Lesser-Seen Works by Often-Seen Artists

A nice time at the VAG yesterday. I was excited to be seeing Alanis Obomsawin's retrospective, looking forward to the abstract painting show (up top, Douglas Morton's Fractured Black, 1963) and, if I am honest, dreading the Shary Boyle exhibition, which, as it turned out, was elegantly designed, allowing its works to be seen in the best possible light.

The painting show and the Obomsawin shows were even better than expected, with the former filled with works by local artists whose names are mostly familiar to us from the 1960s and early 70s abstraction scene, but whose chosen works aren't. Which is to say curator Richard Hill didn't show us the usual go-to Gordon Smith's and Joan Balzar's, but their lesser seen works.

Below is a lesser-seen, Michael Morris-influenced Smith (Boxed Rainbow, 1970):

And here is a lesser-seen Balzar (Untitled, c. 1960s):

And since we're talking boxes (Smith), here is an exploded view of a lesson-in-a-box from the Obomsawin exhibition:

Mother Earth

A pic I took of one of Jin-Me Yoon's videos at the VAG a couple weeks back. As this was my first visit to the exhibition, I swooped through it, gathering impressions first, details (like titles) on another visit.

Much has been made of holes in Jeff Wall's pictures, but with Yoon, the hole and its extracted medium (soil, earth) are given equal weight. Equal because they more or less share the picture's centre. 

We don't see the complete interior of Yoon's hole, only its extracted space. From this extraction (can we call it a mound, or does that sound too much like a pubis?) we infer the size of the hole's interior. 

Suddenly everything is gendered. Or maybe it is formal. The mound is, after all, pyramidal -- a triangle if you consider it two-dimensionally. (A half century ago, the adult pubis was pictured, if not clothed, with a triangulation of pubic hair. Not long after that, North American women began burning their bras; a decade later, they began extracting their pubic hair.)

Another video in the exhibition features people (an extended family?) digging on a beach. Here we don't see the hole or the mound so much as the labour, the relations.

I will see this show again, though from first impressions everything seemed to snap into place.

Cooling Station

Sometimes I get the feeling that the VAG is willing to exploit every opportunity to get us into its building, if for no other reason than to show us how inadequate it is and why we need a new one. But shouldn't that be the purpose of any museum: to pay attention to what's going on in the world and offer a place of engagement, communion, refuge? The VAG's latest come hither pitch is the city's current stretch of hot weather: "Beat the heat with a visit to our temperature-controlled galleries this long weekend!"

Southern Steps

Just before breaking for the 7 a.m. news, CBC host Stephen Quinn gave listeners a preview of what to expect "when we come back" -- namely, "a new installation at the Vancouver Art Gallery."

As it turns out, Quinn was not referring to any of the VAG's current curated exhibitions but the momento mori on the gallery's south steps placed their by those who attended residential schools like the Kamloops Indian Residential School, their children and their children's children. 

This installation was described as "semi-permanent." One has to wonder what that means. 

Modern in the Making

On Sunday we visited the Vancouver Art Gallery's Modern in the Making: Post-War Craft and Design in British Columbia. Lotsa thoughtful pots, furniture, clothes and jewelry on display, yet less thought, time and resources given to display infrastructure. Yes, the recessed pot wall is kinda cute (above, to the left of Mano Herendy's caftan), but for those wishing to see all sides of the wall's two-dimensionalized pots, a disappointment, and indeed a metaphor for a gallery so strapped for cash it can only resort to half measures.

Cross My Arms and Hope You Thrive

I like this math. (Here's hoping.)

+

=

Vapid Fire Q&A

Former "semi-professional kazoo player" (1:14) coming to a directorship near me.

Director to the Floor

It is almost three months since Kathleen Bartels stepped down as the director of the Vancouver Art Gallery -- and still no word of her replacement. Rumours circulate of a hiring committee made up of board members and externals, but no shortlist as of yet.

