Corner Store (2018) was a multi-site project that interrogated notions of social practice and community engagement in contemporary art. Jointly hosted at Access Gallery and The McGill Grocery, the project saw Access’s PLOT project space transformed through an installation referential of the grocery – located near Burrard View Park in Vancouver, BC; a space which not only provides food but also serves as an important community hub.

Solid bronze sculptures cast from items stocked in the PLOT Corner Store were simultaneously displayed on the shelves of the McGill Grocery for the duration of the installation. In this reciprocal exchange of material objects and embodied practices, the McGill Grocery became the gallery, and PLOT became the corner store; intervening in the typical aesthetics and functions of either space. The project recognized the central place of pride which this local corner store holds within the Burrardview neighbourhood, and attempted to upend the implicit power structures and hierarchies of labour that oftentimes underlie artist-led community projects. While this project has evolved out of the specific histories of the Burrardview neighbourhood, it speaks broadly to the social and economic transactions that constitute neighbourhood space and asks important and timely questions about the role of artists in “engaging” community.

Photos:

Denis Gutiérrez-Ogrinc

Support:

Access Gallery

Banff Centre for the Performing Arts

The City of Vancouver’s Parks Board

The Fund for the Arts of the North Shore

An important component animating the Corner Store installation at Access Gallery was an Event and Discussion series programed by Owen with support from Access staff, serving as a point through which community members at-large can come together to discuss pertinent questions of social practice and community engagement in contemporary art, as well as urgent and specific local issues of food commodity and production, gentrification, and the erosion of community under conditions of financial precarity.

The series included:

Discussion 1 | Food: Community, Commodity Collaboration with Holly Schmidt, Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling

Discussion 2 | Itinerant Institutions with Caitlin Chaisson and Leah Weinstein, moderated by Joni Low

Discussion 3 | Community + Solidarity with Andrea Creamer, Elliott Hearte and Vincent Tao, moderated by Am Johal

Event 1 | Performance of Andrea Creamer’s Anti-Fascist Karaoke Lounge Party, with Creamer in attendance

Event 2 | Corner Store Walk – a walk through the Hastings-Sunrise neighbourhood lead by Owen, highlighting the past and current locations of Corner Stores in this historically underserved area.