VISUAL ART FORUMS | Buster Simpson
Join us for a talk with artist Buster Simpson.
MoCap Studio I Room 285E, North Building
Join us for a talk with artist Buster Simpson.
Buster Simpson’s conceptual / process-based art practice has been focused on urban environmentalism for more than four decades. From his home base in Seattle, he has traveled extensively, working collaboratively across disciplines, social spheres, and generations, to create an extensive body of work that inspires individuals and communities to be responsible environmental stewards. Known for artworks of varied duration and scale, from poetic, performative gestures to permanent, large-scale public art projects, Simpson’s talk will focus on his recent investigations into rising sea levels in Gubbio, Italy, Captiva, Florida and Puget Sound, and his proposals for artworks that address one of the most pressing global issues of our time.
Simpson, an artist active since the 1970s, has worked on major infrastructure projects, site master planning, signature sculptures, museum installations, and community projects. He received his MFA in 1969, and later, the Distinguished Alumni Award in Architecture and Design, from the University of Michigan. A recipient of numerous awards, Simpson holds NEA fellowships and the Americans for the Arts Artist of the Year Award (2009).
Simpson has exhibited at The New Museum, MoMA PS1, Seattle Art Museum, The Hirshhorn Museum, Capp Street Project, International Glass Museum, and a recent retrospective at the Frye Art Museum. Simpson’s work is included in numerous public commissions throughout North America. Presently, he is working on commissions for the Seattle Seawall, a large landfill in San Antonio, Texas, the Willamette River Greenway in Portland, Oregon and a pergola for the Seattle Amtrak Station. In the past two years, Simpson has conducted two five-week climate change confab at the Rauschenberg Foundation on Captiva Island, Florida.
Simpson often melds social and ecological concerns into an aesthetic, and continues to employ intervention and temporary prototypes as a way to inform his more lasting works in public.
This event is free and open to all.
The Visual Art Forums are presented by the Audain Faculty of Visual Art + Material Practice. This event is co-presented with the City of Vancouver Public Art Program and produced in partnership with The Foreshore, a year-long collaboration between Access Gallery and Other Sights for Artists’ Projects inspired by the deep influence of the waterways on our cities and societies on the West Coast.
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more about our co-presenters
The foreshore is a place of unclear jurisdiction, and thus of contestation, friction, and constant movement. Those who dwell in this zone must continually adapt to a changing environment. The foreshore also conjures histories specific to this region: narratives of trade and exchange, habitation and nourishment, resistance and violent erasure. It might similarly evoke our contemporary lived situation in this place. Considering the potential of this zone as both concept and site, The Foreshore initiative asks the following: how do we generate conditions of emergence? How can we take up space differently? How do we support unruly practices and futures?
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Established as a non-profit artist-run centre in 1991, Access Gallery is platform for emergent and experimental art practices. We enable critical conversations and risk taking through new configurations of audience, artists, and community. For more information visit accessgallery.ca.
Access Gallery gratefully acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and BC Gaming, the City of Vancouver, the Hamber Foundation, the Burrard Arts Foundation, the Contemporary Art Gallery, NSB Reederei, and our committed donors, members and volunteers.
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Other Sights is a non-profit arts organization that develops new and unexpected exhibition platforms outside of the gallery context. Other Sights collaborates and shares resources with organizations and individuals to present artworks that consider the aesthetic, economic and regulatory conditions of public places and public life. For more information visit othersights.ca.
Other Sights gratefully acknowledges the support of the British Columbia Arts Council, The Canadian Union of Public Employees Local 15.