Corner Store is a multi-site project by Lexie Owen (2014) that interrogates notions of social practice and community engagement in contemporary art. PLOT is transformed through an installation referential of the McGill Grocery near Burrard View Park in Vancouver, BC; a space which not only provides food but also serves as a community hub.

Solid bronze sculptures cast from items stocked in the PLOT Corner Store will simultaneously be 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 becomes the gallery, and PLOT becomes the corner store; intervening in the typical aesthetics and functions of either space. Corner Store thus seeks to recognize the central place of pride which this local corner store holds within the Burrardview neighbourhood, as well as 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.

PLOT SUMMARY

Alongside this installation will be a PLOT SUMMARY publication as part of a series of zines accompanying the activities of each sessional occupant of the PLOT space. The Corner Store PLOT SUMMARY contains photographs of the absent bronze sculpture objet d’arts as well as a conversation between Lexie Owen, Access staff Muhan Zhang, and Harry Mah, co-owner of the McGill Grocery. A supporter and friend to Owen during the past three years of her residency at the Burrardview Fieldhouse, Mah is an indelible presence in this project. This publication provides space for him to share, in his own words, his knowledge of and role within the McGill Grocery and the Burrardview/Hastings-Sunrise community.

Corner Store Discussion Series

The Corner Store discussion and events series is a critical component of this project 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 three discussion sessions in the series are led by artists, curators, and cultural workers knowledgeable to the respective topics being addressed, and are punctuated by special events such as Andrea Creamer’s Anti-Fascist Karaoke, and Lexie Owen’s walking tour of the Burrardview/Hastings Sunrise neighbourhood.

Session 1 | Food: Commodity, Collaboration, Community Saturday, September 29, 2018, 1:00PM-3:00PM In collaboration with BC Culture Days.

Session 2 | Itinerant Institutions Saturday, October 13, 1:00PM-3:00PM

Special Event | Anti-Fascist Karaoke Thursday, October 18, 8:00PM – 10:00PM Hosted by Andrea Creamer

Session 3 | Community and Solidarity Saturday, October, 20th, 2018, 1:00PM-3:00PM In collaboration with Art Book Week organized by Vancouver Art Book Fair.

Special Event | Hastings-Sunrise & Burrardview Walking Tour Saturday, October 27, 1:00-3:00PM