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Vancouver
Cuts to Arts Funding in BC | Ian Wallace at Catriona Jeffries | Black Hole is Also Supernova at the Richmond Art Gallery | Scott MacFarland and Owen Kydd at the VAG
posted by Aaron Peck - October 20th, 2009.
First the numbers: to the arts in British Columbia, 50% funding cuts this year, 90% next. And Hon. Gordon Campbell’s administration hasn’t stopped there (it makes me cringe to apply to the term “Honourable” to this man, so for the rest of this roundup I will follow the word “Hon.” with “[sic.]” as a form of protest). Last week, under the direction of the Hon. [sic.] Kevin Krueger, the Arts & Culture branch of the Ministry of Tourism, Culture & the Arts removed all funding from the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia ($45,000), BC BookWorld newspaper ($31,000) and B.C. Association of Magazine Publishers ($20,000). The short-term consequences to the arts in BC are already staggering. At the end of the month, the Helen Pitt Gallery will close it doors and its director/curator, Paul Kajander, has been forced to step down for lack of funds. The Or Gallery will cut short its programming this year, ceasing at the end of the month, and then renting the space out to other institutions such as the Helen Pitt. And the Bowen Island Museum and Archives has let go its only part-time curator, Heather Joan Tam, terminating any more exhibitions for, at least, the rest of the year. The Campbell administration’s reasoning for the cuts is scant (aside from “economic downturn,” perhaps haunted by the word “Olympics”) and tenuous at best, particularly when tax dollars spent in the arts bring in a $1.04 to $1.365 return on investment.
Are these cuts egregious? Yes. Will this cease artistic production in BC? No. But does the second response, even for a moment, rationalize Hon. [sic.] Gordon Campbell’s cuts? Definitely not. The loss in skilled labour through emigration to other provinces will be hard to recover from, if BC ever reinstates its funding. This said, Vancouver continues to produce and exhibit an unusual amount of good art for a city its size, which only goes to show how stupid it is of the Hon. [sic.] Gordon Campbell’s administration to target its own thriving culture.
Ian Wallace, An Attack on Literature (film sequence), 1975, six black and white photographs (courtesy Catriona Jeffries)
One such exhibition at Catriona Jeffries (a commercial gallery so, at least, superficially unharmed by such cuts) is the Ian Wallace retrospective. These photographs, collages, films, and ephemera give a lot of insight into Wallace’s work and also the influence Wallace had on artists after him. The exhibition includes contact sheets for the films, which give it a somewhat institutional feel. However, that is not unwelcome: it is interesting to see the works in all their stages and it highlights the importance of process and collage in Wallace’s work. Perhaps it is no surprise that I was drawn to works such as Image/Text and An Attack on Literature, wherein Wallace responds to and develops ideas taken from readings of literature (Mallarmé in the case of Image/Text). But overall, the exhibition provided a much-needed overview of the artist’s early works—mapping a crucial figure of what would become the Vancouver School and providing one of the first chances I’ve had to see his major concerns and techniques develop.
Colleen Brown, Curly Moe Hole
At the Richmond Art Gallery, Black Hole is Also Supernova, guest-curated by Vanessa Kwan, features new work by Colleen Brown, Paul Kajander and Kara Uzelman. Uzelman’s work is a further development of her participation in the Subdivision Arts Festival in Hamburg. These works continue her recombination of found objects into sculptural forms, all corresponding to her research-based practice. Kajander’s new video installation is reminiscent of both science fiction and cartoons – the entire narrative playing out in a kind of dream. The video’s absurdity and humor makes it hard for you to take yourself too seriously as you try to figure out what the hell is happening. Of the three works, though, I found Colleen Brown’s the most compelling. Her objects recombined into abstract sculptures ask us to reconsider our relationship to the materials the sculptures are made of. When they are most successful, they alter our perception of our surroundings. Her sculptures fit in with a lot of other Vancouver artists who are also currently exploring abstraction: Kika Thorne, Eli Bornowksy (who has a terrific show of screenprints, Sleep 1, 2, 3,4, at Malispina Printmakers Gallery right now) and Nicole Ondre, just to name just a few.
Scott MacFarland, Women Drying Laundry on the Gorse, Vale of Heath, Hampstead Heath, 2007, ink jet print
Two new exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery opened recently. The first is a mid-career retrospective of the now Toronto-based Scott MacFarland. His photography, once you spend some time with it, gives a lot. The ways in which he rethinks what a photograph can be (through his use of digital manipulation, including different times or seasons in one image) and how that rethinking applies to both contemporary art and art history should not be missed. His photographs of Hampstead Heath, for instance, were produced in an edition of four, although each image has a different sky. The result is that there is no exact duplicate reproduction in the editions. At its worst, this produces collector fetishism, but more interestingly it questions the role of the edition in photography, reminding us of the way Constable would make similar works for different collectors, also sometimes only altering the sky in a picture. MacFarland’s work is difficult, no doubt. At times, for me at least, the subject matter falls flat, but the way he shoots – and then digitally manipulates the pictures – offers a lot to think about the role of photography in picture making.
Owen Kydd, Hands with Isopod, still from Night, 2007, digital video
Also at the VAG, NEXT: Owen Kydd features Kydd’s triptych of videos Mission/Night/Joshua. I’ve been writing about Kydd’s work since Mission, the first of this series, was exhibited at CSA Space in 2007, so perhaps, needless to say, seeing his work at the Vancouver Art Gallery was one of highlights of the season. In each piece, Kydd mounts three monitors, displaying a loop of images, most of which are static, all of which document a particular place: the Lower Mainland suburb of Mission; Vancouver’s Eastside at night; and the settlements around Joshua Tree National Park in California. In Kydd’s work there is a real, genuine interest in people and places. That interest comes through in the way his subjects let him document them. They are vulnerable, candid and oblivious—in other words, there. And then there are the ways in which Kydd’s videos are formally innovative: they combine video art, photo-conceptualism, neo-realism, and documentary photography in a way I’ve never encountered.
Lastly, a quick plug: if you’re in Vancouver, come out to the Helen Pitt for one last hurrah on October 23rd. A time capsule is being prepared to commemorate the first thirty-four years of the gallery’s existence. It will be opened in 2019, in the hopes that the artist run society is still around to unearth it: this is the kind of hope that is required right now.
Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis (Pedlar Press, 2008). His reviews have recently appeared in Canadian Art and Fillip. He lives in Vancouver.
Catriona Jeffries: http://www.catrionajeffries.com/
Ian Wallace continues until October 24.
Richmond Art Gallery: http://www.richmondartgallery.org/
Black Hole is Also Supernova continues until November 1.
Vancouver Art Gallery: http://www.vanartgallery.bc.ca/
Scott MacFarland continues until January 3.
Owen Kydd continues until January 3.
Comments (newest first)
Posted by Lisa, 282 days ago on October 21st, 2009
While Eli Bornowsky's show at Malaspina Printmakers is now over, I feel compelled to provide a correction as they are not screenprints.
The 4 prints are: 1 aquatint, 1 dry-point, 1 relief and monoprint, and 1 relief and dry-point.
However, I won't dispute that they are terrific. We do have 1 set in our consignment sales drawers, for anyone who didn't get to see the exhibition.