PINKING INDEX
HANNAH JICKLING & REED H. REED, BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
October 19 – December 1, 2023
Artist Talk + Opening Reception: Thursday, October 19, 7:30PM
Initiated by Reed H. Reed and Hannah Jickling, BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN is an artist-run taste-making think-tank where artists and children explore themes such as: pop aesthetics and marketing; kids and capitalism; adult/child power relations; food security and the dynamics of an international economy. Within public education, Big Rock Candy Mountain proposes the school as a kind of candy factory. At Hätrʼunohtän zho/Robert Service School specifically, artists and children ask – Who decides the ingredients of soda, the shape of its bottles, the persuasion of its advertising and the after-life of its waste?
As such, this is an exhibition of leftovers – warmed up, re-processed and transformed. Subjected to pressure and heat – plastic, foil, glass, textiles, wood and paper are revealed differently. Shifting in states – between gallery and classroom – these works aim to process the sensory noise of collaborative experiences. Zig-zagging is a method for moving in and out of contexts. As material form, it is enabled by pinking shears and horizontal flow wrapper systems that produce our food packaging in enormous quantities. In the making of this show the artists wondered how a small place like Dawson could impress itself upon the mass-produced materials that arrive here in a constant stream. An hours-worth of garbage picking on Robert Service School grounds – inked and indexed.
Operating across sites and contexts, Big Rock Candy Mountain projects often look like teaching, event production and unpredictable focus groups with kids between the ages of 8 – 12. The following is a list of public programs designed for and with the Grade 5 & 6 students at Hätrʼunohtän zho/Robert Service School during the run of the exhibition:
- Wednesday August 30 –INTRODUCTION TO BIG ROCK CANDY MOUNTAIN
- Wednesday August 30th – SODA STUDIES 1: HOT SODA & OLD BOTTLES AT THE MUSEUM
- Friday, September 8 – SODA STUDIES 2: SMALL SCALE VS MASS-PRODUCTION, ADVERTISING DIRECTED AT KIDS & ARTIST-DESIGNED BOTTLES
- Friday, September 22 – COLLABORATION, SHARED MATERIAL & THE FUTURE
- Wednesday, October 18 – GOODBEAST BOTTLE UNBOXING
- Wednesday, October 25 –TYPHOID CEMETARY CRAMP BARK HARVEST WITH KIKI BARUA (AKA OLISS)
- Friday, October 27 – GLASS BLOWING WITH LUMEL STUDIOS
- Friday, October 27 – CRAMP BARK PROCESSING
- Wednesday, November 15 – TEA-TIME WITH FRAN-MORBERG GREEN
- Friday, November 17 – BOBA STUDIES WITH BO YEUNG
- Friday, November 24 – BIRCH SYRUP WITH SYLVIA FRISCH
- Friday, December 1 – SODA STUDIES BOTTLE BLAST: COMMUNITY MEAL & SODA TASTING EVENT
HANNAH JICKLING AND REED H. REED have been collaborating since 2006. Their projects take shape as public installations, social situations and events that circulate as photographs, videos, printed-matter and artists’ multiples. They have facilitated many collaborative research projects with children, most notably Big Rock Candy Mountain (2015–ongoing). In 2017 they published Multiple Elementary with YYZBOOKS, part exhibition catalogue, artists’ book, and candy store advertisement. Multiple Elementary explores the elementary school classroom as a site for the invention and reception of contemporary art practices.
Jickling and Reed are recipients of numerous awards including the Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence (2016, Emily Carr University), the Mayor’s Arts Award for Public Art (2017, City of Vancouver), the Sobey Art Award Longlist (2018, National Gallery of Canada and the Sobey Art Foundation), the 2018 VIVA Award (Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation for the Visual Arts). Together, they have presented work at: Western Front (Vancouver), Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), Mitchell Gallery (Edmonton), Arts League (Houston), the Malmö Art Academy (Malmö, SE), Dunlop Art Gallery (Regina), Studio XX (Montreal), Carleton University Art Gallery (Ottawa), Gallery TPW (Toronto), Kelowna Art Gallery, Theatre of Research (Hamburg), Westfälischer Kunstverein, (Münster, DE), the Tate Liverpool (UK) and the Ruskin School of Art (Oxford, UK).
Jickling and Reed are currently based between xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in territories – working to locate their practice between urban/southern and rural/northern contexts. They teach part-time at the Yukon School of Visual Arts.
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The artists would like to thank Jesse Bromm of Goodbeast, Tara Rudnickas of the Odd Gallery and Val Loewen of Malaspina Printmakers Society for their major technical, material, and logistical contributions to this exhibition. This project wouldn’t have been possible without the collaboration of Craig Hunter & Jaimie Hale at Hätrʼunohtän zho/Robert Service School, along with the Grade 5 & 6 students of Dawson: Aaliyah, Abel, Colm, Dezy, Eric, Hank, Isaiah, Jack, Jackson, James, Khloe, Louphil, Lyla, Nico, Oliver, Piper, Quinn, Rudy, Rylan, Sam, Sarah, Steven, Taliyah, Tyson and Ved. Thanks to other school staff: Brendaline DeGuzman, Bridgit Amos, Guilia Cecchi, Nathan Dewell, Peter Menzies, as well as Jeffrey Langille who compiled the accompanying text for this show.
In the lead-up to our SODA STUDIES BOTTLE BLAST event, Bo Yeung, Fran Morberg-Green Kiki Barua, Sylvia Frisch, and Lu & Mel Johnson of Lumel Studios hosted hands-on workshops with eclectic, drinkable ingredients and hot, molten glass. Thank you to Charles Atlas Sheppard and Liz Charters for feeding so many of us. Many other people contributed to conversations, feedback, documentation and installation support along the way – big appreciation to Amy Ball, Angharad Wenz, Arcane Perry, Aubyn O’Grady, Bob Jickling, Cari Tangedal, Cassandre Gaumont, Chantal Rousseau, Colleen Dunn, Dennis Dunn, Georgia Sauvé, Hayden Grace, Maura Doyle, Miriam Behman, Rachel Wiegers, and Ryan O’Donovan.
The BC Arts Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Kelowna Art Gallery and the Yukon Food Literacy Grant all contributed financial support to the work in this exhibition.
