2014–15 Calgary Biennial
Atlas Sighed
December 1, 2014 -March 31, 2015
Curator: Steven Cottingham
Working monumentally and secretly, the following artists will be taking over billboards, bus shelters, telephone poles, newspapers, alleyways, administrative offices, cellphones, and the sky itself to realize this project: Dick Averns, Brittney Bear Hat, Steven Beckly, Victoria Braun, Bogdan Cheta, Alannah Clamp, CONSULTANCY GROUP, the Ladies Invitational Deadbeat Society, Natalie Lauchlan, Yvonne Mullock and Mia Rushton, Sans façon, Dan Zimmerman, and others.
The Biennial will be dispersed throughout Calgary and its suburbs with support from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Pattison Outdoor, and anonymous sponsors. A number of conversations and public events will be held as part of this exhibition. Additional details will be released throughout the next few months.
Timeline of events
Early December 2014: Atlas Sighed begins. Natalie Lauchlan’s interventional installations goes up in the neighbourhoods of Martindale and Canyon Meadows. Alannah Clamp’s Let’s fall in love and split the rent appears in select newspaper classifieds. Bogdan Cheta’s There is no place likes this place near this place so this must be the place proceeds by appointment, with resulting writing manifesting mysteriously and incidentally.
Mid-December 2014: Yvonne Mullock and Mia Rushton’s Department of Lost Things is dispersed as a free newspaper throughout the city.
Late December 2014: Brittney Bear Hat takes over a billboard near Blackfoot and Glenmore Trail. Dick Averns’ 90kmh Economy Drive project will be dispersed in various forms throughout the city. Victoria Braun’s #girlproblems poems will replace advertisements along the LRT line. Steven Beckly’s Reunions photographs will be installed in street-level ad spaces throughout the suburbs.
Late January, 2015: Atlas Sighed public lectures and catalogue launch party. Dan Zimmerman’s app development project, LikeBlockr, becomes freely downloadable.
February 2015: Results of a Public vernaculars workshop with Derek Beaulieu’s Creative Writing class at ACAD will appear throughout the city. CONSULTANCY GROUP’s work appears on numerous cellphones.
March 2015: Sans façon’s You Are Here floats above Calgary.
Image: 90m/h Economy Drive by Dick Averns. Near Barlow Trail and Airport Road. Courtesy Calgary Biennial.
March 31, 2015: Atlas Sighed concludes.