Public Art Discussion with Karen Tam and Henry Heng Lu

Image: Blood and Tears, 2018. Photo courtesy of Carey Shaw

Public Art Discussion, with Karen Tam and Henry Heng Lu.

Moderated by Ciara Mckeown

Tuesday November 19th, 6 - 7:30 pm

Stanford Perrott Lecture Theatre, AUArts

Please join us for a discussion concerning public art. This discussion with Karen Tam and Henry Heng Lu, moderated by Ciara Mckeown, is presented in conjunction with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery’s current exhibition Sea of Clouds by Karen Tam.

Bar: 5:30 - 7pm
Talk: 6 - 7:30pm

Karen Tam will discuss her public art project, Agnes Street Park, currently underway in New Westminster, British Columbia. The new park is located at 824 Agnes Street, the former site of the Chinese Benevolent Association (CBA) and in a neighbourhood known as the second Chinatown in New Westminster. The Agnes Street Park will celebrate and pay tribute to the municipality’s early Chinese Canadian community as part of an ongoing Chinese reconciliation process.

This talk is supported by Calgary Arts Development.

More info about this project here:

https://www.newwestcity.ca/publicart/sb_expander_articles/3438.php

Karen Tam is a Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based artist whose research focuses on the constructions and imaginations of “ethnic” spaces through installations, sculptures, textiles, and drawings. Since 2000, she has exhibited her work and participated in residencies in North America and Europe, including the Victoria and Albert Museum (UK), He Xiangning Art Museum (China), Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (Canada), Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (Canada), McCord Stewart Museum (Canada) and Deutsche Börse Residency at the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Germany). Karen Tam was awarded the 2021 Prix Giverny Capital. She was long-listed for the 2010 and 2016 Sobey Art Awards. In 2024, her exhibition Swallowing Mountains at the McCord Steward Museum received an honourable mention from the Canadian Museum Association.

Karen Tam holds an M.F.A. in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Ph.D. in Cultural Studies (Goldsmiths, University of London). Her work is exhibited in museums and corporate collections such as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec, Global Affairs Canada (Embassy of Canada in London), Hydro-Québec Art Collection, La Caisse de dépôt du Québec, Collection of the Royal Bank of Canada, TD Group, Microsoft Art Collection, and in private collections in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom.

Henry Heng Lu is a curator, writer, artist, and public art consultant based in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada. He is currently the Executive Director of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden, Vancouver. Recently, he has served as the inaugural Gallery Manager for the Chinese Canadian Museum, Vancouver, and as Executive Director/Curator at Centre A. He is a co-founder of Call Again, a mobile initiative/collective committed to creating space for contemporary diasporic artistic practices within Canada and beyond through exhibitions, screenings, and roundtables. In 2018, he won an Ontario Association of Art Galleries (OAAG) Exhibition of the Year Award for his curatorial project, Far and Near: the Distance(s) between Us, at the Art Museum at the University of Toronto.

His writings have been published by Canadian Art, ArtAsiaPacific, Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, C Magazine, Richmond Art Gallery, PLATFORM Gallery, ArchDaily and Gardiner Museum. In 2019, he was a Researcher/Curator-in-Residence at the OCT Contemporary Art Terminal Shenzhen, China. Lu holds a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto.

Ciara McKeown is founder and principal of CMCK Public Art, a planning and commissioning agency for art in public space. She has worked as a public art consultant, curator, director, commissioner, and project manager with arts organizations, government agencies, private developers, and artists across Canada and the US for over 20 years. She works closely with artists to contextualize their art practices within the public realm. She has had roles at Waterfront Toronto, The City of Calgary and Hamilton Public Art programs, and with artists Sans façon, among others. McKeown is dedicated to furthering critical conversations about contemporary public art. She has been an Executive Board Member with Public Art Dialogue and co-organized Public Art: New Ways of Thinking and Working, an international symposium hosted by York University in 2017, the first gathering of its kind in Canada to encourage a critical cross-disciplinary examination of the field nationally and internationally. McKeown has lectured about public art at universities and arts organizations across Canada and has written for Alberta Views, Americans for the Arts, The Calgary Herald and most recently in two catalogues for the University of Calgary's Institute for the Humanities.

Image: Karen Tam, Blood and Tears, 2018

Photo Courtesy of Carey Shaw