Did I also hear that the VAG was to announce its new director in September? I am hoping so, but that doesn't seem likely. Although interim director Daina Auguitis is more than capable of helming the VAG, the greater question concerns the proposed Herzog & de Meuron building at Larwill Park. Will the VAG continue with this site and its expensive design, or will it hire a new firm, with new contractors, and build on its current site (what many believe to be the best address in town)? Either way, this decision cannot be made by an interim director but by a new director, someone willing to commit a minimum of ten years to the establishment of the gallery and its collection as a site where the stories of Canadian west coast art can be seen, heard and argued over.

More than any visiting exhibition, it is the collection that is key to generating interest in a public gallery amongst those who share its city, its province and its country. Indeed, without the support of these publics -- Vancouverites, British Columbians, Canadians and First Nations -- the VAG would lack the public funds required to build what must remain a public gallery, a question that few have raised in light of the Chan family’s donation of 40 million dollars towards the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts -- the mall in which the VAG will be housed. Is the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts the “purpose-built, stand alone, iconic” building Kathleen Bartels pushed for since the VAG announced its move 10+ years ago? No. And if Bartels allegedly stepped down because her board decided that the Chan’s money was more important than the stand alone Vancouver Art Gallery building they had originally agreed upon (note that it was a board member who made the announcement of the Chan donation, not Bartels), then she had no choice but to step down.

Kathleen Bartels accomplished a lot in her 18 years at the VAG, some of which is detailed here. She is also responsible for a number of missteps, many of which relate to a top-down approach to leadership that put her in conflict not only with the gallery’s union membership but with its private donors. This top-down approach was most apparent in her inability to inspire and lead a grassroots campaign that would have local, regional and national publics joining in on the call for a new -- if not revitalized -- public gallery. A hallmark of our relational turn has it that the best way to make something is to allow those you are making it for feel a part of it.

A number of people I have talked to, both inside and outside of the arts, feel Bartels’s inability to connect with the greater public was based on her unwillingness to learn about where she was and who she was working with (and for). For Canadians, this is often the problem of the American director who comes from a funding structure based more on private patronage than on government money. Would a Canadian director behave any differently? Maybe. Would the VAG benefit from a Canadian director? That would depend on who, as there are a number of Canadian directors with varying degrees of experience (in fundraising, collections and gallery building) who are working internationally, either in Canada or abroad.

As a long time VAG member, I feel it is time for a director who has a knowledge and an interest in the city, province and country where the gallery is located. Bartel’s predecessor, Alf Bogusky, is a Canadian who had a feeling for the place and its people, but whose failings appeared to lie at the opposite end of the spectrum: he was weary of wealthy patrons and was uninterested in working internationally. Fortunately, today we have more options. Though he has not worked with a gallery board in over 30 years, the Belkin’s Scott Watson could be considered. Though he has not worked with a collection, the Polygon’s Reid Shier, like Watson, has participated in the building of a new gallery and has a knowledge of historic regional practices. Further afield, Art Gallery of Alberta director Catherine Crowston has worked with a board, a collection, overseen a major renovation and has raised a great deal of money; she too must be considered. As for Canadian directors working abroad, there is Séamus Kealy (Salzburger Kunstverein) and Juan Gaitán (Museo Tamayo). Though she has never directed an institution, Candace Hopkins has a range of transferable skills, in addition to the requisite temperament.

But there are still bigger, more intangible questions to sort out before a new director can be considered. The elephant in the room here is Michael Audain, whose commitment to the province is well-known. If the VAG is to raise the money needed to complete its publicly stated funding goal, then Audain will have a hand in the hire. Yet even if the VAG stays where it is and renovates (saving what some believe to be as much as a 100 million dollars), the matching conditions by which public monies are to be delivered will still require Audain’s donation, particularly since staying at the current site would mean the end of the Chan Centre for the Visual Arts (and maybe its donation?). This, I suspect, is what is holding things up, and why the VAG will not have its director anytime soon.

Between and &

There's no way out of it: when you look at Vikky Alexander's Between Dreaming & Living #5 (1985), you are implicated. Whether that means you are "between" "Dreaming" and "Living" or simply its ampersand is a question worth asking. (Neither? That's a question too.)

