Instant Coffee: The hero, the villain, the salesman, the parent, a sidekick and a servant

May 11, 2013 - April 27, 2014
Opening Wednesday May 15, 2013, 6-8PM

Instant Coffee presents a new installation that operates as a stage or set for social framing and interaction. Testing the highly trafficked Teck Gallery as a site for socially engaged contemporary art projects, the installation blurs the lines between the work, participants and audience. The hero, the villain, the salesman, the parent, a sidekick and a servant considers theatrical histories and the title evokes stock characters in Victorian melodramas. The work will treat the Teck as the public site that it is, allowing for myriad social activities and configurations to play out within its framework over time.

Instant Coffee is an artist collective based between Vancouver and Toronto. Formed in 2000, the collective’s current active membership includes Jinhan Ko, Khan Lee, Kelly Lycan and Jenifer Papararo in Vancouver, with Cecilia Berkovic and Kate Monro in Toronto. They have shown inter­na­tion­ally, have exhib­ited in many promi­nent art insti­tu­tions, and have pro­duced numer­ous projects in pub­lic space.