For his second “solo” exhibition at MKG127, Jayce Salloum has chosen to invite seven artists to exhibit along with him. These artists have made works that emanate, pulse and situate themselves between elemental states of being, geographies, or relationships. Markers on the road, connecting the oblique, abstract and inherent natures of where we happen to be. These essential ingredients form a type of periodic table of the indescribable, a metaphor of presence within differing geographies and explicit conditions.

Hank Bull took up painting and piano at an early age. Subsequently he studied drawing, photography and film under Robert Markle and Nobuo Kubota at the New School of Art, Toronto. In 1973 he moved to Vancouver to join the Western Front where he became involved in video, performance, radio art, and telecommunications art. Over the last thirty years he has collaborated with artists from all over the world, traveling widely and organizing cultural exchange projects. This led to the creation in 1999 of the Vancouver International Centre for Contemporary Asian Art (Centre A), of which he is the executive director.

Jack Jeffrey lives in Vancouver where he works in a variety of disciplines including sculpture, installation, photography, video, writing and music. His work often shows a playful, subtle, yet critical treatment of everyday objects and spaces. Jeffrey has exhibited extensively, including at The Contemporary Art Gallery, Charles H. Scott Gallery, Artspeak, (Vancouver); Alternator Gallery, Kelowna; Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge; Art Gallery of Windsor; Mercer Union, Toronto; La Vigie Art Contemporain, Nimes, France; and the Temple Bar Gallery, Dublin. Most recently he exhibited in “Point of Origin”, Artspace, Sydney, Australia, and at the Galerie du Tableau, Marseille.

Mireille Kassar was born in Lebanon and currently lives and works in Paris. She graduated from the l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts, and the Sorbonne. Her works have been exhibited in Barcelona at the Miro Foundation; Update ’96, ‘ Houna wa Hounak’ (Here and Elsewhere), Turbine Halls, Copenhagen; East of Here..(Re)imagining the ‘Orient’, YYZ, Toronto; Glasgow, Man Museum; and Bologna at the Palazzo Montanari. She is currently featured in the project “The face“ launched by Arte-East, New York. Her works are held in various private collections.

Ali Lohan is an artist, video maker, and an art-based community organizer who works, lives and exhibits in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Ali has a BFA (Honours) in Film and Video from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London, UK. Her practice involves working closely with residents, artists and community organizers creating works that invite local collaboration while implementing a new framework for community engagement. This has included interactive performances with the street community, painting, drawing, video and blog collaborations, as well as digital storytelling and curatorial projects.

Bernadette Phan lives in Vancouver and has a studio in Japantown. She was a founding member of the desmedia (downtown eastside media) collective and has worked in different collaborations with other artists at home and abroad. Her work, primarily in painting and drawing, is interstitial – between figurative and non-representational. Her interest lies in the exploration of visual slippages between spaces collapsing into one another, and different intentions not quite gelling. She’s still fascinated by the fact that painting can slow down one’s gaze; that not everything is absorbed all at once and can be revisited many times anew. She is represented by Equinox Gallery, Vancouver.

Johnney Watts (JJ) is Afro-Nisga’a born in the Village of Gingolx, Northern British Columbia. He is an artist and community activist working in mixed media, installation, and graphic design. His work is often performative and site specific. While a prolific street/spray painter, JJ taught himself to draw and paint with MSWord draw tools while in jail in 1985, he continues to use that ‘obsolete’ software for the part of his work that is computer generated. For the last 15 years he has also been working and displaying his work in Pigeon Park (in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside) where he is an integral part of the community, “making Pigeon Park a ’safe zone’ for women.”

Tania Willard hails from the Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation in the Interior of B.C. She is a writer, editor, designer, curator and visual artist committed to celebrating Aboriginal expression. An honours graduate from the University of Victoria (1998), Willard utilizes narrative in her work sharing stories, histories and experiences. Tania has been an artist in residence at Gallery Gachet in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, a writer in residence with Native Women in the Arts, and the Banff Centre’s fiction residency. Recently she was awarded a curatorial residency with Grunt Gallery, Vancouver.

Jayce Salloum has worked in installation, photography, video, performance and text since 1979, as well as curating/coordinating a vast array of cultural projects. Salloum has lectured and published pervasively and exhibited at the widest range of local and international venues possible, from the smallest unnamed storefronts & community centres in his Vancouver Downtown Eastside neighbourhood to places like the Musée du Louvre, The Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Canada, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Centre Pompidou, CaixaForum, 8th Havana Biennial, 7th Sharjah Biennial, 15th Biennale Of Sydney, Museum Villa Stuck and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. His solo survey touring exhibition opened at the Kamloops Art Gallery this October and will tour nationally over the next two years.