READING THE GALLERY I

October 24, 2019, 2:30pm–4pm
Open to all
Free program with refreshments

Reading the Gallery is a reading group in conjunction with on-site exhibitions. By collectively reading a short text out loud, following by an informal discussion, we will explore the critical relationship between art and theory. In reading and thinking together, we will consider the ways in which galleries can be sites of knowledge production and dissemination, and offer us ways to situate our practices as scholars, students and artists.

Union Gallery's 25th anniversary exhibition Re: UNION offers the occasion to reflect on the gallery's mandate as a responsive resource for enhanced experiential learning by connecting artistic culture across campus, curriculum and the broader Kingston community. The animating questions for the first iteration of Reading the Gallery ask: What has the Union Gallery meant for students, scholars and artists over the past 25 years? What is the role of artist run and student spaces more broadly? How do we assure that they remain sites of enrichment and transformation?

To begin to tease out these questions we will be reading “Imperfect Compliance: A Trajectory of Transformation” by Dana Claxton and Tania Willard. This essay, as a response to the 2012 conference Institutions by Artists, offers a generative critique of artist-run centre culture through a critical decolonizing lens and offers a framework for examining Union Gallery as an art institution and a springboard to imagine the future of this space.