CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 VANCOUVER APRIL 2016
IMAGINE. TASTE. ENJOY. Award-winning catering and unparalleled service for corporate gatherings, social events and weddings since 1979. lazygourmet.ca Captured by: Shannyn Higgins On a DSLR: 5DMKII | 50mm Lens Date: 2nd September, 2015 Fall Menu Preferred Caterer to the Capture Photography Festival Capture.indd 11 2016-02-29 9:11 AM ® The TD logo and other trade-marks are the property of The Toronto-Dominion Bank. M05234 (0116) Proud to support the Capture Photography Festival. We are working together with Capture to celebrate photography and lens-based art.
CONTACT Capture Head Office 305 Cambie St Vancouver BC V6B 2N4 [email protected] capturephotofest.com Capture Photography Festival is produced by the Capture Photography Festival Society, a registered not-for-profit society.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 April 2016 CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Kim Spencer-Nairn PROGRAM DIRECTOR Meredith Preuss DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS Raji Sohal PUBLICATION COORDINATOR Jaclyn Arndt CREATIVE DIRECTION AND DIGITAL/PRINT COMMUNICATIONS Palms CAMPAIGN PHOTOGRAPHER Birthe Piontek PR AND MEDIA RELATIONS Dela Cruz PR FESTIVAL INTERN Pearl Choy ADDRESS 305 Cambie St Vancouver BC Canada V6B 2N4 capturephotofest.com [email protected] PRINTED IN VANCOUVER BY Mitchell Press EDITION 8,000 FRONT AND BACK COVERS Stephen Waddell, Showroom and The Collector 2016 ALL CONTENT © 2016 THE ARTISTS, AUTHORS, AND CAPTURE. UNAUTHORIZED REPRODUCTION IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED. ALL IMAGES ARE REPRODUCED COURTESY OF THE ARTIST UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED. CAPTURE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR THE SPECIFIC CONTENT OR SUBJECT MATTER OF ANY WORK DISPLAYED OR ADVERTISED. SOME EXHIBITIONS OR INSTALLATIONS MAY BE OFFENSIVE, UPSETTING, OR DISTURBING TO SOME MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC. BOARD OF DIRECTORS Mike Harris Ian McGuffie Eric Savics Kim Spencer-Nairn CHAIR David Thorpe Todd Towers FOUNDING DONORS John and Nina Cassils Stephen Carruthers Chan Family Foundation Mike and Sandra Harris Brian and Andrea Hill Hy’s of Canada Ltd. Michael O’Brian Family Foundation Radcliffe Foundation Ron Regan Eric Savics and Kim Spencer-Nairn Leonard Schein Ian and Nancy Telfer Samantha J. Walker (IN MEMORY OF) Bruce Wright Anonymous Anonymous B L U R T H E BOUNDA RIES
Contents 001 CONTACT 004 WELCOME 006 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 009 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS 034 LAUNCH EXHIBITION 043 EXHIBITIONS 109 EVENTS 124 MAP 126 EDITIONS CONTENTS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 Our launch party on April 1 moves to a new, larger location this year: the Exhibition Hall at the Roundhouse in Yaletown. The party coincides with an exhibition of the finalists of Presentation House Gallery’s new Phillip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize, with the winner announced that night. Our public art program continues to grow, and we are delighted to present four major projects this year. The facade of the BC Hydro Dal Grauer Substation features a large-scale diptych created by Vancouverbased artist Stephen Waddell. Works from Jim Breukelman’s series Hot Properties are mounted on ten Pattison Outdoor Billboards throughout the city. The Canada Line Project returns with ten stations that feature diverse works on the theme Lying Stills: Constructing Truth with Photography. Lastly, Viewpoint—an interactive project that incorporates two stacked shipping containers—has been installed at Lonsdale Quay, challenging the way we view North Vancouver’s waterfront. None of this would be possible without the continued support of our sponsors, donors, partners, board members, dedicated team, volunteers, and, of course, the many participating artists. We are thrilled to welcome back TD Bank as Capture’s presenting sponsor this year. I cannot emphasize enough the importance of their support to ensuring the Festival’s continued success. Thank you also to our returning sponsors: London Drugs, PwC, and YVR Airport Authority. And thank you to our media, contributing, and in-kind sponsors: the Georgia Straight, Pattison Outdoor, Gotham Steakhouse and Bar, St. Regis Hotel, Lonsdale Quay, Big Dog Containers, Proper Design, Lazy Gourmet, Denbigh Fine Art, Fine Art Framing, and Palms. Much of our programming is made possible through the hard work of our partners at the Burrard Arts Foundation, Presentation House Gallery, Roundhouse Community Centre Gallery, Inform Interiors, BC Hydro, Knowledge Network, Contemporary Art Gallery, Western Front, the Vancouver Art Gallery, YVR Airport Authority, SFU School for Contemporary Arts, and the Vancouver Biennale. Welcome to the third edition of the Capture Photography Festival! This year’s Festival includes over 100 free exhibitions, public installations, and events throughout Metro Vancouver during the month of April.
