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The Or Gallery is pleased to present a new destination-based art project for Vancouver’s Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood by Vancouver/New York based artist-curator Barb Choit. The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work is a series of exhibitions and events produced and curated by Choit in an open studio setting situated in a 1000sq. ft. office space near Vancouver’s Dunbar Street. The offices are also currently partially occupied by Dialog Medical Systems Inc., a Vancouver based software company that produces billing software for doctors and dentists, now in the process redefining its business model in the face of a rapidly shifting technological marketplace.

Taking cues from the seminal 1979 article The Function of the Studio by French conceptual artist Daniel Buren, The Unspeakable Compromise… will involve a collaboration between Choit and a diverse range of artists to produce an ever-changing configuration of artworks, performances and artifacts that investigate and illuminate multiple economies and reveal thresholds between production and display within a combination production / exhibition space. The project will present artists as workers, ultimately; workers that are subject to the same fluctuations and outside influences as others in information economy workforces.

The offices of Dialog Medical Systems Inc. are located at 202-3540 41st Avenue West, in Vancouver’s Dunbar-Southlands neighbourhood. The office building itself is home to a number of businesses (predominantly service-industry and health related) including – Dentists, Doctors, Travel Agents, Mineral Extraction companies, Software companies, Investment companies, Physiotherapists, Laboratories, Acupuncturists and an Asian Women’s Health Center.

Artist included in the exhibition are John Anderson, Beth Howe, Adam Brickell, Aaron Carpenter, Nathan Gwynne + The Ice Machine and Swift, Andrea Merkx, Sylvain Sailly, Igor Santizo, Jen Weih.

Over the course of the exhibition, the space will continue to serve as a studio space for the participating artists, allowing the artists to modify and add to their works in the exhibition over time. Choit and the artists will also maintain a blog over the course of the exhibition, hosted at portablework.orgallery.org

The Unspeakable Compromise of the Portable Work marks the third project in the Or Gallery’s Economies/1 series