Burnaby Art Gallery hosts Kim Kennedy Austin: Booster Club, February 7 to April 20

Solo exhibition centres the artist’s fascination with 20th-century popular culture using found objects and craft techniques

Burnaby Art Gallery presents the solo exhibition Kim Kennedy Austin: Booster Club from February 7 to April 20, with an opening reception on February 6 from 7 pm to 9 pm.

This solo exhibition by Kim Kennedy Austin centres upon the artist’s fascination with how 20th-century advertising, media, and popular culture can generate myth and meaning. Drawing on a range of movies and books through this body of work, she explores topics such as conformity, consumer capitalism, risk, and blind faith.

Austin employs techniques of drawing and craft to express issues of labour, seriality, and automation. With a make-do attitude, she pairs readily found supplies from hobby and dollar stores with source material quoted from across popular 20th-century print periodicals and media. Selected line drawings, illustrations, and texts are edited, redrawn, and blown-up to speak to the changing nature and perception of craft, the applied arts, and women’s work over time.

Born in Waterloo, Ontario and now based in Vancouver, Austin is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (now the Emily Carr University of Art + Design). She has held artist residencies at the Burrard Arts Foundation and The Sointula Art Shed. Her past solo exhibitions, which date back to 2002, include You, Only Better at the Burrard Arts Foundation; Fast Girls Get There First at Wil Aballe Art Projects; and Industry, Charity, Faith, Hope at the West Vancouver Museum.

Austin’s work is currently held in the permanent collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery, West Vancouver Art Museum, Burnaby Art Gallery, and Global Affairs Canada.

On April 13 from 2 pm to 3 pm, the artist will host a special event called the Booster Club Fireside Chat at the Burnaby Art Gallery. Attendees are invited to celebrate the launch of the publication for the Booster Club exhibition through a relaxing afternoon of discussion with Austin and curators Jennifer Cane and Emily Dundas Oke. Light refreshments will be served. Limited spaces to the event are available, and guests can register by phoning 604-297-4422.

For more information about Kim Kennedy Austin: Booster Club, visit the Burnaby Art Gallery.

Post sponsored by Burnaby Art Gallery.

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