[BCMA] Media Release Kamloops Art Gallery: Germaine Koh: Weather Systems opens Apri 6

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Germaine Koh
Fair-weather forces (water level), 2008
stainless-steel stanchions with electronic and mechanical systems moving velvet ropes up and down in relation to changing water level reported by Internet data stream from ultrasonic sensor installed at nearby body of water


MEDIA RELEASE

For immediate release from
Kamloops Art Gallery
March 26, 2013

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Germaine Koh
Weather Systems
April 6 to June 15, 2013

Artist Talk: April 6, 5:30 to 8pm
Opening Reception: April 6, 6:30 to 8pm

Weather Systems presents work by Vancouver based artist Germaine Koh from the past two decades and new works made specifically for this exhibition. The selected work relates natural and human systems by focusing on the inter-relatedness of conditions in the built and natural environment that might otherwise seem disparate. It brings together the artist's series of three Fair-weather forces works for the first time. This series comprises architectonic interventions that suggest a reciprocal relationship between human behavior and natural or meteorological phenomena, namely wind, sunlight and tides.

For example, in Fair-weather forces: wind speed, 2002, a metal turnstile rotates at varying speeds determined by the wind velocity outside the gallery, as measured by an anemometer. Similarly, in Fair-weather forces (sun:light), 2005, the gallery's interior light levels are linked to changing exterior light levels, effectively defeating the purpose of the artificial lighting system. In the most recent project from the series, Fair-weather forces (water level), 2008, metal stanchions are connected by velvet ropes that slide up and down corresponding to the current levels of a coastal body of water (transmitted in real time over the Internet by a custom-built sensor that measures tide levels).

Koh's work often links the space of the gallery or museum with the outside environment or actively intervenes in the institution to reveal tensions between the public and private realms.
In an intervention into the gallery's everyday operations and outward appearance entitled Prayers, a fog machine situated at the entrance to the building transmits Morse code versions of data entered on a staff member's computer and a computer within the gallery. Prayers signals activities within the gallery to the outside. It also associates technological advances- such as binary languages, the telegraph, steam power and smoke signals-with today's electronic digital communication systems.

Through her interventions into technology and everyday systems, Koh creates alternate networks of transmission and exchange. By bringing apparently unrelated activity together, disrupting social conventions or transposing one site onto another, Koh shifts expectations of these systems so they become un-naturalized and can be experienced from a shifted perspective. Her work exists in an undefined space, both as art object and functional object, wherein new meaning is produced.


Curated by Charo Neville, KAG Curator
Sponsored by the Vancouver Foundation and the Hamber Foundation

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Please direct all media inquiries to Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery,
(250) 377-2406 or cwillms at kag.bc.ca<mailto:jgordon at kag.bc.ca>


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