WEATHER SYSTEMS
Germaine Koh
Central Gallery
April 6 to June 15, 2013
Curated by Charo Neville, Kamloops Art Gallery
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.
Generously sponsored by Terra Restaurant, Willms Design, Hamber Foundation, Vancouver Foundation
Installation view showing Germaine Koh
Accord of Wood, 2013–
one cord of pine wood to be processed over time, administrative documents
Courtesy of the Artist
Photo: Scott Massey, SITE Photography
Germaine Koh: Weather Systems
Germaine Koh is a Vancouver-based artist whose work relates natural and human systems by focusing on the inter-relatedness of conditions in the built and natural environment. Koh’s work often links the space of the gallery with the outside environment or actively intervenes in the institution to reveal tensions between the public and private realms. Through her interventions into technology and everyday systems, Koh creates alternate networks of transmission and exchange.
This full colour publication was produced in conjunction with the solo exhibition Germaine Koh: Weather Systems at the Kamloops Art Gallery April 6 to June 15, 2013 and includes reproductions of the artist’s works spanning two decades.