Sweet beats by DJ Ruggedly Handsome and your regular EC hotties!
The Cobalt, 917 Main Street, Vancouver, BC Doors at 9pm, Drag Show at 10pm (come early, the line’s always long) Tickets $10 at the door / $8 in advance
Every year a little festival comes to town. Though it’s not as big as some of the music festivals that draw crowds in the tens of thousands, it has a lot of heart. This year, the Queer Arts Festival (QAF) brings the same spirit to Vancouver as it has the years prior.
In it’s sixth year, QAF features a curated visual arts show, a community art show, and three weeks of performances and workshops from all artistic disciplines, including music, dance, theatre, literary, and media arts.
Scroll through the list below to see what you expect and what you need to attend. Click each image to find out more details about each event.
QAF 2014: Must-Sees
By Sad Magazine
What’s tickling your fancy? There so many events to see, we’ve narrowed it down to a few you have to catch over this three week festival.
Ongoing – X
By Sad Magazine
With the tagline of "Ever seen a drunk puppet?" we are both intrigued and already chuckling at this one man show.
July 25 – Colin Tilney Celebrates LXXX
By Sad Magazine
A keyboardist with chops beyond your wildest imagination, Colin Tilney, in partnership with the Vancouver Early Music Festival, will tickle the ivory and your ears with this performance.
July 23-August 9 – Queering the International
By Sad Magazine
An arts fest without a visual arts exhibit? Don’t be silly. This exhibit curated brings together works by queer artists who creatively expand possibilities of how to be Queer in the Large World.
July 31 – Alien Sex: A Gala(xy) Fundraiser
By Sad Magazine
An innovative multi-generational and multi-genre collab between artists, this fundraiser for the festival is a must. Prizes for best dressed queer aliens are only PART of the incentive.
We’re gonna push it, push it good, with the biggest, baddest Diva Showdown to date.
TLC takes on Salt-N-Pepa in a drag battle of ’90s street-wear and pop-hip-hop that will make you wanna talk about sex, baby.
Drag show starts at 10pm sharp with performances by Celestial Seasons, Jadis Vanity and Fly Girl, followed by sweet beats at the mercy of DJ Nancy Dru, DJ Ruggedly Handsome and your regular Electric Circus all-stars!
The Cobalt, 917 Main Street, Vancouver, BC Doors at 9pm, Drag Show at 10pm (come early, the line’s always long) Tickets $10 at the door / $9 in advance
Grit & Gristle artist Nicola Tibbetts has organized a new group exhibition for the North Vancouver Arts Council. On until July 26th, it features her work along with that of Ying-Yeuh Chuang and Ben Lee. Sad Mag talked with her about her donut painting on the back of the Grit & Gristle issue and her love of food.
Art + food. A match made in heaven.
Sad Mag: I was introduced to your work when one of your paintings was on the back of Grit & Gristle. The painting has Honey Cruller and Vanilla Dip donuts positioned on a stage of sprinkles and is part of a series that reimagines The Marriage of Figaro using Tim Hortons’ donuts in the place of actors. Each donut was given a character from the opera based on its appearance, texture, taste, and popularity. It was a perfect note to close the food issue and I think readers would be interested to know where the idea for this series came from.
Nicola Tibbetts: I had been using food as my subject for a few years at that point and was looking to put the foods into a context instead of painting them into flat saturated colour fields. I was sitting in Tim Hortons in Halifax drinking a hot chocolate and I began thinking of ways to do this. I realized that Tim Hortons donuts were a perfect “food” to anthropomorphize and play with because of the variety of textures, colours, shapes, fillings, and associations people have with certain varieties.
I chose The Marriage of Figaro as my narrative because it’s a ridiculous and melodramatic opera, which exaggerates the absurdity of anthropomorphizing donuts. I liked that Tim Hortons donuts are the epitome of low quality food while opera is one of the most bourgeois and “high art” of art forms.
SM: I’ve been looking at your work and food is common to all your series. Could you give a little context to your interest in food?
Eat. Art. Repeat.
NT: I’ve been interested in food for a long time. It began with baking and moved on to cooking when I realized meals were more important than dessert. Growing up we would talk about food, recipes, and our family food history around the dinner table and my sisters and I have continued that into our conversations today.
I love to read books and watch movies about food as well; two of my favourite books are The Art of Eating by MFK Fisher and Charlemagne’s Tablecloth by Nicola Fletcher. My favourite food films are ‘Tampopo’ by Juzo Itami and ‘The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover’ by Peter Greenway. Because I lead a food-centric life that’s all I want to make art about. For now.
