Art Gallery of Alberta

Three times a year, the Art Gallery of Alberta hosts the Refinery, an ongoing series of late-night art parties themed around current AGA exhibitions featuring projects by artists, designers and performers from the local arts community. Refinery aims to provide audiences with access to art in its many diverse forms, media and manifestations.

Each Refinery is led by an independent Creative Director. Creative Directors are asked to develop programming for the evening and assist with the vision of this popular event. 

In 2013, I was the Creative Director for the Refinery themed-party "Funhouse." I was responsible for curating the evening's performances and activities, as well as producing my own show for the night's entertainment. Tickets sold out quickly, and as for the actual event? It blew passed the stratosphere! 

It was beyond memorable.

Simply put. 

You had to be there. 

Statement

Funhouse Refinery

An amusement facility in which patrons can have a number of unusual and, hopefully, amusing experiences, both physical and psychological. Unlike thrill rides, it is a participatory attraction. It can be thought of as a slightly insane, even sadistic, eerie obstacle course, or as a place where people can briefly experience the unknown…

I invite you to enter this temporary world of the other. The old-time thrill of the carnival funhouse and the innocence required to experience its pleasure are no longer possible. The travelling sideshows have been done; the entertainment of the good old days is readily replaced by the momentary fix of six second Vine screenings and a random mouse click. Our desire to return to the Paris of the 20s or the New York of the 50s is fuelled by a pervasive sense of nostalgia. In Old Greek, the phrase nostalgia means to suffer (algia) an impossible return (nostos).

The funhouse is replete with nostalgia: our nostalgia for the carnival holds within it the impulse to return to a better time—a period of innocence where the magician’s cheap tricks were willingly believed, or, at the very least, we could be entertained by something as simple as our senses. Funhouse Refinery is an invitation to be dislocated from the boredom of your own expectations with an evening of moving installations, performances and video projections that offer a pill of either perversion or pleasure. Oh, and of course there will be cotton-candy, glamour and booze.

This is not the funhouse of the past- instead of tired-out tricks, stir your senses with performances and installations that stretch the realm of reality. Be amazed by The World's Smallest Circus Show. Marvel at the menacingly musical styling of The Lad Mags. Dare to peek at a bizarre and verboten world in a video installation created by Anna Binta Diallo. Experience an out-of-thus-world sound performance by Kamil Krulis. Get lost as you venture through Geoffrey Farmer's labyrinthine haunted house-themed exhibition, The Intellection of Lady Spider House. Take part in fanciful and fantastic hands-on-projects and activities, nibble on tantalizing treats and dance the night away to choice tunes by DJ Sheri Barclay