Book Launch
Book Launch: Love Poems for Ceres, Alex Turgeon
3 May 2018
6:00PM
Participants: Alex Turgeon
Please join us in the Or Bookstore for the Vancouver launch of Love Poems for Ceres, the first collection of poetry by artist Alex Turgeon (published by Broken Dimanche Press, Berlin 2017). The book compiles works touching on themes of gender, sexuality and romance in relation to fantastical positions of witchcraft and interplanetary space, as well as cowboy and creation mythologies.
This collection of poetry explores a metaphor described in the celestial body of Ceres. Considered a dwarf planet as well the largest object in our solar system’s asteroid belt, a ring which divides the system between inner and outer planets, this publication describes Ceres as a portrait existing on the border of an inclusive centre and that of a nebulous expanse. Love Poems for Ceres looks at a relationship to a subject who is unable to reciprocate, orbiting a position set against the unattainable expanse of outer space, and in doing so recounts a fleeting attempt to position oneself against the cosmos found within.
Participant Bios
Alex Turgeon
Alex Turgeon (b. 1988, Halifax, Nova Scotia) is a Canadian artist based in Berlin. He received his BFA from Emily Carr University in 2010. Turgeon’s artistic practice operates at the intersection of poetry, performance and sculptural installation by way of extrapolating poetry out of the seemingly benign conditions found within domestic industries, allegorical narratives based in folklore and fairy-tale, definitions of sexuality and masculinity as well as ideologies defined through the economies of capitalism. His work has been presented at the Tate (Liverpool), KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Trans Art Triennial, Center, Ashley, Éclair, Spike Art, After the Eclipse, Blackland, Babes Bar (Berlin), Franz Kaka, Art Metropole (Toronto), Proxy Gallery, Brown University (Rhode Island), as part of Poetry as Practice online exhibition hosted by Rhizome and the New Museum (New York), Contemporary Art Centre (Vilnius), Clearview Ltd., French Riviera (London), San Serriffe (Amsterdam) Tunnel Tunnel (Lausanne) and Toves (Copenhagen).