Public Reception in the Corner Store

Join us this Thursday, September 27 at 7:00 PM to celebrate the launch of Lexie Owen's project, Corner Store, in Access' PLOT space.

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Corner Store is a multi-site project by Lexie Owen that interrogates notions of social practice and community engagement in contemporary art. PLOT is transformed through an installation referential of the McGill Grocery near Burrard View Park in Vancouver, BC; a space which not only provides food but also serves as a community hub.

Solid bronze sculptures cast from items stocked in the PLOT Corner Store will simultaneously be displayed on the shelves of the McGill Grocery for the duration of the installation. In this reciprocal exchange of material objects and embodied practices, the McGill Grocery becomes the gallery, and PLOT becomes the corner store; intervening in the typical aesthetics and functions of either space. Corner Store thus seeks to recognize the central place of pride which this local corner store holds within the Burrardview neighbourhood, as well as to upend the implicit power structures and hierarchies of labour that oftentimes underlie artist-led community projects. While this project has evolved out of the specific histories of the Burrardview neighbourhood, it speaks broadly to the social and economic transactions that constitute neighbourhood space and asks important and timely questions about the role of artists in “engaging” community.