5 Giving back to our communities in meaningful ways is a source of pride for us at TD. Additionally, we believe it’s important to showcase and present the wealth of artistic talent available locally and to encourage an appreciation of the arts among all Canadians. Visual art in the form of photography has blossomed in popularity in recent years. The beauty that comes from the camera lens has engaged a collective arts community consisting of art collectors, galleries, and students and has become a point of interest for the general public. We believe our support of Capture will help to further develop this art form and inspire the next generation of emerging artists who will take up this medium. Enjoy this year’s festival. Mauro Manzi SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT TD Bank Group, Pacific Region We are also grateful for the support of the Vancouver Foundation, Audain Foundation, the Department of Canadian Heritage, the BC Arts Council, Province of British Columbia, City of North Vancouver, the City of Vancouver, the Downtown Business Improvement Association, and the Canada Line Public Art Program—inTransit BC. Finally, thank YOU for picking up this magazine and for joining Capture to inspire creative engagement, celebrate the practice and culture of photography, and foster a vibrant photography community in Vancouver. Kim Spencer-Nairn EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR On behalf of TD Bank Group, I am very pleased to extend greetings and best wishes to the organizers of the 2016 Capture Photography Festival. WELCOME
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 PRESENTING SPONSOR WE GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE THE SUPPORT OF MEDIA SPONSOR
7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS SUPPORTING SPONSORS PARTNERS CONTRIBUTING AND IN-KIND SPONSORS MAJOR SUPPORTING SPONSOR
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 THANK YOU Adad Hannah Alan Convery Aline Smithson Andrew McCaw Anne Murray Amanda Vincelli Amit Amin Apoorv Dwivedi Barrie Mowatt Birthe Piontek Brian Mesina Cate Rimmer Catherine Cook Chantal Shah Christian Chan Christos Dikeakos Coleen Nemtin Corrina Parent Courtney Senick Dana Claxton Danny Singer David Paterson Denise Oleksijczuk Dennis Dong Diana Freundl Donna McGeachie Ed Chan Erin Siddall Gale Penhall Glenna Pollon Greg Girard Hana Pesut Helga Pakasaar Ian Wallace James Moes Jan Ballard Janet Smith Jeff Klaver Jennifer Winsor Jennilee Marigomen Jeremy Roncoroni Jim Breukelman John Chimuk John and Lucie Spencer-Nairn John Goldsmith Kate Bellringer Ken Stephens Kevin Day Kevin Mazzone Laura Moore Laura Minta Holland Leah Iverson Linda Banecevic Malania Dela Cruz MaryAnn Camilleri Marie Lopez Megan Buckley Megan Low Michael Audain Michael Barrow Michael Hanos Michael Preuss Nancy Bendtsten Neil Aisenstat Nelson Mouëllic Nigel Prince Pablo De Ocampo Pantea Haghighi Pascale Georgiev Patryk Stasieczek Paul Larocque Phuong Banh Reid Shier Rita Beiks Rob MacDonald Rudy Buttignol Ryan McKenna Ryan McGrew Ryan Romero Scott Massey Scott Mullin Sean Arden Shane O’Brien Sinziana Velicescu Stephanie and Michael Wesik Stephen Bellringer Stephen Waddell Steve McGregor Susan Almrud Susan Mendelson Tanveer Badal Toma Savics Travis Collier Uwe Boll Vishal Marapon Wil Aballe
9 Public Installations
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
11
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 1, 2016 — MARCH 31, 2017 BC HYDRO DAL GRAUER SUBSTATION PROJECT: THE COLLECTOR AND SHOWROOM Stephen Waddell PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP BY Capture Photography Festival and Burrard Arts Foundation 944 Burrard St Vancouver BC Stephen Waddell’s photographs are at once spontaneous and contemplative. His compositions offer a striking initial impression while their seemingly banal subject matter demands closer attention. He depicts recognizable scenes that appear too composed to have been happened upon, yet Waddell is neither a so-called street photographer nor interested in the rhetoric of epic staged photography. He creates pictures that deliberately exist in a place of ambiguity. Photography and industrialization came about in the Western world at roughly the same time—the mid nineteenth century— quickly and vastly changing the way in which everything from labour to the perception of time and space was understood. During this time, photography evolved from a fine art to prosaic and documentary forms. It was only later taken up again by those whose creativity would bind both elements into a conversation between the arts and artists. In many ways, modernist painters such as Édouard Manet and Gustave Caillebotte, whose works often celebrate the working class and the modern city, set the stage for the rise of street photography during the late 1800s. Images like Eugène Atget’s Chiffonier (Ragpicker) (1899) demonstrate photographers’ growing interest in the lives of labourers, not unlike Caillebotte’s realist painting The Floor Scrapers (1875), which depicts the urban proletariat through an ambivalent, non-moralizing lens. It is this interwoven realist history of early modern painting and street photography that leads directly to Stephen Waddell’s considered studies of anonymous figures working, relaxing, and moving through the urban environment. His work also finds links to a more recent past: mid-century modernism, with its renewed optimism for the possibilities of art, architecture, and technology and their ability to enhance the public realm. Today, this optimism tends to fall flat. Waddell’s photographs of urban subjects moving through cities often illustrate the (il)logical conclusion of this history, this utopianism never come to pass. One reading of the photos on the Dal Grauer Substation could interpret them as laying bare the disconnection between the optimism of the era of the building’s mid-century construction and the cynicism of today. In general, street photography makes the people who would otherwise be invisible to us visible. In The Collector, Waddell makes visible a trophy seller transporting statuary through Berlin’s streets, and, in doing so, directs our attention to the labour and chain of production involved in constructing and disseminating these peculiar objects. He is an arranger and seller of these twilighted objects. In the second photograph, Showroom, what at first appears as a Renaissance sculpture or arte povera installation awaiting exhibition is revealed to be an item in the showroom of a marble importer in Richmond, British Columbia. When we realize the photo was taken just outside of Vancouver, it brings up questions of aesthetics’ role in both consumer culture and class structure. Both photographs replicate the act of moving through the city alone, observing those you pass by and allowing the mind to wander as the cast of characters around you take on different forms. The mind begins to engage in the description of those anonymous figures, filling in the details of imagined lives with memories from one’s own past. Despite the resulting feeling of familiarity, we are reminded of the unknowability of strangers, as well as of those we are close to. The photographs on the Dal Grauer Substation illustrate the illegibility of images as much as they do that of individuals. Presented as two works on opposing sides of the building, they seem to fight each other to exist. Unsure of whether to identify as a cohesive tableau or as disparate fragments of something larger, the temporary installation invites contemplation of its sense of incompleteness. It also encourages those walking by to consider their own status as anonymous urban subjects as they become aware of their place in the public sphere, now shared with these photographs.
