Craft Parlour
- Rebecca La Marre
Western Front, in partnership with Peripheral Review and the Vancouver Art Book Fair, presents Craft Parlour, a solo exhibition by Saskatoon/Treaty 6 artist and writer Rebecca La Marre. Installed in Western Front’s library, the exhibition brings together a series of ceramic writing tablets and the newly released publication Craft Parlour to explore the intersection of craft and writing.
La Marre began researching the history of writing across cultures and languages in 2017, experimenting with ways to merge her writing practice with clay. This led to the creation of experimental tools and surfaces used in art writing workshops held at institutions across Canada, including the Darling Foundry, Montréal; MacEwan University, Edmonton; and the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon.
During her 2023–24 residency at Western Front, La Marre expanded this research through Craft Parlour, a six-part workshop series that brought together ten interdisciplinary artists—Rosamunde Bordo, Amelia Butcher, Xinwei Che, Hannah Crosson, Sun Forest, Amy Gogarty, Chloë p.f. Lalonde, Christian Newby, Emiliano Sepulveda, and Julia Wong. Selected through an open call, the group met monthly from September to April to explore craft, contemporary art, and art writing, with a focus on writing as a tactile, material practice. The sessions combined shared research and hands-on exercises, and were enriched by guest contributors Rob Froese, Danny Kostyshin, Sharon Kivland, and Anahita Jamali Rad.
Designed by Manon Fraser and co-published by Western Front and Peripheral Review, the publication Craft Parlour features original contributions by La Marre and the workshop participants, offering further insight into the ideas and processes that shaped the project.
About the Artist
Rebecca La Marre is a queer artist based in Saskatoon, Canada, or Treaty 6, the traditional home of the Blackfoot, Cree and Métis people. Her writing, making, and performance practice uses clay, text, and the human voice to give form to questions about what it means to be a person in the world. Her activity is driven by what she reads and a need to test how ideological structures, trauma, language, and ritual can shape bodies. The first person to teach her about clay was her grandmother Ellen La Marre, who displayed her work in domestic settings and craft markets.
Accessibility
The Library is located on the second floor of Western Front, which is accessed by a flight of 26 stairs. Further details about accessibility at Western Front can be found here.
Acknowledgements
Presented in partnership with Peripheral Review and Vancouver Art Book Fair with support from the Canada Council for the Arts and SK Arts.
Western Front is a non-profit artist-run centre in Vancouver.
We acknowledge the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations as traditional owners of the land upon which Western Front stands.