Other Sights for Artists’ Projects is an arts collective based in Vancouver, BC. The organisation's mandate states, "Other Sights' projects consider the aesthetic, economic and regulatory conditions of public places and public life." Incorporated as a non-profit society in May 2005, the collective supports temporary public art projects by providing expertise in curation, project management and promotion. Other Sights supports art in spaces and sites accessible to a broad public and as such considers the public realm to be both the built environment, including streets and parks, as well as media and communication technologies.
Other Sights board members include Patrik Andersson, Clint Burnham, Holly Schmidt, Jordan Wilson and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill. The production team includes Lorna Brown, Barbara Cole, Colin Griffiths, Vanessa Kwan, Marko Simcic, Jen Weih, and general manager, Sunshine Frère. Though they do not operate from a fixed address, Other Sights is an artist-run center and a member of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centers (PAARC).
Select projects
Big Rock Candy Mountain (2016 - 2018) Big Rock Candy Mountain is a project by artists Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed. The project took the form of a multi-year artist residency with students from Queen Alexandra Elementary School in East Vancouver.
Through a program of workshops, printed matter, artist editions and installations, BRCM considered the school as a site of production with a variety of capacities and processes. The artists investigated the potential of children as collaborators and sought to challenge intellectual divisions between children and adults, and between fine art and art education. The project expanded traditional ideas about public art by producing a range of outcomes rather than a single finished ‘artwork’. For instance, one outcome of the project was a special bubble gum, designed through taste workshops by the students, and sold as an artists’ multiple.
The project takes its name from Big Rock Candy Mountain, a folk song that describes a mythical utopia. The artists chose this title because, as they describe it, “The Big Rock Candy Mountain is a topsy-turvy world, where adults and rationality no longer define the rules and limits of what is possible." Because the project chose to focus on flavor and confectionery it made ideas from art history accessible and interesting to children. Moreover, the project initiated a role reversal whereby children were considered the experts on candy and were consulted by the artists, rather than students being taught. Lucien Durey wrote of BRCM, “The project has proven that socially engaged practices can be funny and accessible while exploring new material approaches and furthering contemporary art dialogues."
As a result of the project, Hannah Jickling and Helen Reed were joint recipients of the 2018 VIVA Award.
The Foreshore (2015 - 2018) The Foreshore was a multi-year collaboration between Access Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, and Other Sights. It was primarily a series of events, such as talks and discussions, screenings, mini-artist residencies, and open studios. Inspired by the influence of waterways on the cities and societies of the West Coast of Canada, and of the foreshore as a zone of flux and change, the project was an extended think-tank intended to bring about the exchange of ideas.
The Foreshore project had three phases. The first took place between 2016 and 2017 and was focused on intensive research. It featured nineteen collaborative discussion sessions, two field trips, and four residencies. The second phase, from 2017 to 2018, featured four collaborative discussion sessions with a previously participating session artist inviting a new participant to continue on discussing ideas from previous sessions as well as current research. Presenters for Phase II, sessions 1-3 include: Carmen Papalia, Joulene Tse, Coll Thrush, Kamala Todd, Dana Claxton and Jaleh Mansoor. Phase three, "The Foreshore Listens," was an audio zine series commissioned by Other Sights, led by Jen Weih. Each audio zine was edited by an artist, focused on a particular aspect of the Foreshore Sessions, and included ambient recordings, poetry, fragments of interviews, and foley recordings to create a aurally textured piece retirement of self-published artist zines. The series episodes were: "Embodiment" by Stacey Ho, "Water Weight - Friction Possibility" by Dan Pon, "Sea Legs" by Sara Moore, and "We Call You To Witness" by Vanessa Campbell. Sound mixing & design was by Pietro Sammarco.