13 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS previous spread STEPHEN WADDELL THE COLLECTOR AND SHOWROOM (INSTALLATION VIEW), 2016 PHOTOGRAPH BY NELSON MOUËLLIC Completed in 1954, the BC Hydro’s Dal Grauer Substation was designed by the young architect Ned Pratt and artist B. C. Binning. The building was commissioned by the B.C. Electric Company, under the helm of then-president Edward Albert “Dal” Grauer, to bridge functional design and public art. The substation would go on to serve as a three-dimensional “canvas” that was said to resemble a Piet Mondrian or De Stijl painting. The modernist philosophy with which the building was designed emphasizes the link between art, architecture, and everyday life. With this in mind, Capture Photography Festival and the Burrard Arts Foundation have commissioned Canadian photographer Stephen Waddell to create a new site-specific work to be adhered to the Dal Grauer Substation’s facade. Drawing on the building’s originality, the project will temporarily emphasize the building in the streetscape and reassert it as an architectural icon.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
15 opposite page JIM BREUKELMAN HOT PROPERTIES 3, 1986/2016 next spread — left JIM BREUKELMAN HOT PROPERTIES 34 (INSTALLATION VIEW), 1986/2016 PHOTO BY NELSON MOUËLLIC next spread — right JIM BREUKELMAN HOT PROPERTIES 16, 1986/2016 MARCH 28 — APRIL 24 PATTISON OUTDOOR BILLBOARDS PROJECT: HOT PROPERTIES Jim Breukelman PRESENTED BY Capture Photography Festival CURATED BY Meredith Preuss In the late 1980s, Jim Breukelman photographed Vancouver’s quirky and well-tended homes built during the 1930s and 1940s. The resulting series, titled Hot Properties, captured these homes as they were slowly vanishing in areas of the city undergoing rapid change. Capture has placed ten of these photographs on billboards throughout Vancouver, in unexpected locations. The homes each reflect the vernacular architectural conventions adopted by builders of the time, from the colourful Frank Stella–like cut-outs adorning a modest bungalow to the baroque flourishes atop a stucco home. The street-facing gardens exhibit the personalities of those who tend them, with their considered mix of springtime blooms and quirky, sometimes misshapen topiaries. Initially conceived as portraits of both the houses and their owners, the series feels more urgent some thirty years later, in 2016. In the years following Breukelman’s documentation, the pace of development in Vancouver has only quickened, yet many of the concerns remain the same. Issues around loss of character persist, as do more alarming trends of gentrification and displacement. Furthermore, homes like these—when they haven’t already been replaced by developments—are assessed at the current value of the land, with the house merely bellying the price. Phrases like “developer’s dream” and “investor’s opportunity” proliferate in real estate listings, implying that the act of living in the space is secondary to the so-called investment in the property. Alternatively, Breukelman’s photographs of these lovingly cared-for homes suggest that the lived experience within a home may actually hold more value. These conflicting sentiments speak to our basic need for shelter and the dream of single-family home ownership, while pointing to the pressure to adapt to a new reality. PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS SEE THE MAP ON PAGE 124 FOR BILLBOARD LOCATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
17 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 2 — MAY 31 CONTAINER PROJECT: VIEWPOINT Ryan McKenna Erin Siddall and Sean Arden CURATED BY Cate Rimmer PRESENTED BY Capture Photography Festival Open approx. 1:15–5:30 pm every day; check the Capture website for exact times. “Our home is beyond the great Atlantic Ocean, beyond the great inland seas of Canada, beyond the vast wheat-growing prairies of Manitoba, beyond the majestic Rocky Mountains, away on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.” These words, contained in a letter of petition to King Edward VII by a small delegation of First Nations leaders in 1906, underscored the remoteness of their home on the edge of a vast continent, far from the colonial seat of power. At the time of the First Nations peoples’ petition requesting greater control over their own lands, the topography around them had already been carved up and reshaped by homesteads and commercial enterprises. One of those petitioning the king was the Squamish elder Kiyapalanexw, or Joseph Capilano, the namesake of so much on the north shore of Burrard Inlet. From his viewpoint overlooking the inlet, Capilano would have seen the city of Vancouver taking form, its buildings rising and the docks of the port reaching toward him over the water. Where once Indigenous canoes were the sole watercraft, great sailing ships and steamers now plied the water, bringing goods and settlers from the far reaches of the world. Presented 110 years later and situated within the lands of Kiyapalanexw, Viewpoint—a project about looking, seeing, and perception—surveys the bustling trade of commercial shipping and tourism on and around Burrard Inlet. Viewpoint consists of two lens-based works of art: Vision in 1792 by Ryan McKenna and Burrard Inlet Big Camera by Erin Siddall and Sean Arden. Housed in shipping containers on the edge of the port, the project evokes the history of the inlet as an access point for new forms of governance and for settlers, refugees, goods, and resources from all points of the globe. Though distinct from each other, both projects are focused on observation and the experience of seeing. McKenna’s film Vision in 1792 considers Burrard Inlet and the exploration of its waters by George Vancouver through the unique perspective of a Coast Salish Shaman. The Shaman has a vision about new longhouses that will follow the arrival of the new people as he sings a coming-into-the-house song. Filmed from the vantage point of the Lions Gate Bridge, the movement of the water below is at first barely perceptible. The “impending event” that one expects of traditional narrative film is set aside in favour of a rhythmic reflection of place, circumstance, and the passage of time. The second shipping container of Viewpoint has been turned into a camera obscura, a device that played an important role in the development of photography. The precursor to the modern camera, it allowed a scene to be captured and viewed as an isolated indoor projection. Like historic camera obscuras, Burrard Inlet Big Camera by Erin Siddall and Sean Arden employs a single aperture, multiple angled mirrors, and a camera bellows to create a projection of the slowly evolving view outside. The ephemeral, shifting image of Burrard Inlet speaks to the transient nature of not only the commercial ships that pass by but also to the history and stories of the built environment and landscape around us here on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. opposite page RYAN MCKENNA VISION IN 1792, 2010 FILM TRANSFERRED TO VIDEO
