RAW POTENTIAL RELEASE! – DEC 11 reception
NEWS RELEASE
Canadian design flaunts its ‘Raw Potential’
at exhibit in abandoned Gastown building
For immediate release Thursday, December 11, 2003
VANCOUVER, BC – A jet-setting exhibit of Canadian design that picked up kudos during its debut at the Tokyo Designers’ Block in October will be touching down in Vancouver from December 11 to 14 as part of its global tour. “Raw Potential: Design from Canada” will be flaunting the best of Canadian design in an edgy and offbeat exhibit in an abandon building at 44 Water Street in Gastown. The exhibit is headed to design shows in Toronto and London, England, in the new year.
“We want to break the stereotype that design is elitist by showcasing some of Canada’s best designers in an unorthodox, raw setting,” says Rob Studer, a member of the Vancouver-based BARK Design Collective, which is organizing the exhibit. “We picked a derelict building in the heart of Gastown to bring this high-calibre, international exhibit down to earth, to make it accessible to everyone in the city.”
“Raw Potential” is one of the largest exhibits of Canadian design to be showcased in Vancouver in recent years. An opening reception and party to celebrate the exhibit’s Tokyo success will be held at 7 p.m. on Thursday, December 11 at 44 Water Street.
The provocative exhibition of architecture, illustration and graphics, furniture, textiles, jewellery, media arts, fashion and product design opened at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo on October 9 as part of the Tokyo Designers’ Block. The exhibit features 35 works, from 26 internationally established and emerging designers, representing design from corporate to street culture, from landed immigrants to indigenous peoples, from the conceptual to tangible.
Casa Brutus, the leading Japanese design magazine, rated the exhibit in the top ten at number seven out of some 100 exhibits during the Tokyo Designers’ Week and Designers’ Block. “QUOTE MAGAZINE”
The exhibition showcases both conventional and iconoclastic design that challenges stereotypes of Canada. Haida Manga, for instance, is the ancient saga of Raven Travelling illustrated in Japanese comic book format or “manga” casting the lewd Trickster-Creator in fishnet stockings. “Aboriginal design is not some artefact buttressing the Canadian myth,” says Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas, a Haida illustrator. “I want to reshape the elevated and sacred Haida iconography into a rudely familiar image, one that is relevant and accessible to all, even to the Japanese.”
Other offbeat designs include a white “one-piece” felt suit by Vancouver fashion designer Natalie Purschwitz, architectural renderings of an “extreme” museum perched precariously at the top of a rocky mountain by Cynthia Wilson and Oliver Lang, and a “Grow-Op” coffee table to green the interior of your cramped, downtown condo by Mark Brady.
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“Canada is the Petri dish of human culture. We are an experiment in identity, where cultures from all over the world are grafted together, where social conventions about marriage and drugs are being radically reshaped, where creativity is unhindered by history,” says Beth Hawthorne, a member of the Vancouver-based BARK Design Collective. “Yet our international image is strikingly out of sync. Canadians are seen as a painfully polite, terribly dull bunch whose greatest contributions to humanity are maple syrup, smoked salmon and log cabins.”
“There is huge potential for the creative design industries to reshape Canada’s brand image,” adds Studer. “We wanted to capture the spirit of the ‘New Canada’ through conceptual design and consumer products, to provoke entirely new perceptions of our country as urban, youthful, eclectic and outrageously entrepreneurial.”
Curated by the BARK, the exhibition is based on a nation-wide call for design submissions, which display unapologetic qualities of a newfangled Canadian brand. Its intention is to expand the world’s perception of Canada as a place where there are world-class designers conceiving progressive design solutions through edgy aesthetics, novel functionality and material innovation.
BARK* Design Collective was founded in 2003 by six Vancouver designers who recognized a lack of support, identity and dialogue in the West Coast contemporary design scene. BARK’s mandate is to heighten the profile of Canadian design and highlight provocative design concepts resulting from the exploration of unique materials, forms and cultures. BARK actively engages the public through local and international exhibitions, as well as an upcoming lecture series on desing. BARKS includes Robert Studer and Beth Hawthorn of ‘this is it design Inc., Christian Blyt and Marja Koskela of Up and Down Productions, furniture designer Steve Suchy and Victor Chan of c-design studio.
MEDIA EVENT
WHAT: Opening Party and Reception
DATE: Thursday, December 11, 2003
TIME: 7 p.m.
PLACE: 44 Water Street, Vancouver
For more information contact or to schedule special photo sessions contact:
Rob Studer or Beth Hawthorn of this is it design at info@barkbark.ca 604-682-8447