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51 EXHIBITIONS opposite page EVAN LEE FROM FUGAZI, 2016 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT 60” x 60” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY KAREN ZALAMEA LIGHT & VARIATION NO. 3, 2015 ARCHIVAL GICLÉE PRINT ON PHOTOGRAPH 36” x 48”
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 MARCH 12 — APRIL 9 FUGAZI Evan Lee OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2–4 PM Monte Clark Gallery 105–525 Great Northern Way Vancouver BC Fugazi consists of visually stunning 5 x 5 ft prints created from digital scans of cubic zirconia, relatively inexpensive but highquality imitations of diamonds (“fugazi” is a slang term used in mafia films for counterfeit diamonds). The images are captured at a high level of detail and enlarged 15,000 percent to a scale that renders the gems’ internal appearance mesmerizingly random, distorted, and fractured, while the effects of digital image loss and artifacting emerge to aid in their visual transformation. The patterns and reflected colours appear kaleidoscopic and at times groundless, an aesthetic that Lee manipulates further by constructing geometric backgrounds in response to the resulting visual space. Lee’s project reflects on his earlier works, such as the Dollar Store Still Life series (2006), which also examines the economic and cultural values of fake and artificial consumer goods. Fugazi also continues Lee’s take on representations of psychedelia, illusion, and optics, as explored in such earlier works as Every Part from a Contaflex Camera . . . (2006) and the Stain (2003) and Phoropter (2012) series. Lee’s practice has always been positioned both alongside and against the grain of photography, and Fugazi continues the artist’s image production in the avant-garde reaches of the post-photographic or camera-less digital realm. opposite page RYAN PETER UNTITLED (AUTOGRAM), 2015 CYANOTYPE ON UNIQUE GELATIN SILVER PRINT 16” x 20” MARCH 12 — APRIL 23 THE MOON AND OTHER MYTHS Ryan Peter CURATED BY Pantea Haghighi OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, MARCH 12, 2–4 PM Republic Gallery 732 Richards St (Third Floor) Vancouver BC For his fourth solo exhibition with Republic Gallery, Ryan Peter presents a group of new photo-based works. An extension of his Autogram series, The Moon and Other Myths includes a selection of large-scale unique silver gelatin prints. Along with more traditional darkroom processes such as dodging and burning, the works are made by collaging and contact printing “textures” that consist of acrylic paints on translucent polyester and polypropylene films—plastic on plastic. This uneasy union between synthetic materials produces uncannily natural results: fractal forms that evoke numerous phenomena, from rock formations to wood panelling. In this way, the works present a temporal excavation, resuscitating the organic ancestries of these petroleum products and, in doing so, conjure Georges Bataille’s concept of the ghost as “the perfect heterogeneous space, between life and death.” These allusions to the distant past—and the prehistoric life forms whose deaths have fuelled the future—are complicated by references to more recent imaging technology, such as Photoshopped drop shadows. The exhibition additionally includes new cyanotype prints on canvas, furthering the artist’s investigation into the relationship between painting and photography. MARCH 17 — APRIL 9 SPECTRES OF DESIRE Karen Zalamea Franc Gallery 1654 Franklin St Vancouver BC Developed through the lens of many disciplines, Karen Zalamea’s process involves image making through handson material engagement. As exhibited in Spectres of Desire, Zalamea creates light forms as photographic subject matter. These images demonstrate the direct relationship between lens, light, and subject and function as evidentiary threads of process. The resultant works combine the unhurried nature of large-format analogue photography and the immediacy of light and its spectral potential.
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55 EXHIBITIONS THE BURIAL OF JOHN SMITH, SPENCES BRIDGE, APRIL 23, 1905 SILVER PRINT (UL #1023) COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA LIBRARY, RARE BOOKS AND SPECIAL COLLECTION, UNO LANGMANN FAMILY COLLECTION OF BC PHOTOGRAPHS MARCH 30 — JUNE 26 NANITCH: EARLY PHOTOGRAPHS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA FROM THE LANGMANN COLLECTION OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 16, 7 PM Presentation House Gallery 333 Chesterfield Ave North Vancouver BC NANITCH offers the first look into the Uno Langmann Family Collection of BC Photographs, an important archive of over 18,000, rarely seen photographs recently donated to the University of British Columbia Library by Vancouver’s Uno and Dianne Langmann and Uno Langmann Ltd. Spanning a sixty-year period from the 1860s to the early 1920s, this groundbreaking exhibition reveals dramatic changes in the province, as well as in how and why photographs were made. The dynamic display of photographic material shows how the official activities of nineteenth-century working photographers using large-format cameras evolved with the introduction of amateur cameras and mass distribution of promotional photography. NANITCH also brings to light new interpretations of the early history of British Columbia. The significant role of the camera in colonization is suggested by the exhibition title, NANITCH, meaning “to look” in Chinook jargon—the trade language of the Pacific Northwest at that time. Questioning colonialist narratives of progress, the exhibition emphasizes the contradictions of settlement. Early photographs of official land surveys, family portraits, industrial ventures, commerce, political events, Indigenous peoples and their displacement are brought into dialogue with dystopian conditions of failure. The exhibition features rare albums of photographs, ranging from the first nineteenth-century government expeditions in the province to the turn-of-the-century, utopic community of Wallachin, which promoted land to entice settlers. Key photographers highlighted include Frederick Dally, Charles Horetzky, Charles McMunn, Hannah and Richard Maynard, Ben Leeson, and Edward Curtis. NANITCH is a co-production of Presentation House Gallery and the University of British Columbia Library. The exhibition and publication are part of UBC Library’s Centennial programme.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 opposite page ADAD HANNAH AFTER MUYBRIDGE: WRESTLERS 2, 2016 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT 27” x 24¼” MARCH 19 — APRIL 16 CASE STUDIES Adad Hannah OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2–4 PM Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way Vancouver BC Adad Hannah works within a photographic tradition that combines elements of very early photographic practices, film and video pioneers such as Andy Warhol and Nam June Paik, and the cinematographic approaches of photographers such as Jeff Wall and Cindy Sherman. Largely known for extending and exploring the photographic moment by stretching it out over time using a video camera pointed at tableaux vivants, Hannah’s approach to photography and video is cinematic and focuses on the discursive possibilities of performativity and photography and how, particularly in digital video, stillness can be distilled into an extended moment. Time and its complicated relationship to photography have been central to Hannah’s practice for more than a decade. In his new exhibition, Case Studies, Hannah has created three series of performancebased photographs and videos that explore the relationship between the human body, movement, and its photographic representations. Taking Eadweard Muybridge’s studies in human movement and motion as his starting point, this exhibition reverses Hannah’s stance to perform motion rather than stillness, joining together still images toward the illusion of movement.