19 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL — SEPTEMBER CANADA LINE PUBLIC ART PROJECT — LYING STILLS: CONSTRUCTING TRUTH WITH PHOTOGRAPHY PRESENTED IN PARTNERSHIP BY Capture Photography Festival and the Canada line Public Art Program—InTransit BC Considering the role of authenticity and truth in documentary-style photography, Capture has installed photo-based artworks on the exteriors of nine Canada Line stations. The project stretches from downtown’s Waterfront to YVR-Airport and includes curatorial contributions from diverse cultural organizations: Presentation House Gallery, Contemporary Art Gallery, Western Front, School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University, the Vancouver Biennale, and Capture itself. Each organization has presented a unique perspective on this expansive topic. Throughout history photographers have relied on subtle manipulations to convey authenticity, their techniques ranging from staging and tableaux, darkroom processing, and Photoshop manipulations to any number of other subtle “tricks.” Famously, many of Walker Evans’s portraits of dustbowl interiors from the 1930s were skilfully staged to WATERFRONT YALETOWN ROUNDHOUSE BROADWAY CITY HALL VANCOUVER CITY CENTRE OLYMPIC VILLAGE KING EDWARD MARINE DRIVE YVR AIRPORT TEMPLETON 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 9 8 evoke empathy from their viewers, who would interpret the photographs as unbiased documents. Despite photography’s historically fraught relationship with documentary-style imagery, much of its potential to deceive is taken for granted. As such, many contemporary artists have based their practices around this paradox, to the extent that it is now one of the central concerns for photographic discourse today. The artworks selected for this series of installations offer a detailed look at the meaning of documentary-style photography, from traditional photojournalism to meditations on the construction of identity and photography’s complex role in representation and stereotypes. In several cases, the artists involved have even experimented with optical illusions and degraded images, which—by challenging the very act of seeing and perceiving—function as metaphors for the construction of truth within documentarystyle images. By presenting works that offer a variety of insights into what it means for an image to be made in the documentary style, this project aims to ask questions about the nature of how narrative is conveyed through images, authenticity in photography, and the many choices photographers make to create an image. opposite page JEAN-PAUL KELLY FIGURE-GROUND (CRASH OF CANADIAN PACIFIC AIRLINES, DE HAVILLAND COMET IA, CF-CUN, “EMPRESS OF HAWAII”, KARACHI), 2015
21 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 left ADAD HANNAH AN ARRANGEMENT (POLKA DOTS) 1, 2016 right ISABELLE PAUWELS UNTITLED, 2016 SERIES OF 7 PRINTS 48” x 32” EACH opposite page JÉRÔME HAVRE UNTITLED, 2010
23 1 WATERFRONT STATION: UNTITLED Isabelle Pauwels CURATED BY Helga Pakasaar, Presentation House Gallery Isabelle Pauwels’s sequence of images hovers between fantasy, absurdism, and documentary. Sourced from digital photographs, scans of family archives, and frame grabs from the artist’s past video productions, the images depict common cultural artifacts and are capped by mirroring analogue video colour bars that have been superimposed with text clipped from digital HD video colour bars. Removed from their original contexts, further processed, and combined with texts that function as visual shapes as well as language, the images form an open-ended narrative. While evoking advertisements through the pairing of image and text, the resulting collages refrain from directing us to feel or react in a certain way. Their meanings shift according to how we combine and prioritize them in relation to the rest of the sequence. Left to right, right to left, these two but not the others—the story can change every time. PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 2 VANCOUVER CITY CENTRE STATION: AN ARRANGEMENT (POLKA DOT CASE STUDY) 1, 2, 5 Adad Hannah CURATED BY Meredith Preuss, Capture Photography Festival Adad Hannah is perhaps best known for his tableau vivant video stills that reimagine historical artworks with live actors. With An Arrangement (Polka Dot Case Study) 1, 2, 5, he explores new themes, exchanging the high-production epics for process-based, in-studio experimentations. For this new body of work, Hannah made a set of ceramic pots, then hired a contortionist to pose with them. By camouflaging the contortionist in a polka-dot bodysuit made of the same material as the plinth and backdrop she appears with, the ceramics at first appear to be floating in space. A human form is revealed slowly as the objects recede, generating tension between the seemingly earnest ergonomic studies and the disorienting illusion caused by the repeating polka-dot pattern. The act of looking becomes deliberate and challenging as the viewer reconciles the fissures between the curves of the contortionist’s figure, the imperfect seams of her suit, and the backdrop. Through these means, Hannah examines how a photograph can function as a document of something both real and imagined. The photo acts as a destabilizing and whimsical pseudo-anthropological document, sharing as much in common with Eadweard Muybridge’s and Étienne-Jules Marey’s studies of movement as with many of the early photograms of László Moholy-Nagy and Man Ray, suggesting a surrealist, topsyturvy world. In this case, the optical illusion acts as a metaphor for how authenticity is constructed and deconstructed. APRIL 15 — AUGUST 31 3 YALETOWN — ROUNDHOUSE STATION: UNTITLED Jérôme Havre CURATED BY Shaun Dacey, Contemporary Art Gallery Contemporary Art Gallery presents Toronto-based artist Jérôme Havre’s first presentation in Vancouver. Of Caribbean descent and originally from France, Havre’s work considers representation, circulation, transmission, and translation of black identities, interrogating racialized stereotypes and ideologies projected onto bodies. Havre’s Untitled (2010) is a blunt gesture. The found image depicts a family posed against a vintage car in a tropical landscape, its warm hues of analogue colour giving entry to a past generation. Havre disrupts the scene, scrawling doodles of masklike forms in white-out directly onto each family member’s face, erasing identity and subjectivity, reforming these physical bodies as alien figures. Masks are objects held in high esteem in Western culture. Through centuries of colonial violence and capitalist extraction, these specific objects have come to sit in private and museum collections around the world, detached from the action, ritual, communities, and physical bodies they were made for. Disembodied heads without voice, these masked bodies are “stilled,” recontextualized as stand-ins to represent otherness, here a reflection on Western perceptions of blackness. 4 OLYMPIC VILLAGE STATION: FIGURE-GROUND (CRASH OF CANADIAN PACIFIC AIRLINES, DE HAVILLAND COMET IA, CF-CUN, “EMPRESS OF HAWAII”, KARACHI) Jean-Paul Kelly CURATED BY Pablo de Ocampo, Western Front Jean-Paul Kelly’s work challenges the notion of documentary images: how they are produced, how they circulate, and how we interpret and understand them. For this project, Kelly repeats a photograph of an original gouache painting across the facade of the station. The original painting, made by Kelly, is itself a reproduction that formally and subjectively translates a JPEG image of the 1953 plane crash in Karachi that killed his maternal grandfather, John Cooke. Cooke was a navigator for Canadian Pacific Air Lines and at the time lived with his family at 2006 West 48th Avenue in Kerrisdale. Kelly found a photograph of the crash on a website about aviation history, and used this low-resolution image as the basis for his project. The gouache painting directly references Bridget Riley, whose op art paintings and drawings from the 1960s use repeating patterns of grids and lines to create an illusory perception of form and space. Kelly’s painting deploys Riley’s technique to offer the viewer a position from which to consider difference, distance, and the disjuncture between subjective interpretations and physical forms inherent in documentary images. opposite page — top JOHN GOLDSMITH BONDI BEACH, 2011 opposite page — bottom DAVID ELLINGSEN JULY 2015 HOTTEST ON RECORD GLOBAL, 2015
