Grimes' Claire Boucher curates charitable art show in NYC
Claire Boucher of Grimes, the Montreal artist whose latest album "Visions" has set the indie blogosphere on fire, will debut a selection of audio and visual art in a special exhibition opening on March 23 at New York City’s Audio Visual Arts (AVA)
Gallery.
On the heels of SXSW, the opening will present a collection of Boucher's paintings and drawings from the past few years highlighting Grimes’s multifaceted nature not only as a musician but also as an audio-visual artist and curator of culture. Works from two other Canadian artists, specially selected by Boucher for the show, will also be on display.
For those unaware, Grimes is the inventive electronic work of Claire Boucher, a project that has gained notoriety since its inception back in early-2010. Moving to Montreal from Vancouver in 2006, she developed Grimes among the city’s burgeoning DIY scene; a scene where both punk ethos and pop music collide, resulting in a distinct sense of community, religiosity and psychedelic revelry. Boucher describes her music as “post-Internet.” “I like to think about it as cyborg-ism,” she says of the classification, a new term that encompasses the fact that musicians can access more music today than at any other time in history. “It’s not about storing information in your head any more. You can get anything you want in five seconds.”
The art event will introduce the public to an unseen depth in the Grimes project, presenting a unique and exciting insight into the world behind Visions. Boucher was an integral member of the experimental Montreal arts collective and venue Lab Synthese (which eventually evolved into Arbutus Records) and its contemporary incarnation La Brique, refining her artistic sensibilities through collaborations and exhibitions in different mediums with her peers in the confines of Montreal’s fertile Mile End neighborhood.
In exposing a wider spectrum of her art to the public’s attention, this show intends to be the inaugural edition of other similar shows in Montreal, Vancouver, London, and other cities worldwide, as well as a forum and outlet for the different work that together forms Grimes' truly singular artistic vision.
Presenting the second night of the gallery run, Refinery29 will be staging a silent auction, giving fans the opportunity to bid on an exclusive, original Grimes piece, with proceeds benefiting Sisters In Spirit, a charity Boucher chose to support.
Boucher felt strongly about proceeds from the silent auction going to SIS, noting that "Sisters in Spirit is an organization that seeks to 'publicize the impact, causes and consequences of violence against Aboriginal women'. There are currently over 582 missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls in Canada, and most investigations into these murders are closed. I have a lot of friends who have been affected by this, or who are working to bring awareness to these issues. This is the organization we've chosen to support by donating the proceeds from this silent auction. Please participate in preventing further violence against Aboriginal women in Canada."