SM:Many of your paintings anthropomorphize food and I think the result is at once humorous and elegant. Do you find the use of humour to be a balancing act?
NT: Sometimes the humour in my work is evident from the very beginning like in The Marriage of Figaro series while other times it becomes apparent later. I often appropriate ideas from art history and tend to choose stories and images that I find entertaining and strange which then find their way into my work. For Progress of Love series I copied the backgrounds and took the titles of French Rococo painter Honore Frangonard and inserted my own food characters where he had painted a courting couple. The Rococo genre was a very romantic, playful, and often frivolous period in art history and I wanted to heighten and exaggerate those aspects when I made my works. I’m not laughing at my ideas as I’m making the work but I do sometimes chuckle during an artist talk when I realize how crazy I must sound.
SM:Some of your work explores performance and theatre as well as food. Do you see an inherent connection between them or is there something else you are wanting to evoke in bringing them together?
NT: I think of cooking and serving food as performative even within my home. The series The Feast is inspired by medieval feasts, which were extremely performative. Every dish served had a specific history and meaning. In the Progress of Love series I took this concept even further by making the foods themselves the characters.
SM:You, Ying-Yeuh Chuang, and Ben Lee all use food as inspiration in your practice. What was your intention behind the exhibit with works from you three artists?
NT: The three of us have been colleagues in the Studio Art department at Capilano University for the last few years until the program was cut in April. Oddly I didn’t realize until about a year ago that our processes’ were so similar. I was interested in bringing together three very different practices that were united by the use of everyday objects like food to make curious and unexpected artworks. And in your words from earlier they also balance humour and elegance in their work. Basically I just love both of their work!
” I realized that Tim Hortons donuts were a perfect “food” to anthropomorphize…”
SM:Most of the pieces you have at the exhibit are from The Feast series, which imagines a banquet from beginning to end—untouched ingredients to dirty dishes. Was there a reason you brought this series to the context of this particular exhibit?
NT: Of all my paintings The Feast series is most focused on food and this exhibition highlighted food as subject. I felt that the minimalist nature of much of Ben and Ying-Yueh’s work also contrasted nicely with the abundance and excess in The Feast paintings.
Get yer moustache on and head down to the Fox Cabaret for the Official After Party for East-Side Pride, hosted by sexy-town residents Tran Apus Rex and Shanda Leer!
There’s something about an outdoor theatre experience that can’t quite be matched. While Bard on the Beach isn’t entirely set under the stars (would be a bit of a poor decision in Vancouver’s climate), the keyhole view to the outside world through the back of the stage always adds some extra interest to the carefully crafted and artfully conceived renditions of Shakespearian works.
I first remember seeing A Midsummer Night’s Dream outside as well, but as a one-time student production on the castle ground of Royal Roads University in Victoria. I don’t remember much of this production—I was 12 at the time—but what I do remember is the way the natural light enhanced the production. Well that, and the fairies.
Bard’s production, though with a little more power behind it than a student production, was also memorable for both the setting and the acting, fairies included. The minimalist stage provided the perfect backdrop to the most incredible costumes. They consisted of bustles, patterned tights, brocade, shimmery sheer skirts, and more, each one more intricate and detailed than the last. The costumes of the fairies were a perfect fit to the comedic relief their roles brought to the tense, but still humorous love stories in the play. Overall, the aesthetic of the play was simple and beautiful with key props being used to transform the stage into everything from a forest to a celebratory party. The makeup and hair were also flawlessly integrated into the aesthetic of the play—everything seemed to flow so nicely together.
For me, the most notable part of the show was the integration of the classical Shakespearian script with current elements, like music and references. The fairies were the main source of this with references to Prince, Iggy Azaelea and more. I’ve always appreciated Bard’s effort in making their performances accessible and this show was no different. As previously mentioned, this show had a particular flow about it. Though I did get a bit lost with the language at first (I’ve never been the hugest Shakespearian aficionado), I got my bearings and was throughly impressed at how understandable the cast made the classic tale, and really, how funny they made it all. As one of Shakepeare’s comedies, I was expecting a chuckle or two, but this rendition warranted a few full on guffaws. In fact, I did see a few more mature ladies clutching their pearls in hysterics. They really amped up the comedy and blended it seamlessly with the tale.
Along with delivering an excellent show, this year is also a special year for Bard for another reason—it’s turning 25. Head down to Vanier Park, celebrate a milestone for a Vancouver cultural institution, take in the scenery, and enjoy a play. I recommend the Bard-B-Q if you’re looking for a primo fireworks seat.