25 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
27 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS 5 BROADWAY — CITY HALL STATION: WEATHER PATTERNS I David Ellingsen CURATED BY Alexandra Best Daniella Donati Solana Rompre, School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University Climate change is directly responsible for influencing David Ellingsen’s ongoing series Weather Patterns. Having grown up on rural Cortes Island, British Columbia, Ellingsen acknowledges his strong connection with the environment and the immediate effects of global climate change felt around him. Ellingsen began Weather Patterns I in 2011 by documenting the daily flux of the Pacific Ocean, taking a photograph every day possible. Inspired by meteorological records being broken globally and locally, Ellingsen uses such events to structure his works. As humanity moves forward, constantly ushering in new records for extreme temperatures and precipitation activities, the continuous, never-ending nature of this project becomes obvious. The presence of the artist is important to this work, with Ellingsen shunning any automated process by only documenting the days he is able to be present at the Pacific Ocean. His technique of compressing photos creates images that appear abstracted, challenging our notions of documentary photography by creating lens-based compositions. Through logging and recording images associated with record-breaking elemental extremes, Ellingsen envisages a narrative archive of environmental changes as he experiences them from his home here in the Pacific Northwest. 6 KING EDWARD STATION: CAPTURE AND GEORGIA STRAIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY COMPETITION WINNER John Goldsmith Capture Photography Festival and the Georgia Straight invited photographers of all backgrounds to respond to the theme “Authenticity in Documentary-style Photography” by submitting an image or series that creates a story or narrative. A shortlist of five was created by an expert jury consisting of Pablo de Ocampo (Exhibitions Curator, Western Front), Laura Marks (Professor, School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University), and Nigel Prince (Executive Director, Contemporary Art Gallery). The winning photographs, by John Goldsmith, were determined by public vote on the Georgia Straight’s website. John Goldsmith’s work follows the long tradition of straight photography, but in a contemporary and often theatrical mode. Drawing from the rich history of documentary photography, this project explores the social aspects of people inhabiting the built environment, documenting unstaged moments punctuated with the visual representations of a postmodern psyche. Using the principles of the photojournalistic style of storytelling, Goldsmith’s photographs examine reality-based perceptions of a medium that manipulates both spatial and temporal dimensions. The photograph is treated as “truth”—produced largely incamera with adjustments made using digital tools analogous to those in a traditional darkroom. In the spirit of the straight movement, nothing is added, nothing removed. The series of photographs mounted on King Edward Station explores community and public space in some of the world’s most livable cities, including Vancouver and Melbourne and Sydney, Australia. The works create caricatures of real people in real moments within the modern urban environment, where citizens negotiate manufactured landscapes under the everwatchful eyes of government, commerce, and an increasingly photography-savvy general public. The line between public and private spaces has become increasingly blurred and, along with it, so has the one between our personal and shared personas. opposite page — top LUCIEN DUREY HAMSTERLEY FARM WATER TOWER, 2015 opposite page — bottom SEUNG WOO BACK RE-ESTABLISHING SHOT, 2012
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 7 MARINE DRIVE STATION: HAMSTERLEY FARM WATER TOWER Lucien Durey CURATED BY Jorma Kujala Abbey Hopkins Lauren Lavery, School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University For Hamsterley Farm Water Tower, Lucien Durey turned a Hamsterley Farm strawberry jam tin, which he found in Saskatoon, into a crude pinhole camera, using a sewing needle to poke a small hole into the face of the tin. With the homemade camera and 4” x 5” film, the artist travelled to Saanich, British Columbia, to document the jam tin’s referenced site—the farm’s water tower is now preserved as a recognized heritage structure—in an attempt to reveal something of the object to itself. Seemingly “personal” to the camera, can these photographs somehow convey the relational energies that exist between the antique tin and its documented site of origin? The variety of media approaches that constitute Durey’s work often begin with a performative engagement with found objects and ephemera. He is attracted to things that have the potential to be overlooked—quietly emotional things—discarded, forgotten, or revealed through searching. Durey considers his object collecting to be informed by a subjective queer experience—one of simultaneous attraction and repulsion that encompasses the sense that what we find exciting or sensuous can also embarrass us or expose us to harm. Further to this, Durey is interested in the theme of compensation, that is, the emotional motivation for gestures particularly as it relates to human investment in contemporary mythological figures and their representations and to the collection of symbolic and totemic objects. 