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59 EXHIBITIONS opposite page EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE HUMAN AND ANIMAL LOCOMOTION: PLATE 521. A: WALKING. B: ASCENDING A STEP. C: THROWING THE DISK. D: USING A SHOVEL. E: USING A PICK., 1887 COLLOTYPE 11” x 10” MARCH 19 — APRIL 16 BUILDING AN ATLAS Eadweard Muybridge OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, MARCH 19, 2–4 PM Equinox Gallery 525 Great Northern Way Vancouver BC Eadweard Muybridge is one of the most influential photographers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, known for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion. Born in England, Muybridge immigrated to the United States as a young man but remained obscure until 1868 when his large landscape photographs of Yosemite Valley, California, made him world famous. Muybridge’s experiments in photographing motion began in the early 1870s, when Leland and Jane Stanford hired him to help prove that during a particular moment in a galloping horse’s gait, all four legs are off the ground simultaneously. Adapting the very latest technology to his ends, Muybridge finally proved his theory by using a galloping horse to trigger the shutters of a bank of cameras. Following his initial success with horses, Muybridge used his tripwire method to capture humans and animals engaged in over 700 different movements and actions. Comprising these hundreds of plates and thousands of individual exposures, Human and Animal Locomotion is a veritable atlas of imagery about movement and time. Muybridge’s innovations as a photographer cannot be understated. In the new world that Muybridge envisioned and created, the depiction of moving things was freed from the limitations of memory or perception, and clearly anticipated coming developments in cinematic technologies.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 MARCH 28 — APRIL 9 2016 NATIONAL PICTURES OF THE YEAR NOMINEES Group Exhibition CURATED BY News Photographers Association of Canada OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 6–8 PM Pendulum Gallery HSBC Building 885 West Georgia St Vancouver BC The News Photographers Association of Canada (NPAC) hosts the annual National Pictures of the Year awards each spring. This event is the largest annual photo contest in Canada, showcasing the best work of its members. It also recognizes the Photojournalist of the Year, Photograph of the Year, and Student Photographer of the Year. The awards competition further serves to provide members with important peer review of their work, as well as helping them to stay current with trends and techniques in photojournalism. The National Pictures of the Year awards has become the largest photojournalism competition, for both still photography and multimedia, in the country. MARCH 29 — APRIL 5 SD 45 ONE. FIVE: A SENSE OF PLACE Jody Broomfield Cedric Burgers Craig Cameron Chris Kennedy Ross Penhall SD 45 students CURATED BY Jackie Wong OPENING RECEPTION WEDNESDAY, MARCH 30, 6–8 PM West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St West Vancouver BC In SD 45 One. Five: A Sense of Place, local residents investigate their perceptions of West Vancouver’s social, cultural, economic, and topographical settings. Their personal inquiries of this distinct community are documented in a collaborative mural. Students, educators, politicians, artists, and architects have been directed to document their “community” using a camera. The resulting images have been brought together in the West Vancouver Museum, revealing the common thread that links these neighbours and what defines them as a distinct population. opposite page — top ALESSANDRO OLIVO SD 45 STUDENT JUMP, 2015 opposite page — bottom MARTA IWANEK SD 45 STUDENT TORONTO STAR, 2015 MISSISSAUGA, ON-MARCH 31 - Mumtaz Ibrahim plays with her father Adan at their host family’s home in Mississauga, March 31, 2015. Mumtaz Ibrahim was born with no right upper eyelid, a cleft skull and frontonasal dysplasia disfiguring her face. Through the Hospital for Sick Children’s Herbie Fund, which provides financial support to families from all over the world in need of treatment for their children, she was able to come to Canada for surgery.