Support CUPE Local 15

"No ideas but in things," said Williams Carlos Williams. To which I say, No new art gallery without a Vancouver Art Gallery board and management respectful of staff who work hard to deliver exhibitions and programs relevant to the contemporary life of our city.

Fringing the Cube

There is a lot to recommend Dana Claxton's Fringing the Cube exhibition, which opened last night at the VAG. For starters, a great exhibition design, some of it, according to curator Grant Arnold, was adapted from the previous Cabin Fever show. Other elements include a number of diagonal placements, like the banner in the exhibition's "Red Room" (above) and a ceiling-hung veiled work that greets you as you enter the exhibition and bids you farewell as you turn its final corner.

Guest Curators

Back in the 1980s, McDonald's began hiring retirees as cashiers. Other corporations followed, notably Walmart, who hired them as greeters.

The trend continues. At the Vancouver Art Gallery retired white male university professors of art and art history are hired as guest curators.

BOMBHEAD
March 3 - June 17, 2018
Curated by John O'Brian (ret. University of British Columbia)

ENTANGLED: TWO VIEWS ON CONTEMPORARY PAINTING
September 30, 2017 - January 1, 2018
Curated by Bruce Grenville and David MacWilliam (ret. Emily Carr University of Art & Design)

I HAD AN INTERESTING FRENCH ARTIST TO SEE ME THIS SUMMER: EMILY CARR AND WOLFGANG PAALEN IN BRITISH COLUMBIA
July 1 - November 13, 2016
Curated by Colin Browne (ret. Simon Fraser University)

Sign of the Times

When I first saw this sign I thought it said WELCOME TO WHITENESS.

1-5pm

Vancouver Special Forum

Vancouver Special includes work by forty visual artists, as a survey of the contemporary art activity in the city over the last five years. The featured works of art do not adhere to a singular subject or style but instead point to overlapping and ongoing conversations about abstraction, Surrealism and conceptual practice. In this afternoon of talks, artists and writers offer perspectives on these aspects of the exhibition and highlight the nuanced and stimulating spaces in-between definitions. 

1pm: Perspectives on Surrealism presented by catalogue contributor Steffanie Ling with further reflections by artists Julia Feyrer & Rebecca Brewer

2:20pm: Two perspectives on Abstraction presented by artists Mina Totino & Eli Bornowsky with further reflections by artists Colleen Heslin & Sylvain Sailly

3:45pm: Two perspectives on Conceptual Practice presented by Raymond Boisjoly & Gareth James with further reflections by artists Matt Browning & Krista Belle Stewart

Free. Seating is first come, first seated for an audience of 170.
Presented in collaboration with 221A, supported by the British Columbia Arts Council

Following the forum please join us at 221A for Walter Scott's book launch of Wendy's Revenge (Toronto: Koyama Press, 2016) with reading from 7–9pm.

Assu on Carr, Kennedy as Peck

At the Vancouver Art Gallery last week I came upon a group of elementary school students whose assignment it was to draw Sonny Assu's interventions into the (reproduced) paintings of Emily Carr. Meanwhile, on the floor below, Garry Neill Kennedy writing as Robin Peck via Jeff Wall on Dan Graham.

Picture from Vancouver

The containers in Stan Douglas's Damaged Containers, Mitchell Island (2001) are arranged in no particular order. Whether they are awaiting repair or disassembly is uncertain. Point is they are unusable and, as shipping containers, have been taken out of circulation.

When I first saw this picture, I thought of visual art itself: from the early 20th century sculptors and their anxieties over industrialization, to Pop, Minimalism and conceptual art's interest in serial structures.

Douglas's stack of containers is and is not a serial form. It is a serial form because they are containers; it is not a serial form because each is different from the other, either by design or through wear.

The first thing I thought of when I saw Herzog & de Mueron's Vancouver Art Gallery design -- before a pagoda, an inuksuk and a stack of clothing boxes purchased during a Robson Street shopping spree -- was Douglas's picture.