8 TEMPLETON STATION: RE-ESTABLISHING SHOT Seung Woo Back CURATED BY Ken Lum Vancouver Biennale Re-Establishing Shot is a montage of photodocumentation from multiple large-scale photographs composed of urban landscapes, including Seoul, Busan, and Tokyo. The artwork holds photo fragments from various places, perspectives, and narratives, assembled together as one. However, upon closer inspection, the images do not contain a fluid visual continuity but rather end abruptly, causing an optical break. This large-scale image draws the viewer in with its unusual perspective of an assembled urban landscape; yet it does not provide clues to a specific location, leaving the viewer curious as to which city they are engaging with. All features suggesting recognition with a place in this documentation have intentionally been removed by the artist. What remains are superficial surfaces. Being devoid of the city’s historic and social significances removes individual memory, recollection, and personal story. The urban landscape in Re-Establishing Shot cannot be located, and this transient encounter leads to a floating narrative. Without any historic and social context, the urban setting loses its distinction and becomes generalized. During his residency at the Vancouver Biennale, Seung Woo Back documented the industrial landscape of this city, as part of a developing global narrative of the generalizing trend of popular culture, in which differences, distinctions, and tastes are vanishing. 9 YVR-AIRPORT STATION Ted Grant CURATED BY Rita Beiks, YVR Vancouver Airport Authority Ted Grant began his career when photographers still used film, never knowing what kind of photo he got until the film was developed. Despite advances in technology, waiting is still key to his practice. No matter what the subject—notable people, the Vietnam War, the children of Chernobyl, the Olympic Games, births, deaths, or doctors performing surgery—his process is always to find his vantage point, plant himself, and wait for the right moment. As a photojournalist and documentary photographer, Grant does not manipulate or stage his photos to achieve any preconceived idea of what the photo should convey. He doesn’t pose his subjects and he doesn’t use flash. He doesn’t need to. And while his intent is to allow the photograph to speak for itself, there is no denying that it is his unique way of seeing and experiencing the world that determines which moment is captured and chosen to convey the true essence of a subject. The photos on display at YVR-Airport Station are a small and varied sampling of Grant’s sixty-year career.
29 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS top TED GRANT PIERRE TRUDEAU, OTTAWA, 1968 bottom ART ZARATSYAN ELIMU–KENYA–1, 2014
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 top SONNY ASSU 1UP, 2016 INSTALLED ON SURREY ART GALLERY’S URBANSCREEN PHOTO BY EDWARD WESTERHUIS bottom LYNOL LUI WILHELMINA, 2015
31 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS APRIL — MAY OUTSIDE DARKROOM Lynol Lui CURATED BY Roxanne Gagnon Arts Umbrella 1286 Cartwright St Vancouver BC & 116–15850 26th Ave Surrey BC Arts Umbrella’s two buildings, at Granville Island in Vancouver and at Morgan Crossing in Surrey, are transformed into site-specific installations by larger-thanlife black and white photographs by artist and Arts Umbrella instructor Lynol Lui. Outside Darkroom aims to create an impact from these two different locations and perspectives, encouraging dialogue around the medium, process, subject matter, and accessibility to art in an open space. APRIL 1 — 30 SEE THROUGH A NEW LENS Megan Wilson Art Zaratsyan CURATED BY Tallie Garey PRESENTED BY Photographers Without Borders Various Public Spaces Photographers Without Borders showcases images from select photographers who have volunteered their time to capture the work of grassroots charities around the world. Through their collective voice these images are shared worldwide both in print and online, as well as by the organizations for fundraising and awareness campaigns. These inspiring stories of community, collaboration, and positive change reinforce open dialogue, public education, and peaceful relations, encouraging a humanity that would rather help than discriminate. SEE PHOTOGRAPHERS WITHOUT BORDERS WEBSITE FOR LOCATION DETAILS: photographerswithoutborders.org
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 UP UNTIL MAY 1 THE EXPERIENCE Elizabeth Zvonar CURATED BY Diana Freundl, Vancouver Art Gallery Vancouver Art Gallery Offsite 1100 West Georgia St Vancouver BC Vancouver artist Elizabeth Zvonar conjures romantic sentiment and melancholic undertones in The Experience, a bleachedout collage and light installation boldly positioned in downtown Vancouver during the dreary winter months. Combining materials and strategies used in advertising, the site-specific public artwork draws tangential connections between thoughtful inquiry and advertorial amusement. A pair of sunglasses is placed in the foreground of a celestial landscape from Mars, creating a scene that reads like a postcard from the future. The 105-squaremetre digital collage is accentuated with gel-filtered lighting and framed by a reflective pool of water and colour. In The Experience, Zvonar continues her practice of appropriating imagery from various sources and media, including advertising, contemporary fashion photography, and counterculture. She amplifies the digital design of her hand-cut collage by dramatically increasing its scale and using theatrical lighting to produce an environment that shifts from a space of entertainment to one of examination. In its totality, The Experience combines classic summer imagery with references to hippie ideals of the 1970s psychedelic music scene, forming a new hybrid that ultimately prompts viewers to reconsider the passage of time and the limits of temporal reality. The Experience at the Offsite outdoor exhibition space is presented as part of MashUp: The Birth of Modern Culture, a major group exhibition tracing the history of mashup culture across diverse disciplines, presented at the Vancouver Art Gallery from February 20 to June 20, 2016. UP UNTIL MAY 8 1UP Sonny Assu CURATED BY Alison Rajah RECEPTION Thursday, April 21, 7–9 pm UrbanScreen at Surrey Art Gallery 13458 107A Ave Surrey BC Sonny Assu’s 1UP is a site-specific architectonic installation newly created for the Surrey Art Gallery’s offsite projection venue, UrbanScreen. Located on the west wall of Chuck Bailey Recreation Centre, UrbanScreen is situated on traditional Kwantlen territory. As a Ligwilda’xw/ Kwakwaka’wakw person recently relocated to South Surrey, Assu “tags” the colonial landscape to bring attention to the hidden histories of the Indigenous people in Canada. A colloquial term in gaming culture, “1UP” grants an extra life to a player through an achievement or item. Drawing on this term, Assu’s artwork 1UP becomes a metaphor for how the First People have risen up for rights within a system that was designed to oppress and assimilate them. 1UP merges ’80s and ’90s retro gaming iconography from his childhood with Northwest Coast formline elements. Assu’s 1UP relates to his larger body of work, specifically his Longhouse, Chilkat, and Interventions on the Imaginary series, which investigate theories of abstracting abstraction, the recreation of language, and decolonization. Recognizing art from the Northwest Coast is a form of abstraction that inspired artists from the surrealist and cubist movements, Assu witnesses this gaze and influence by making work in response. With 1UP, Assu seeks to comment on the land, honouring and making visible the parallel narratives of Indigenous people and the histories of this place, now known as Surrey city centre. Sonny Assu thanks Mark Mushet for adding the video elements into 1UP.