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CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 MARCH 30 — APRIL 26 PROJECT INSTANT V3.0: HOLD A MOMENT IN YOUR HAND Group Exhibition CURATED BY Kathy Kinakin Nicole Langdon-Davies PRESENTED BY Beau Photo OPENING RECEPTION WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, 6–8 PM Science World at TELUS World of Science 1455 Quebec St Vancouver BC In a time when digital cameras and smartphones provide truly instant gratification by displaying a moment in time almost as it passes, the term “instant photograph” is somewhat of a misnomer, being that they can take a period of up to twenty minutes to develop. The instant photograph is, however, an immediately tangible object, whereas the digital image remains ethereal unless printed at a later time. Project Instant V3.0: Hold a Moment in Your Hand brings together photographers who want to see photographs as immediately physical objects. Being able to hold the image, put it in a pocket, or pass it around is part of what makes it important. Contributors to the exhibition include young people with an eye for detail, emerging photographers, and established artists who use instant film as one of many mediums. The subject matter varies but the materiality of the photograph is the common theme. The film used ranges from Fujifilm Instax Mini, Polaroid, and Impossible SX-70 film up to 8 x 10 instant images. The exhibition also explores the science behind the photograph, providing information about the technology of instant film. The art and science of instant film are inextricably linked, and one can more fully appreciate the one with an understanding of the other. NICOLE LANGDON-DAVIES DOLL’S HEAD, 2015 IMPOSSIBLE CYAN 600 MONOCHROME FILM opposite page VALERIE DURANT CROSSING, 2008 ARCHIVAL PRINT 40” x 30”
63 EXHIBITIONS MARCH 31 — APRIL 30 INTERWEAVE AFRICA Valerie Durant CURATED BY Janine Vertone OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 12–5 PM Ukama Gallery 1802 Maritime Mews Vancouver BC Interweave Africa explores the convergence of African cultures, past and present, within today’s global society. Climate change has emerged as the greatest challenge facing humanity, threatening human and animal existence. Extreme weather events and increased temperatures resulting in flooding and droughts are having unavoidable impact on food and water security and human health, particularly in Africa. Those who contribute the least to climate change are emerging as the most affected. Environmental degradation from intensive agricultural practices and resource exploitation has intensified the issues in many African regions. Rural to urban migration—brought about by economic and geopolitical influences, the impact of colonization, partitioning, and, more recently, extreme climate events and food insecurity—has led to destabilization and displacement. The images selected for Interweave Africa take a humanistic approach, drawing links between the social, economic, and ecological interweave of people and their deep-rooted connection to place. The exhibition reflects upon the impact of human interventions on the culture and livelihoods of people and their interdependence with the natural world.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 MARCH 31 — APRIL 8 INTERVALS: PHOTOGRAPHY IN FLUX Goga Bayat David Ellingsen Jim Friesen Diana Nicholette Jeon Edward Peck Phyllis Schwartz Andrew Ward CURATED BY Edward Peck Phyllis Schwartz OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 7–9 PM South Main Gallery 279 East 6th Ave Vancouver BC Intervals: Photography in Flux is an exhibition about the transitory nature of photography. Every image, depending on time, location, viewer, and context, is constantly in transition. Photographers create meaning that fluctuates in the intervals between their images—whether it be the intervals between the shutter opening and closing, the intervals between the images on the wall, the interval between the image and the material on which it is presented, or the interval between the meaning that arises and changes in the viewer as they move between images. Intervals presents the work of seven contemporary photographers based in Vancouver, Victoria, Los Angeles, Honolulu, and Iran who explore the rhythms and tension of their geographical, social, and psychological landscapes. Andrew Ward and David Ellingsen both explore the obsolesce and disposal resulting from a fast-paced economy, reminding us of the rapid fluctuations of our material world. Diana Nicholette Jeon turns the camera on herself, processing her emotions into an expression of her views on women’s identity and environmental issues. Goga Bayat’s and Jim Friesen’s works explore inner psychological landscapes, resulting in poetic visual imagery. Edward Peck’s abstraction of the Icelandic landscape leads into Phyllis Schwartz’s analogue/digital, cameraless image-making process, which results in abstract landscape forms. Intervals: Photography in Flux is a collection of unique and unusual digital and photographic processes that are rarely seen in one setting. The methods and techniques range from those used long before the invention of the camera to the advanced technology available to artists today. opposite page GOGA BAYAT UNTITLED 2, 2011