Base Infrastructure

That Roger Ebert should refer to non-New York City theatre spaces as existing in "the provinces" is an instance of a large, timeworn urban centre defining itself not by what it does, but by what it does not. "Off-Broadway" is yet another instance of this negative (self-)conception.

Vancouver's visual art scene does not have a Broadway. If it does, it is the Vancouver Art Gallery, which, over the past fifteen years, has proven itself to be more of an ally than an enemy of those who appreciate the rich interior life that art and its contemplation inspires.

Like many in the local arts communities, I support a new Vancouver Art Gallery, but am uneasy with the ends-over-means manner its board chairs and director have gone about it. Rather than run a campaign that balances garden suites and penthouses, the VAG has spent too much time in the latter, earning its elitist tag, rather than doing what it can to dispel it.

Next week the VAG unveils a maquette of its new building: a sequence of boxes on poles designed to excite those in search of the new and the unusual. That much of this structure will (potentially) be made of wood is also something to look forward to.

Something else to look forward to is a new City Manager, as the former Manager was arguably the biggest impediment to the new building and its siting.

The final piece in the puzzle, apart from Liberal MP Hedy Fry's re-election and her boss Justin Trudeau forming the next federal (majority) government, is some serious lobbying by someone who has appeared largely absent (when not appearing to take orders from the former City Manager) throughout the VAG's journey -- the Mayor of Vancouver.

With provincial government monies already committed, and a developer (and federal Liberal party member) willing to grout the deal with cash, the VAG will have secured the three levels of government needed to turn a paved parking lot into what some are already calling a visual art paradise.

Colours of the Market State

When travelling, news from home has a different sheen. What is big news sometimes appears small, depending on where one is looking. Conversely, what is small can sometimes find its parallel in a local variant, making the world smaller, more engaged. But again, depending on where one is looking.

When I heard the news that the Vancouver Art Gallery won City approval to fundraise for a move to Larwill Park I was enjoying the unsecured server of a cafe whose walls are filled with art. Not the art I see at the Vancouver Art Gallery, but that which its patrons gave it in exchange for meals.

The Vancouver Art Gallery has served up a number of thoughtful meals over the years, sometimes to my liking, sometimes because they are good for me, sometimes for those whose interests are so different from mine as to mistake art for fashion, conflict for affirmation, criticism for hype. But all in all I appreciate the VAG, and am among the first to recognize that in its attempt to be all things it can only skimp at times on what I want and what is good for me.

Although I am not in town to share the VAG's news, I imagine many are happy to hear it, particularly those who feel the most important part of the VAG is not its building or its location but its collection, which many of us hope to see displayed on a permanent basis, where the (symbolic) stories of our city and our moment can be discussed, debated, supplemented and synthesized.

Of course not everyone will be happy to hear about the VAG's move. Some will complain that taxpayers will be expected to bear the brunt of it, while others will say the collection is not worth a hill of beans, while others still will say that giving up the centre of the city as a site of ambiguity will only make Vancouver more certain, less mutable, the market state one step closer.

One person who will be unhappy about the VAG's move is real estate agent/artist collector Bob Rennie, who has proven over the years that his problem is not with the VAG but with its director, Kathleen Bartels, a problem he contracted from dealer/art consultant Patrick Painter, who once advised Rennie to acquire works by artists whose relevance has risen dramatically over the years and whose ongoing complaint that Bartels would not buy from him provided the starter for Rennie's sourdough.

Evidence of Rennie's unhappiness can be found in his recent de-accessioning of the work of an artist most active in the campaign for a larger, art-friendly VAG: Roy Arden. Further evidence can be found in another de-accessioned work, this time by an artist not active in the campaign but whose boyfriend is: me.

Is it a stretch to suggest that my girlfriend's work has been sent to auction (along with Arden's) because I have supported the VAG and, perhaps especially, because I have questioned Rennie's behaviour as a human being? I don't think so. In fact, I have evidence to suggest that Rennie's motivation is exactly that. But rather than divulge my sources, I would prefer instead to ask those of you who do business with Rennie to ask yourself what it is you are exchanging. Unless of course that exchange is, as they say, just business. In which case that is very big news, no matter where I am in the world.