Epic Journey Screening

Presented by Justina M. Barnicke Gallery

Details: Do you have the steely resolve of a Tolkienian character? Join us on this epic journey, an 11.5 hour screening of Kevin Schmidt’s Epic Journey.

In just under 12 hours, Kevin Schmidt’s 2010 film Epic Journey brings us on two parallel journeys: one with the artist adrift in a boat on British Columbia’s Fraser River and the other with Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring as they travel through the realms of Middle Earth. In the process, Schmidt tests the limits of his viewers, pushes the context of the films and brings together these two epic journeys in a mash-up of the real and the fantastical.

Epic Journey is a single long-take film that documents a small aluminium boat as it drifts languidly down the Fraser River while Peter Jackson’s acclaimed The Lord of the Rings trilogy is screened on board.  Impressionistic, lit with incident and trailing wanderlust, the boat takes its viewers on an odyssey through the suburban and industrial landscape of the BC Lower Mainland, alluding to themes of industrialization portended in J.R.R. Tolkien’s World War II-era novels and engaging with the British author’s Homeric style.

We challenge you to join us on our quest. Epic Journey will be an all-day affair that invites the die-hard, the curious, and the uninitiated alike. Refreshments and snacks will be served at 12:00 pm and 5:00 pm.

There will be couches and snacks and, most importantly, A/C.

Where: Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, 7 Hart House Circle, University of Toronto

When: August 3, 2011 9:30 am to 9:00 pm

Cost: Free and open to the public

The exhibition Don't Stop Believing featuring the work of Kevin Schmidt continues at Justina M. Barnicke  Gallery to August 20, 2011.

About Kevin Schmidt
Born in 1972, Kevin Schmidt graduated from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1997 and currently lives and works in Vancouver. His works have been included in major exhibitions across Canada, including at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Presentation House Gallery, Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, Musée d’art contemporain, Leonard and Bina Ellen Art Gallery, Mercer Union and the Edmonton Art Gallery, among many others; and internationally, at the Fruitmarket Gallery (Edinburgh, Scotland), the Frankfurter Kunstverein (Frankfurt, Germany), Norwich Gallery (Norwich, UK ), Kunstnernes Hus (Oslo, Norway), Kunstverein Wolfsburg (Wolfsburg, Germany), Witte de With (Rotterdam, Netherlands), de Kist (Groningen, Netherlands), Württembergischer Kunstverein (Stuttgart, Germany), Galerie van der Mieden (Antwerp, Belgium) and Galerie Barbara Thumm (Berlin, Germany). Schmidt is represented by Catriona Jeffries Gallery (Vancouver) and he is the recipient of the 2008 VIVA Award, provided by the Jack and Doris Shadbolt Foundation to exemplary British Columbiaartists in mid-career.

Kevin Schmidt first came to international attention with his single-channel 2002 video work “Long Beach Led Zep” featuring the artist’s studied solo guitar performance of Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” staged against the setting sun of Vancouver Island’s mythic Long Beach. Since then, the combination of sublime settings and heroic, DIY or amateur quests have been a recurrent element in his installations, such as in the works in this exhibition. Taking their point of departure in a wide array of generation-defining cultural referents and re-enactments – Tolkien’s famed trilogy “Lord of the Rings”,  the song “Angel of Light” by the Rock group Petra, as well as expeditions such as Franklin’s failed search for the Northwest Passage, among others – Schmidt’s interests in the epic quest expresses the desire to go beyond the limits of knowledge and to chart the more ethereal territories of other non-rational worlds.

Kevin Schmidt’s exhibition at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery is part of an ongoing series of first, in-depth solo exhibitions of artists whose work has received local, national and international attention, such as Ron Terada (2011), Will Kwan (2009), Mark Lewis (2009), James Carl (2009) and Kelly Mark (2007).