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67 APRIL 1 — 16 THE ACT OF CREATION, PRESENTATION AND CONSUMPTION Group Exhibition CURATED BY Alex Waber Lynol Lui Roxanne Gagnon PRESENTED BY Arts Umbrella OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 6–9 PM Remington Gallery 108 East Hastings St Vancouver, BC Arts Umbrella and Remington Gallery come together to curate an evolving exhibition that depends on the participation of visitors. The act of creation, presentation and consumption presents an exploration of the process of creation and sharing through an emphasis on teen photography. Instant production, Snapchat, Instagram, and temporary art will be discussed inside Arts Umbrella’s classrooms and encouraged in the space of the gallery, where images taken throughout the school year by Arts Umbrella students will be displayed alongside Polaroids taken by visitors to the exhibition. APRIL 1 — 21 SANDOKAI: GRASPING AT THINGS IS SURELY DELUSION Josema Zamorano CURATED BY Manuel Piña-Baldoquín OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2–4 PM Back Gallery Project 602 East Hastings St Vancouver BC Sandokai is a poem by the Chinese Zen master Sekito Kisen (700–790 CE), chanted daily in temples around Japan and the world. Extravagantly polysemous, this key Zen text expresses, among other things, the merging of the relative and the absolute, of difference and unity, of reality and perspective. Josema Zamorano’s work in the streets of Japan evokes one of Sandokai’s lines: “Grasping at things is surely delusion.” Aiming to subvert a ubiquitous premise of the photographic image that’s been held throughout the history of photography and into the age of social media—that is, that a photograph fixes appearances— Zamorano unfixes reality to release the perspectives contained therein. He achieves this by performing multiple exposures of alternate gazes and creating a single cubist photograph. Zamorano’s work also calls forth a fundamental premise of Japan’s Shinto religion. According to this tradition, the Utsushiyo (visible or material world) and Reikai (invisible world of spirits) are part of one another. Events in both realms have a consequence on reality as a whole. As the wavering appearances of these images suggest, Josema’s work is an investigation of the reunion of the visible, the invisible, and imagined worlds. opposite page — top LYNOL LUI POLAROID, 2016 opposite page — bottom JOSEMA ZAMORANO SANDOKAI TOKYO #10, 2015 INKJET PRINT MOUNTED ON ALUMINUM DIBOND 36” x 24” EXHIBITIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 1 — 30 DO YOU DREAM OF SUNSHINE WHEN YOU SLEEP? Campbell + Killough CURATED BY Avalon Mott OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 7–10 PM FIELD Contemporary 17 West Broadway Vancouver BC Do You Dream of Sunshine When You Sleep? focuses on the relationship between light, atmosphere, and healing. Using both art and design, Campbell + Killough have constructed an experiential environment that explores the healing properties of light and form through photography and sculpture. The placement of objects and their orientation visually guides the viewer into a fully curated experience, and, through the juxtaposition of furniture and sculpture with photographic prints, the viewer will be able to experience two-dimensional impressions of light with three-dimensional experiences of light. Do You Dream of Sunshine When You Sleep? calls for the viewer to sit, reflect, heal, and frame the world around them. CAMPBELL + KILLOUGH THROUGH A BLUE CLOUD ALL THE LIGHT LOOKS THE SAME, 2016 CYANOTYPE 36” x 48” opposite page ALAN JACQUES LIBRAIRIE PAUL VULIN, 2003 SILVER GELATIN FIBRE PRINT
69 EXHIBITIONS APRIL 1 — 7 VANCOUVER & PARIS: THE STREET PHOTOGRAPHS OF ALAN JACQUES Alan Jacques CURATED BY James Emler OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 7–9 PM Visual Space Gallery 3352 Dunbar St Vancouver BC Vancouver & Paris is a project that has its roots in 1984 Europe, planted during Alan Jacques’s first visit to Paris. Now, thirtytwo years later, this project can be seen as a retrospective of the artist’s street photography work—but it is also much more than that. Not only does the exhibition document Jacques’s impressions of each city, but it also illustrates his creative response to the trials and constrictions placed upon him by Parkinson’s disease. Each exhibited photograph was created using a low or unusual camera position and a prominent wide-angle lens to showcase the unique visual elements present in both cities. Vancouver & Paris features 16” x 20” silver gelatin fibre prints handcrafted by master printer Trevor Martin.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 JON RAFMAN MAINSQUEEZE (STILL), 2014
71 EXHIBITIONS APRIL 1 — 30 JON RAFMAN + MARK SOO Jon Rafman Mark Soo CURATED BY Wil Aballe OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 1, 7–9 PM Wil Aballe Art Project 105–1356 Frances St Vancouver BC Mark Soo’s Koons on Ice features a computer-modelled version of Jeff Koons pornographic Made in Heaven sculpture, with the glass-like bodies acting as an ad hoc lens through which to surveil public scenes. The result is a speculation, at once factual yet hyperreal. The glass interprets the physical laws of optics and explores the phenomena of transparent bodies in space as a visual metaphor for the digital world. Soo’s companion work, You can see the weakness of a man right through his iris, is a further exploration of shapes, bodies, and optics. These protograms bring to mind the instinctive relationship that connects eye to phallus, phallus to lens, and lens as a fundament to the act of vision and photography. Jon Rafman examines the role that technology plays in contemporary life. In Mainsqueeze he surveys and collages clips from the darker corners of the Internet to explore the alienating effects associated with obscure subcultures. Meanwhile, a new, large, resin-poured photograph questions how it is that we, as a society, have premised that technological advances will bring about utopia, only to then discredit any and all utopias as organizing principles for our society via our individualistic impulses.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 2 — 30 THINGS AS THEY ARE Erin O’Keefe OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2–4 PM Gallery Jones Unit 1–258 East 1st Ave Vancouver BC opposite page ERIN O’KEEFE THINGS AS THEY ARE #28, 2015 ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT 20” x 16” New York City–based artist Erin O’Keefe, a trained architect, utilizes tools in her art making that are grounded in the formal language of making, as developed through architectural practice. Her photographic work explores the nature of spatial perception and the layer of distortion and misapprehension introduced by the camera.