33 PUBLIC INSTALLATIONS ELIZABETH ZVONAR THE EXPERIENCE, 2015
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 Launch Exhibition
35 APRIL 1—8 THE LIND PRIZE OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 7–10 PM Roundhouse Community Arts and Recreation Centre EXHIBITION HOURS MONDAY–FRIDAY, 9–9 PM; SAT & SUN, 9 AM–5 PM This year’s Capture Photography Festival launches on April 1 in conjunction with the opening reception of the inaugural Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize and exhibition. The prize has been established to support emerging artists working with photography, film, and video. Each year, post-secondary visual arts instructors are invited to nominate a student enrolled in a BFA or MFA program. Shortlisted students have their work exhibited as part of the Lind Prize exhibition. This year’s winner will be selected and announced during the April 1 opening celebration. THE PRIZE The Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize is made possible with generous support from Rogers Communications. Rogers made a significant donation to Presentation House Gallery to honour Phil Lind’s forty-five years of service and contribution to the company and the communications industry, and to celebrate his passion for the Vancouver art scene, at the time of his retirement last year. The 2016 jury includes Stephen Waddell (artist and Emily Carr University of Art + Design faculty member), Helga Pakasaar (Curator, Presentation House Gallery), and Reid Shier (Director/Curator, Presentation House Gallery). The shortlisted emerging artists for the inaugural prize are: KERRI FLANNIGAN University of Victoria EMILY GEEN University of Victoria CURTIS GRAHAUER Simon Fraser University POLINA LASENKO Emily Carr University of Art + Design BRANDON POOLE University of Victoria ANNA SHKURATOFF University of Victoria VILHELM SUNDIN Simon Fraser University LAUREN TSUYUKI Simon Fraser University The winner will be awarded $5,000 toward the production of a new work to be included in an exhibition at the future Polygon Gallery in 2017. LAUNCH EXHIBITION
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 THE EXHIBITION Kerri Flannigan’s stop-motion animation maps the exterior of a now defunct institution for the intellectually disabled, using changes wrought to the building’s facade since the mid nineteenth century as a vocabulary of exclusion to explore the ideological borders between healthy and sick, normal and deviant. Emily Geen is engaged in an ongoing investigation into the contemporary condition of mediated looking. She purposely works with images that are amateur and ambiguous, using glass and other materials to fragment, obstruct, or otherwise direct our perception of the pictorial content. Curtis Grahauer’s 16 mm film installation depicts an environment that exemplifies the “super unnatural,” a term coined by the artist to identify the anthropogenic landscape that hides in plain sight, a grey area of obscured human influence between the natural and the naturalized. Polina Lasenko has photographed television newsreaders from video stills, drawing attention to their status as modern storytellers and to the divide between fact, fiction, and propaganda. A second series connects narratives of the familiar and the familial through the actions of sea, wind, and time, in prints drawn from personal and family archives. Brandon Poole uses recycled materials to create rough sculptural supports for his meticulous HD videos. In these works, virtuality and materiality collide, as small fluttering movements break the flatness of the surface and trouble the stillness of the image. Anna Shkuratoff has made a series of videos dealing with the themes of longing and nostalgia in the production of lens-based work. The technical and formal implications of HD video are revealed through subtle interventions into the video plane that encourage close looking. Vilhelm Sundin’s video installations bring together the sublime and the everyday. In one, a giant moon hovers over the city, familiar but strange. In another, the tiny figure of a man can be seen smoking quietly on an apartment rooftop as smoke blankets the city. Lauren Tsuyuki’s two recent photographic projects consider the transformative nature of a fold. One series uses the process of folding to break apart narrative and memory, the other to accentuate the division between manual and digital processes. opposite—top KERRI FLANNIGAN CATCHING STONES AND THROWING HAMMERS: THE WOODLANDS DEMOLITION, 2016 INK, PAINT, MASKING TAPE, PROJECTION STOP-MOTION ANIMATION ON A LOOP, APPROX. 5 MIN opposite—bottom VILHELM SUNDIN SMOKE, 2016 HD VIDEO, SINGLE-SCREEN PROJECTION, 6 MIN 26 SEC
37 LAUNCH EXHIBITION
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
39 LAUNCH EXHIBITION opposite page LAUREN TSUYUKI MANUAL PHOTOSHOP, UNTITLED 04, 2014 APPROPRIATED IMAGES FROM LOVE MAGAZINE 6.5” x 10.5” ANNA SHKURATOFF TIRE SWING, 2015 HD VIDEO
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
41 LAUNCH EXHIBITION opposite page EMILY GEEN A VIEW TO CALL ONE’S OWN, 2015 INKJET PRINTS, REFLECTIVE GLASS, CLEAR GLASS, STEEL CURTIS GRAHAUER A DARK SHAPE ON THE HORIZON, 2015 PHOTOGRAPHS, 16 MM FILM LOOP PROJECTION
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 top POLINA LASENKO STORYTELLERS 5, 2015–16 SILVER GELATIN PRINT 11” x 14” (MATTED AND FRAMED) bottom BRANDON POOLE FLATTER MOVEMENT #2, 2015 TWO-CHANNEL HD VIDEO, 1 MIN LOOP
43 Exhibitions
