Read Books, Emily Carr University of Art and Design
520 East 1st Avenue, Vancouver, BC, V5T 0H2, Canada
Part exhibition catalogue, part artists book, and part candy store advertisement,
Multiple Elementary explores the elementary school classroom as a site for the
invention and reception of contemporary art practices. The book explores aesthetic
and representative possibilities for process-based and publicly oriented artworks,
especially amidst the complications and contradictions inherent to collaborations
with children.
Contributors take-up adult-child relationships, the wildness of children and the
contact-high they offer to artists attempting to recuperate wonder, failure, and
queerness in their work. The commissioned texts also explore the reception of
childrens art outside of the classroom, the unruly behavior of artist multiples and
taste-making in relationship to the “Other.” Finally, a lexicon for curatorial,
pedagogical and feminist-material-discursivity is offered to further locate Multiple
Elementary amongst larger cultural questions.
With contributions by: Lorna Brown, Sita Kuratomi Bhaumik, Mark Clintberg, Jack
Halberstam, Sydney Hermant, Vesna Krstich, Chris Lee, Stephanie Springgay, and
Maiko Tanaka.
Artist/editors biography
Helen Reed and Hannah Jickling have been collaborating since 2007. They are
currently based in Vancouver, Canada, on the unceded territories of the Musqueam,
Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations. Their projects take shape as public
installations, social situations, and events that circulate as photographs, videos,
printed matter, and artists multiples. They are currently fascinated with the contact-
high intrinsic to collaborative work, especially in their recent projects with children.
They currently teach at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design where they
received the 2016 Ian Wallace Award for Teaching Excellence. They are the 2017
recipients of the Mayors Arts Award for public art in Vancouver.