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75 opposite page ROY ARDEN WOUND, VANCOUVER, 1981–85 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT PRINT 8” x 8” COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND MONTE CLARK GALLERY EXHIBITIONS APRIL 2 — 30 FRAGMENTS Roy Arden Monte Clark Gallery 105–525 Great Northern Way Vancouver BC Roy Arden’s Fragments is a suite of intimate colour photographs produced between 1981 and 1985 in Vancouver, Paris, Geneva, and Berlin. Arden was twenty-four years old in 1981 and Fragments was his first body of mature work, started in his last year as a student at what was then Emily Carr College of Art. Arden has said that he was looking for “a mode of photography that could function as a lyrical but realist poetry.” Fragments is largely composed of portraits or figure studies, presented alongside details of urban texture, including natural phenomena. Arden chose to work with a vintage twin-lens Rolleiflex, preferring the larger negative and the slower operation of this camera over the speed and ease of a 35 mm camera. The tenor of Fragments is essentially melancholic; as the artist explains, “I was looking for that time and space that meansend rationality had overlooked.” In these photos the liquid texture of the Ektachrome film is wilfully exploited. Objects are drawn out of darkness by the light, which is often harsh or cruel, and a shallow depth-of-field is recurrently employed in the service of a poetics of appearance.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 2 — 27 BRIAN HOWELL: A SURVEY Brian Howell OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 2, 2–4 PM Winsor Gallery 258 East 1st Ave Vancouver BC Brian Howell is a Canadian photographer, notable for large-scale projects that examine vernacular expressions of shifting societal and personal values. His subjects are drawn from fringe or marginalized communities— people and places resonant with allegorical meanings for an age that seems to Howell to be both broken and blinded. Howell’s photographic series build on a truth-telling mantra of an earlier era of documentarians, though they are given structure and further meaning by a more rigorous contemporary, conceptual framework. This survey exhibition features works from a number of Howell’s large-scale projects from the past twenty-five years. BRIAN HOWELL ASIAN COUGAR, FROM THE WRESTLER SERIES, 2002 ARCHIVAL INK JET PRINT ON PAPER 31” x 31”
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79 EXHIBITIONS opposite page — top JAEDAN CHAYCE LEIMERT LAC-MÉGANTIC, 2016 opposite page — bottom ANGELA FAMA DEBBIE INTERIOR (WHAT IS LOVE), 2015 APRIL 5 — MAY 7 EIDOLICON Jaedan Chayce Leimert OPENING RECEPTION TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 7 PM Robert Lynds Gallery THE GALLERY’S NEW LOCATION WILL BE ANNOUNCED THE DAY OF THE OPENING SEE ROBERTLYNDSGALLERY.COM FOR DETAILS EIDOLICON runs the gamut of tragedy, ranging from atrocity and social injustice to personal bereavement and material impermanence. Jaedan Chayce Leimert’s images are contextually heavy-handed but simultaneously conflicted by the ephemeral nature of their materials (static-held toner, birch bark, exterminated hornet nests). The exhibition brings to light the empathetic power of iconic imagery and the fleetingness of memory while also questioning our mediated understanding of current events through photography. APRIL 7 — MAY 14 WHAT IS LOVE Angela Fama CURATED BY Kate Bellringer OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 7–10 PM Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway Vancouver BC The concept of love has been the driving force behind the creation of some of our greatest works of art, our best-known philosophies, and our most severe behaviours. While Webster’s Dictionary defines love as “a feeling of strong or constant affection for a person,” this uniform definition precludes our understanding that the human experience of love is varied. Angela Fama began What Is Love in response to this standardized definition. With the aim of unifying communities’ past perceived differences and together redefining the word “love,” in May and June 2015 Fama and her assistant, Joel Tong, visited more than twenty locations across Canada and the United States. Using the same setup for each portrait session within her travelling RV studio, Fama sat with interested adult passersby and discussed the word “love.” She asked the same question of everyone and documented the process by capturing a consistent set of photographs timed with the discussion and recording the stories shared. The project has been created with the intent of comparative viewing. What Is Love is housed under the umbrella project Wabisabi Butterfly, begun by Fama in 2010 with the concept of bringing together adult survivors of trauma and sexual abuse to form safe, respectful, and inclusive communities engaged in the arts and positive change.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 7 — MAY 14 EARTH TO EARTH, ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST Randy Grskovic CURATED BY Kate Bellringer OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 7–10 PM Burrard Arts Foundation 108 East Broadway Vancouver BC Unlike most photographers, Randy Grskovic uses the darkroom as a starting point for his work. He is affected by the chemistry, geology, and memory of the process. In combination with the science behind the darkroom, Grskovic uses content from history by purchasing glass negatives, smashing them, and printing the result. In each session he shatters the image more, making it impossible to recreate a previously printed image. For him, this Sisyphean process of printing a negative, breaking it, and printing it again until it’s finally dust illustrates his fascination with memory and how each time a memory is accessed it is unavoidably altered. His interest lies in the interruption of photographic tropes to challenge our understanding of historic composition and content. APRIL 7 — 21 LIGHT AND THE SOCIAL ORDER Louise Francis-Smith CURATED BY Ewan McNeil OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 6–9 PM Covan02 Art Gallery 148 Alexander St Vancouver BC In the 1960s, Vancouver’s Chinatown organized against the city’s slum clearance and freeway plans. A freeway would have been a concrete knife cut through the heart of Chinatown, inducing the collapse of its social structure. Once again, Chinatown is undergoing dramatic physical and social change. The colour and fabric of this historic neighbourhood are fading. Traditional businesses are closing at exponential rates to be replaced by cafes, skateboard shops, upscale restaurants, and art galleries. Signage everywhere promotes new condo developments. In Light and the Social Order, Louise FrancisSmith sees an elderly population and a way of life passing. opposite page RANDY GRSKOVIC MEMORY 1 (ITERATION 3), 2016 GELATIN SILVER PRINTV V
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CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2015 opposite page LOUISE FRANCIS-SMITH MAILBOX, 2014 ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT 19” x 19” KEN BURTON NORTHUMBERLAND HOUSE, BEECHY ISLAND, 2015
83 EXHIBITIONS APRIL 7 — JULY 3 ARCTIC ENCOUNTERS Group Exhibition Vancouver Maritime Museum 1905 Ogden Ave Vancouver BC In August 2015, the Vancouver Maritime Museum sent staff aboard a One Ocean Expeditions cruise ship travelling through the Arctic to present an exhibition that focuses on John Franklin and the European efforts to find the Northwest Passage. This, however, is only one side of a multifaceted story. The Vancouver Maritime Museum staff also took this opportunity to document their experience in the Arctic through photographs as well as to solicit images from local community members, including the archivist of Pond Inlet, Nunavut, who provided photographs of contemporary life in the Arctic. Arctic Encounters presents audiences with unique views of the modern Northwest Passage and the people who call the Arctic home. Photographs from the Pond Inlet archives are presented alongside the photographs of the museum staff’s Arctic trip, revealing the contemporary social and environmental landscapes of Canada’s Far North.
