Godfrehannah_g, Art Direction, Designed by Terry Corrigan. Cover image. Critical Fictions, hannah godfrey (Winnipeg: ARP, 2023). Courtesy the author.
Book Launch: Hannah Godfrey: Critical Fictions
FRI, JUL 21 / 12 – 1PM
Teck Gallery
Join author Hannah Godfrey, Or Gallery Director Jenn Jackson, and SFU Galleries Curator Kristy Trinier for the book launch of Critical Fictions. Hannah Godfrey will provide a reading from an excerpt of the book, with introductions and questions facilitated by Jenn Jackson and Kristy Trinier. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the launch and at Or Gallery.
In her bold departure from conventional art criticism, Hannah Godfrey looks to the work of five contemporary queer visual artists, with attention to, and affection for, the wit, subversion, and many complexities of each of their practices. Shifting through written forms as experiential coves, Critical Fictions is a collection of inventive responses that are delicately linked, and devoted to their subjects.
Alongside the five artists — Derek Dunlop, Kristin Nelson, Hagere Selam shimby Zegeye-Gebrehiwot, Andrea Oliver Roberts, and Logan MacDonald — Godfrey shares a keen interest in intricacies of queer power, the body, and abstraction. Her varied approach to criticism embraces stories, poetry, essays, and other textual formations as means of wayfaring through the work of art. In these pages the reader will find not only celebrations of the depth, beauty, and acuity of the artworks discussed, but explorations of the imaginative thoroughfares they open up.
Hannah Godfrey/hannah_g (she/her) is an interdisciplinary writer & artist. Her practice has included live art, video, soundscapes, drawing, poster making, and text and is informed by queer echo-locating, contemporary art, and recollection. She has exhibited, performed, and given readings in Canada, the US, and Europe. Kindness, mischief, and social justice underpin her practice. She has been awarded funding from the Canada Council for the Arts, Winnipeg Arts Council, Manitoba Arts Council, and Arts Council England for her work. Her book, Critical Fictions, a collection of interdisciplinary writing about five queer, Canadian artists was published by ARP in 2023. Her forthcoming book, Oubliette, contains meditations on grief among glimpses of her mum, and will be published in the autumn by Nevermore. hannah was the director of the Artist-Run Centre, aceartinc. from 2008-2018. aceartinc. was an artist-run centre and gallery in Winnipeg mandated to support, exhibit, and disseminate work by contemporary artists, especially those from underrepresented communities. As director, she managed over 60 exhibitions and ran the annual juries to select them. She also ran the art writing program, Critical Distance. She co-founded Flux Gallery, co-founded and ran The Cartae Open School, and co-founded the gallery's first Indigenous Curatorial Residency.
Co-presented with SFU Galleries, Or Gallery, and SFU Vancouver Campus
