[BCMA] Media Release: Pedro Reyes Art Turns Guns To Trees - Tree Planting @ The Reach October 5 at 3pm

[Moderated BCMA subscriber listserv.]

For immediate release
contact: Kat Wahamaa kwahamaa at thereach.ca<mailto:kwahamaa at thereach.ca>
604-864-8087 x124

Pedro Reyes Art Turns Guns To Trees
Tree Planting Ceremony at The Reach
Wednesday, October 5, 3-4pm
The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford
32388 Veterans Way
Abbotsford, BC...Wednesday, October 5, at 3pm join University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) Chancellor Brian Minter and UFV Dean of Arts Jacqueline Nolte in a ceremonial tree planting utilizing a work from The Tree:  From the Sublime to the Social, an exhibition organized and circulated by The Vancouver Art Gallery, currently on view at The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, 32388 Veterans Way.

The Tree: From the Sublime to the Social provides a provocative exploration of the tree's significance in art; spanning time, cultures and media. The exhibition incorporates historical images of the forest that evoke the grandeur and power of the natural world and includes works by contemporary artists who use the tree as a device to question humankind's relationship with the natural environment.

The tree planting ceremony is part of the process of a work created by artist Pedro Reyes, Pala por Pistolas, 2007.  With this artwork, Reyes turns the Gallery into an "agent of transformation," and in doing so urges people to turn awareness into action.
Reyes worked with a Mexico City agency to encourage people to hand in their guns and trade them for food stamps. 1527 weapons were collected, 40% of them were high power automatic weapons. These guns were taken to a military zone and crushed by a steamroller in a public act. The pieces were then taken to a foundry and melted. The metal was sent to a major hardware factory to produce 1527 shovels.

These shovels have since been distributed to a number of art institutions and public schools where adults and children engage in the action of planting trees. This ritual has a purpose of showing how an agent of death can become an agent of life. Reyes and the filmmaker Raphael Ortega have documented this process in a five single-channel installation of the same name.

The tree planting takes place on Wednesday, October 5 from 3-4pm at the Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford, 32388 Veterans Way, Abbotsford.  For more information on the tree planting ceremony or the exhibition call The Reach at 604-864-8087 x111 or email info at thereach.ca<mailto:info at thereach.ca> or visit www.thereach.ca The Tree: From the Sublime to the Social, is on view at the Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford until October 9, 2011.

-30-



Kat Wahamaa
Cultural Programs Manager
t 604 864 8087
f 604 864 8048

The Reach
Gallery Museum Abbotsford
32388 Veterans Way
Abbotsford, BC V2T 0B3
thereach.ca<http://www.thereach.ca/>

[cid:image001.gif at 01CC81B3.E8865AB0]<http://www.thereach.ca/>



-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.vvv.com/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20111003/95846f8e/attachment.htm 
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.gif
Type: image/gif
Size: 2020 bytes
Desc: image001.gif
Url : http://lists.vvv.com/pipermail/bcma/attachments/20111003/95846f8e/attachment.gif