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 7 — 28 FAKE PLASTIC TREES Biliana Velkova CURATED BY Leah Taylor OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 7 PM Tartooful 3183 Edgemont Blvd North Vancouver BC fake plastic trees presents Biliana Velkova’s observations on the branding and commodification of nature. She romanticizes, exaggerates, and complicates the exploitation of nature and nature as artifice, directly referencing tourist tropes found throughout the Saskatchewan prairies and Alberta’s Rocky Mountains. Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, Velkova lived under the Communist regime until immigrating to Canada in 1991 at the age of fifteen. Her memories of communism have deeply opposite page BILIANA VELKOVA LAKE LOUISE SCENE, 2012 DIGITAL PRINT ON DIBOND 24” x 36” next spread — left MERLE ADDISON RUBY’S LIGHT, 2015 DIGITALLY MANIPULATED PHOTOGRAPH 9.3” x 14” APRIL 7 — MAY 7 ANÁLEKTA: THE FLOWERINESS, THE BARENESS Merle Addison CURATED BY Glenn Alteen Dana Claxton OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 7–10 PM grunt gallery Unit 116–350 East 2nd Ave Vancouver BC This exhibition of new works by Merle Addison documents his switch from analogue to digital. Reworking old works using digital overlays, the final prints in Análekta: the floweriness, the bareness owe as much to printmaking as photography. At once modern and nostalgic, the works transform the media through their highly manipulated surfaces. impacted the way in which she perceives the “West,” leading her to interrogate issues of capitalism, appropriation, and Western femininity. Although her interdisciplinary practice focuses on social and political issues from a critical perspective, her delivery is optimistic, convivial, and often humorous. From iconic fake palm trees found throughout Saskatoon to the majestic views of Lake Louise, Velkova’s cinematic photographs conflate opulence and kitsch. The glossy images of fake plastic trees create a spectacle from everyday encounters. Through her Bulgarian lens, Velkova inserts the narrative of the other by presenting alternative ways of viewing and interpreting the Canadian landscape, ultimately problematizing the ubiquitous images of Canadian identity, creating space for a more polycentric, multicultural history. “When an outsider comes to a new place, he sees the picturesque and the freakish, whereas the local sees through layers of emotion and memory.”— Walter Benjamin
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87 EXHIBITIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
89 EXHIBITIONS APRIL 8 — MAY 14 STRAIT GOODS David Crompton CURATED BY Tarah Hogue Julia Kreutz OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 8–11 PM The Gam Gallery 110 East Hastings St Vancouver BC Strait Goods is a collection of images made while crossing the Strait of Georgia by ferry from the mainland to Vancouver Island on Canada’s West Coast. If the photographs are portraits, they are oblique portraits. Viewed from above, the subjects do not reveal themselves through their eyes but, instead, through their physical forms, gestures, clothing, and the personal belongings that surround them. In the images passengers sun, smoke, and sleep through the seasons while the set remains essentially the same: an industrial grey ship deck, an ashtray, a garbage bin, and a line of lifejacket trunks turned furniture. The minimal geometric stage provides the perfect common denominator for these strangers to reveal their character and acts a catalyst for imagining the stories each of them might occupy outside the frame. Strait Goods began in 2011 and is an ongoing series. APRIL 8 — MAY 14 PLANT LIFE Alex Waber CURATED BY Tarah Hogue OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 8–11 PM The Gam Gallery 110 East Hastings St Vancouver BC Alex Waber’s Plant Life series focuses on the boundaries of the two-dimensional medium of photography. The images invite the viewer to experience the physical surface of the object as separate from the image just beyond, thereby shifting the narrative properties of the captured photograph. Narratives created around flowers are equally as rich as they are varied. Nearly every plant has a symbolic meaning, a scientific function, and an aesthetic quality. APRIL 7 — 23 OBJECTSUBJECT Peppa Martin OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 7, 6:30–8:30 PM truth and beauty gallery 698 West 16 Ave Vancouver BC ObjectSubject combines visual and descriptive storytelling of personal relationships through object biographies. The photographed objects, often regarded as touchstones of