Hold on at the Or Gallery

This is the first time that I’ve been in the new gallery location, although I had lived in that neighbourhood for a while, so it was to my liking that division between the neighbourhood and that actual content of the building itself. I don't know if it was me then or the exhibition, but Hold On by Anna Zett t had this sort of magnifying effect on me if you will. As well as the general literature that the Or gallery contains and a robust anthology of literature and collection of materias Zett has produced, behind that heavy black drape hanging at the entrace of the show I was not sure if that was just how the gallery was supposed to be or that I was going into an old classical theatre with risers and what not into the beyond. To my surprise it was actually like being transposed into a campsite far high up in the rocky mountains actually. I could almost hear a stream of water as I was now automatically standing upon a pile of soft river rock approaching this little midden like fire pit receptacles that almost sheened reflective light from their glossy transparent surfaces. It’s nothing new to me anyway that things like rocks have a grounding effect either. In places like this where there is quite a lot of development it’s quite easy to feel transient and at the whims of the air and ocean as well. Yet, the sense of being on a landlocked periphery it’s quite easy to imagine small little buds emerging from such piles perhaps. And from such things also rises the various filmic imagery and sounds that makes one want to warm up around a fire pit perhaps. Yet there are no sounds, other than the ones my feet make like the crisping of hot coals regardless of how cool that surroundings actually are. Then of course the mind kicks in and is like ah, well I’m already around a pit anyways so I might as well warm my hands. Or I’m not there yet. Anyway, I’m met with this kind of confusion as to am I meant to join this? I’m enjoying everything else much more anyway, the sight, the sound, the feeling. They’re obviously delicate little globes that risk being fractured against such hard surfaces already yet nothing else is happening, so I go ahead and grab one with excitement that I still haven’t figured out which one it is yet. I’m alone though, so it doesn’t really matter. Eventhough whose to say that this is the original spot it was in the first place. Regardless, a soundtrack begins to play with a dialogue between two people. It’s soft, they’re soft, the voices, as my mind perhaps, and the globes, well they’re remarkably ergonomic and quite cheap seeming actually. Just the thought of a flicker from my hands though, the spark perhaps that heat may bring to a situation regardless of it’s original spot or place and intention perhaps is glimpsed by the reality that the track begins to wein on me. So the rocks begin to hurt that I feel as though there’s more to explore like in a garden perhaps. And there is, and it’s my turn then to change or move the part perhaps. Not that I did anyway. I could, especially that no one is there. Just like the video screen in the back, with the people spray painting the Berlin Wall, such stark realities raise real questions regarding the confinement of being creative in such pre and post war environments. As well, it also brings forth other types of meta-dialogue perhaps between the new location of the art gallery and the neighbourhood it is in as well. Such seemingly contrary elements in the midst of a place that is saturated with social issues and problems and development issues itself parallels such realities in quite an archaic way. This exhibition Hold On by Anna Zett is showing at the Or Gallery in Vancouver B.C. from Oct. 17 2019- Jan. 11 2020.