Brian Fuata in Residence

Description:

During the Image Bank exhibition at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery in 2021, Western Front hosted Brian Fuata for an online residency to develop new work that enters into correspondence with Image Bank’s history and archive. Image Bank was a project initiated in 1970 by two of Western Front’s founders, Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov, and the artist Gary Lee-Nova, as a method for personal exchange of ideas, images, and information between artists through the postal system.

Since 2012, Fuata has been producing “email performances” as a new form of mail art. In these performances, Fuata appropriates the everyday format of the email as the site for an event. Western Front audiences were invited to participate in Fuata’s email performances during his residency. 

The residency concluded with From To: The Spirit of Hands in August 2021: an improvisational performance live-streamed from the Queensland Art Gallery & Gallery of Modern Art (QAGOMA) in Brisbane, Australia; and a conversation between Fuata and Western Front’s executive director, Susan Gibb.

Presented in partnership with the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, at the University of British Columbia.

Curated by Susan Gibb.

Associated Works:

From To: The Spirit of Hands (2021)
From To: email performances (2021)