past relationships, act as agents of shared experience found at the improbable intersection of absence and presence. Material histories deposit into memory the small dramas of everyday life, thus acting as tangible placeholders for a time, place, or event that would otherwise exist only in the abstract. Material histories reflect temporal continuity—with the object assuming the role of physical agent for a shared experience— such that a personal narrative of the past is easily reconstructed from them. Often, they propose their own surrogate relationship and serve to explore our understandings of the universal human experience of being attached to people and things. The forty-eight objects of ObjectSubject were collected, photographed, and documented over a period of two years. While the contributors are anonymous, their gender is identified in the companion exhibition catalogue of the object-images and subjectstories. previous spread — right ALEX WABER UNTITLED (PLANT LIFE) ARCHIVAL INKJET PRINT 11” x 14” opposite page — top PEPPA MARTIN CIGAR, 2014 DIGITAL CAPTURE opposite page — bottom DAVID CROMPTON STRAIT #13, 2012 ARCHIVAL PIGMENT INK PRINT
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 opposite page DAVID LEMON K 2, 2015 APRIL 8 — 13 BONSTARDT IS ALWAYS EXCITING ISN’T HE ISN’T HE David Lemon Visual Space Gallery 3352 Dunbar St Vancouver BC Bonstardt is always exciting isn’t he isn’t he is a body of photographs that will be made in the gallery over the course of the exhibition, which will then be uploaded to the Internet for whatever use the viewer may have for them, free of cost. Their subject will be materials brought into the gallery, which will be available for inspection—in whatever form they are left in—after each session. None of the photographs will be Photoshopped. The outcomes of these photos are unknown. “Bonstardt is always exciting isn’t he isn’t he” is a fragment of dialogue from the 1959 comedy recording The Critics by Ron Goodwin and Max Schreiner, performed by Peter Sellers and Irene Handl. This fragment has enlivened the artist’s experience of looking at and thinking about art, with the rhetorical question continuously popping up like a mind-worm. APRIL 8 — APRIL 18 COLOUR STORIES Tanya Goehring Nariman J CURATED BY Lauren D. Zbarsky OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 8, 8 PM–LATE Untitled Art Space 436 Columbia St Vancouver BC Photographer Tanya Goehring and creative director and stylist Nariman J worked collaboratively to create the photographic series Colour Stories. The series is a trip through the decades, playing on the aesthetic sensibilities of each period. Through their use of a limited colour palette within each photograph, Goehring and Nariman J explore a range of unique feelings that play out in a moving visual poetic. The set, created by Nariman J, and the lighting, designed by Goehring, are designed so that the resulting images appear to be two-dimensional, transporting the viewer into the duo’s collaborative and surreal world. APRIL 9 — 23 CONSTRUCT Chris Shepherd CURATED BY Riko Nakasone OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 2–4 PM Bau-Xi Gallery 3045 Granville St Vancouver BC Construct is a series of interventions on physical photographic prints. Through shredding, cutting, tearing, folding, crumpling, and other acts, Chris Shepherd rearranges and reconfigures photographic prints into sculptural forms. These new objects are then rephotographed, and the journey—from taking to making and back to taking—allows the viewer to re-evaluate the conventional language of photography. Memory, nostalgia, documentation, and other established tropes of the medium become secondary to the form and object, opening a dialogue about what photography is and means. Shepherd’s artistic practice to date has focused on large-scale photographic prints. Underpinning that work has always been an overriding interest and affection for the painting and sculpture of the geometric abstractionists of the 1960s and the contemporary and conceptual artists of today and the last fifty years. Construct is a conscious effort by the artist to move from “taking” pictures to “making” pictures within this frame of reference. The work in this series uses either existing artist proofs from Shepherd’s studio or newly photographed pieces specifically taken and printed to work with the new processes of manipulation. These processes deliberately avoid technology, opting instead for mundane and repetitive physical actions. This also adds an archaic, durational aspect to the work that is simultaneously uncomfortable and meditative.
