (CCA) and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC).