Ford City Celebrates Unique Art Gallery Windsor Outdoor Exhibit: Possible Futures

Charlie O’Geen, Limber (Zero Drouillard Road), 2014

Ford City Chosen by the Art Gallery of Windsor as Site for Possible Futures: What is to be Done? The 2014 Windsor Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art

The 2014 Windsor-Essex Triennial of Contemporary Art highlights and celebrates the distinct voices and compelling work by artists in southwestern Ontario, Eastern Michigan, Windsor-Essex and Detroit. The Triennial builds on the AGW's legacy of promoting the region as a cultural hub of (post-) industrial transformation and urban renewal. This year and for the first time, the exhibition will take place at the Art Gallery of Windsor and four offsite venues - The Leamington Arts Centre, Leamington; The Vollmer Culture and Recreation Complex, LaSalle; Drouillard Road, Ford City and the Capitol Theatre in Windsor
This exhibition will run through Oct 3 to January 11, 2015.

The sculpture beside 1297 Drouillard Road.

About the Artist:Charlie O’Geen, Limber (Zero Drouillard Road), 2014

With an academic background in architecture, Charlie O’Geen is currently a College Professor of Architecture (Design, Materials and Tectonics) at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. O’Geen has worked with several design-build practices and has managed construction projects in four countries. O’Geen’s work moves off paper and into a full-scale reality, looking to expose the opportunities of readily available and existing material energy. O’Geen’s project in Ford City is titled Limber (Zero Drouillard Road) and responds to the latent potential of local resources within the community.  Using automotive scrap from the Ford City neighbourhood, the project recognizes the local efficiency in handling, manipulating and compressing recyclable materials. Local skill and resources are used to directly point out the material energy and vitality of the neighbourhood. For O’Geen, the project can be viewed as a lever and makes use of the adaptable, malleable nature of the material at hand to conceptually examine the potential and effective nature of geometry. Discarded automobiles have been specifically compacted to become parts of the equation. The site-derived installation is responsive and reactionary to the site and material at hand.

The AGW would like to thank Ford City Renewal, YU Express, Excess Metals, Ford City Redevelopment Committee and Randy Diestelmann for their support.

 

Exhibition Tours: October 11, 2pm – 3pm and October 25, 12pm – 1pm The AGW is pleased to provide exhibition tours of O’Geen’s installation leaving from the Gino Marcus Community Centre on the following dates in October:

Bus Tour: October 18 AND November 1, 2014  The Art Gallery of Windsor (AGW) will offer
us tours to all the venues of the Triennial. Starting at the AGW, the bus tour will stop at each of the venues, enjoy lunch, artist talks and a curatorial tour! For tickets contact triennial@agw.ca

Curated by Srimoyee Mitra, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Windsor

Curatorial Committee: Melissa Bennett, Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Gallery of Hamilton; Lucy Howe, Artist, Windsor; Stuart Reid, Director/Curator, Rodman Hall Art Centre and Gregory Tom, Gallery Programs Director, Eastern Michigan University Art Department.

For more information please visit www.agw.ca

Possible Futures: What is to be done?is organized by the Art Gallery of Windsor in collaboration with Tourism Windsor Essex and Pelee Island and Windsor Endowment for the Arts and is generously funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Title Sponsor: Caesars Windsor. The AGW would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council. Curated by: Srimoyee Mitra.