91 EXHIBITIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
93 EXHIBITIONS opposite page TANYA GOEHRING JADE, 2015 DIGITAL C-PRINT 29” x 36” CHRIS SHEPHERD RED BRICK WALL FOLDED, 2016 CHROMOGENIC PRINT 36” x 36”
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 9 — JUNE 12 I WAS HERE Paulo Majano CURATED BY Brian Foreman OPENING RECEPTION SATURDAY, APRIL 9, 7:30–9:30 PM Surrey Art Gallery 13750 88 Ave Surrey BC Using augmented reality technology, Paulo Majano’s project I Was Here recreates the drama of everyday events in public outdoor spaces and parks across Surrey and its surrounding region. Each location is captured both as a photograph and as a 3D scan (created by scanning individual elements on location in three dimensions). Each resulting photograph contains within it a latent image—a three-dimensional photographic scene that when revealed, like the latent thought in Sigmund Freud’s theory of dreams, offers potentially different narratives and new layers of meaning. When each photo is viewed with a smartphone or tablet using an artist-developed augmentedreality application, the 3D scene becomes visible. The photographic image—at times revealing only partial subjects, or showing elements perhaps a little close to the edges—is an invitation for the viewer to interact with the scene and reframe the composition from different points of view. Through this virtual view, viewers can move in for a closer look, or look behind objects to reveal elements not initially visible in the original photo. Ironically, since the viewer must move around the photograph to fully see it, this virtual medium creates the potential for active, physical interactions. APRIL 11 — 28 AROUND HERE Chris Gallagher CURATED BY Chris Keatley OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 6–8 PM Pendulum Gallery HSBC Building 885 West Georgia St Vancouver BC Around Here combines motion-picture duration with the stasis of the fixed image through a technique the artist calls the radial pan. During exposure, the camera rotates precisely around the lens axis, bending the linear exposure time into a circle, forming a closed loop reminiscent of the film loop. A circle is understood with just a glance; it is narrative free and immune to temporality. Theoretically, at the infinitely small centre of a rotating circle—the dead centre— there is no movement, and this is revealed in the appearance of Chris Gallagher’s photographs. The image smear created by the radial camera’s movement shifts the subject’s representation from the real to the abstract, suggesting temporality as the dominant element of representation, rather than spatial depiction. The images of Around Here are an instant imbued with duration, a continuous moment to which the viewer brings their sense of self and seeks a point of identification. They oscillate between positioning themselves at the dead centre of the image, in the cryogenic stasis (the photograph) but longing for dynamic time and space, and as a satellite, whirling in the circle (the movie) of an unknowable space over an uncontrollable time, wishing for the transcendental stasis of the centre. opposite page — top PAULO MAJANO THE PICNIC PARTY—REDWOOD PARK [49.034595N, 122.727962W] COLOUR PHOTOGRAPH WITH AUGMENTED REALITY INTERACTIVITY FOR SMARTPHONE opposite page — bottom CHRIS GALLAGHER FIRE IN THE HOLE, 2015 INKJET ON ALUMINUM 76 x 109 cm
95 EXHIBITIONS
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016
97 EXHIBITIONS APRIL 13 — JUNE 4 MIRRORED EXPLOSIONS Sanaz Mazinani CURATED BY Pantea Haghighi OPENING RECEPTION TUESDAY, APRIL 12, 7–9 PM West Vancouver Museum 680 17th St West Vancouver BC Mirror reflections have multifarious interpretations: some view the image as objective truth, while others identify its inherent reversal as proof of the mirror’s deception or illusion. Mirrors confine and frame the visible, although they may also exaggerate it infinitely—for example, when two mirrors face each other. We are so used to viewing our reflection on a daily basis that we often fail to see who or what is staring back. The same is true of the photographic image: despite the complexities of photography, even the most atrocious scenes of conflict and war dissolve in the indiscriminate and ubiquitous depictions encountered in the media. Sanaz Mazinani’s recent photographic collages physically jar these images out of this mediascape. By presenting chaotic explosions in mirrored, kaleidoscopic arrangements that refuse to lie flat, opposite page SANAZ MAZINANI EXPLOSION (DETAIL) PHOTOGRAPHS MIRROR MOUNTED ON DIBOND WITH CUSTOM WOODEN STRUCTURE 46” x 23.5” x 6.25” Mazinani impedes a passive spectatorship; the representation of conflict is both visual and haptic. Each work in Mirrored Explosions is an intervention in space, challenging the privileged vantage through which the politics of war are mediated. Problematizing both the mirrored reflection and the photographic lens, Mazinani ruptures our modes of observation, forcibly asking: How does an image’s mediation affect moral or political judgments? To what extent are these images real to us? How can the implications of war be more visibly, and tangibly, understood through representation?
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL APRIL 2016 APRIL 14 — 30 GODS OF SUBURBIA Dina Goldstein CURATED BY Meyvis Araniva OPENING RECEPTION THURSDAY, APRIL 14, 7–9 PM South Main Gallery 279 East 6th Ave Vancouver BC Gods of Suburbia is a ten-part conceptual photography project analyzing religious faith within the modern context of technology, science, and secularism. The project challenges the viewer—religious or secular—to embark on a journey of self-reflection as they contemplate the relevance of ancient ethics and morals in a society characterized by materialism and consumerism. APRIL 15 — JUNE 10 IN A VAULTED ROOM: WORKS BY VIKI WU AND NEO TANG Neo Tang Viki Wu CURATED BY Tamla Mah OPENING RECEPTION FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 3–6 PM Art Beatus (Vancouver) 108–808 Nelson St Vancouver BC In a Vaulted Room brings together the work of Neo Tang and Viki Wu, both fourth year students at Simon Fraser University. Using a black and white photodocumentary style, Tang presents ten portraits of different women in his series Ten Sisters. However, the artist subverts the documentary style through the use of ambiguity—he does not define the relationship between the photographic subjects, who do not appear to be biological siblings. In addition to exploring the photographer/ audience relationship, Wu is interested in investigating the way the world is presented beyond the borders of the picture frame. In her work, Wu uses mirrors and live cameras to reveal and invert the invisible presence of the photographer into a performer in the act of picture taking. opposite page — top VIKI WU UNTITLED 9, 2015 INKJET PRINT ON EPSON PHOTO MATTE PAPER 11” x 19” opposite page — bottom DINA GOLDSTEIN LIGHT BOX LAST SUPPER 32.5” x 58”