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 OCTOBER 2015 — FEBRUARY 2017 100 YEARS, 100 TREASURES Sheila Byers Don Griffiths Kirsten Hodge Darren Irwin Linda Jennings Mairin Kerr Brian Leander Olivia Lee Wayne Maddison Karen Needham Ada Sin Derek Tan Eric Taylor David Turner Christopher Stinson Yukiko Stranger-Galey Ildiko Szabo Jeannette Whitton RECEPTION SATURDAY, MAY 28, 10 AM–5 PM Beaty Biodiversity Museum University of British Columbia 2212 Main Mall Vancouver BC 100 Years, 100 Treasures is a celebration of the University of British Columbia’s centennial by its natural history museum. The Beaty Biodiversity Museum is opening its cabinets and revealing 100 of its most spectacular treasures through breathtaking photography in an online exhibition at BeatyTreasures.com. Community members have shared their stories about these objects, and the public has been asked to vote on their favourite treasure. These images are currently on display in an interactive installation in the museum. In May 2016, in response to the public’s votes, an exhibition of the top treasures will be unveiled. From the largest creature to have ever lived on earth, the blue whale; to the passenger pigeon, an abundant species brought to extinction by humans 100 years ago; to some of the earliest records of knowledge exchange about uses of native plants between European settlers and local First Nations in British Columbia, these treasures tell important tales. Beaty Biodiversity Museum hopes this project will encourage public dialogue and debate on how these objects are used and understood in different communities in the past and present, and where they might hold a place in the future. opposite page BEATY BIODIVERSITY MUSEUM PASSENGER PIGEON, ECTOPISTES MIGRATORIUS
45 EXHIBITIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
47 MARCH 5 — APRIL 24 NO NAME CREEK Zebulon Zang CURATED BY Gregory Elgstrand Art Gallery at Evergreen 1205 Pinetree Way Coquitlam BC In No Name Creek, Zebulon Zang presents a collection of work in photography, film, and sculpture that trains sights on the frequently overlooked and often downright ignored spaces and places in the city. These may, in fact, provide a truer description of the nature and condition of the city than the well-known asphalt and concrete highways and byways that connect strip malls and power centres, parks and leisure centres, formula shops and chain restaurants. In Maillardville, the original centre of Coquitlam, a small creek flows toward the Fraser River, where, just before being diverted under Lougheed Highway, it runs alongside a big-box grocery store. Beyond the expansive parking lot and hidden among a wild tangle of blackberry bushes, the national chain has branded the creek with a sign in its signature “no name” brand font, proclaiming it “No Name Creek.” This no-naming is the kind of non-definition of no-place that stands as a representative anecdote for the city in No Name Creek. In a balance between the distinctive natural landscape and the increasingly homogenous social aspects of specific suburban areas, the exhibition looks to the surfaces of the city to understand how they may be unintentionally understood. The exhibition is supported by a grant from the BC Arts Council. EXHIBITIONS opposite page EDWARD BURTYNSKY SHIPYARD #7, QILI PORT, ZHEJIANG PROVINCE, CHINA, 2005 CHROMOGENIC COLOUR PRINT 48” x 60” © EDWARD BURTYNSKY, COURTESY OF NICHOLAS METIVIER GALLERY / PAUL KUHN GALLERY, CALGARY JANUARY 21 — APRIL 10 A TERRIBLE BEAUTY: EDWARD BURTYNSKY IN DIALOGUE WITH EMILY CARR Edward Burtynsky CURATED BY Bruce Grenville, Senior Curator, Vancouver Art Gallery The Reach Gallery Museum 32388 Veterans Way Abbotsford BC A Terrible Beauty presents a selection of photographs by Edward Burtynsky in dialogue with paintings and drawings by Emily Carr. Though working in different mediums and over fifty years apart, both artists sought to record the changing, industrialized landscape and our place within it. A Terrible Beauty is organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery with the generous support of the Killy Foundation. MARCH 14 — MAY 31 BALLET BC 30TH ANNIVERSARY PHOTO EXHIBITION Michael Slobodian PRESENTED BY BC Ballet Scotiabank Dance Centre 677 Davie St Vancouver BC Michael Slobodian’s fascination with movement, passion for dance, and ability to catch the perfect lighting, feeling, and line has sculpted his work for almost four decades and has made him one of the most important and internationally recognized dance photographers in Canada. This exhibition is a celebration of Ballet BC’s enduring relationship with this compelling photographer, showcasing Slobodian’s incredible talent for capturing the physicality and beauty of the human body in motion as artistic expression. Celebrating its thirtieth anniversary this year, Ballet BC is a collaborative and creationbased contemporary ballet company, comprising seventeen talented dancers from Canada and around the world who combine classical integrity with a contemporary sensibility. Solidly grounded in the foundation of ballet with an emphasis on innovation and the immediacy of the twenty-first century, the company presents a distinct and diverse repertoire by the most sought-after Canadian and international choreographers today.
ZEBULON ZANG NO NAME CREEK, 2015 10” x 8” opposite page MICHAEL SLOBODIAN BALLET BC DANCER GILBERT SMALL, 2013 CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016