The Vancouver Art Gallery Presents Photographic and Video Works

Written by Craig Farnswoth Tuesday, 27 September 2011 21:43

Vancouver, British Columbia.- The Vancouver Art Gallery is proud to present  on view at the museum from September 24th through Feburary 12th 2012. "The Distance Between You and Me" presents the work of three notable contemporary artists from Vancouver, Los Angeles and Guadalajara. Thematically, the exhibition revolves around the ideas of location and dislocation, not only in the geographical sense, but also in terms of psychological location.  The artists - Isabelle Pauwels, Kerry Tribe and Gonzalo Lebrija – are loosely united by the geographical configuration of their locations, which form a line extending along the west coast of North America from Vancouver through Los Angeles to Guadalajara in Mexico. “This simple line unites diverse cultures revealing shared points of intersection and interest,” says Bruce Grenville, senior curator of the Vancouver Art Gallery, “but this is only the beginning, for we can also see in the work of each of these artists a shared sense of dislocation, a necessary estrangement that shapes our personal history and sense of self, creating the distance that allows us to see who we are in this place.”

The three artists are also linked by their use of photo-based media. The nature of film, photographs and video makes them perfect choices for those who want to document their experience and establish evidence of their locatedness. The capturing of a trace of light on the surface of the film negative or video photoreceptors is a proof of sorts, an index that points to a position in time and space that we have occupied. Vancouver-based artist Isabelle Pauwels uses video and found photographs that combine images from her home in suburban Vancouver with home movies made by her grandfather during his family’s time in the Belgian Congo. The temporal and geographic disjunction produces a remarkable uneasiness, binding social and political history, location to medium and memory and family relations. The installation is comprised of two single channel videos, June 30, 2009 and W.E.S.T.E.R.N, 2010, together with a group of digital prints, scanned images of historical photographs taken or collected by her grandfather.

"Here and Elsewhere", a two-channel video installation by Los Angeles-based artist Kerry Tribe, presents a conversation between a father and young daughter. Asked to speak about time, space, memory and being, the daughter evokes a sense of melancholy and dislocation that cannot be mended with critical thinking. In the arid Los Angeles landscape that appears and disappears throughout their conversation, their resolutely British accents seem oddly out of place. "The Distance Between You and Me" by Guadalajara artist Gonzalo Lebrija includes four 16-mm films, each depicting the artist running away from the viewer as fast as he can. Light and landscape affect the figure’s visibility as he recedes, creating an image that is at once mesmerizing and disturbing. The viewer is left to wonder if they are the cause of this retreat, or if they  should join the artist and abandon their own location.


In its 79-year history, the Vancouver Art Gallery has expanded three times. Currently operating at and beyond capacity after nearly 30 years in the renovated former provincial courthouse building, the Gallery is now planning a new, purpose-built facility that will meet the community’s needs for the next 50 years and beyond. Construction of the original Vancouver Art Gallery building began in March of 1931, funded by $130,000 raised by a group of art patrons led by Vancouver businessman Henry A. Stone. In 1951, the Vancouver Art Gallery at 1145 Georgia Street was expanded to three times it original size in order to accommodate 157 works by Emily Carr, willed by the artist to the province of British Columbia before her death in 1945. The Vancouver Art Gallery remained at 1145 Georgia Street until 1983, when it moved to its present location in the former provincial courthouse building bound by Georgia, Howe, Hornby and Robson Streets. The new Vancouver Art Gallery opened to the public in October 1983 in the retrofitted courthouse building with 41,400 square feet of exhibition space. The Vancouver Art Gallery’s collection originated with few Canadian works and a strong emphasis on British historical painting. The Vancouver Art Gallery houses a number of major works by Canadian artists (in addition to the Emily Carr collection), including Lawren Harris , A.Y. Jackson , Arthur Lismer , Jock Macdonald , J.W. Morrice, David Milne, Harold Town, Gershon Iskowitz and Jack Bush. The collection includes a number of works by some of Quebec's best known artists, including Theophile Hamel, Antoine Plamondon, Marc-Aurèle de Foy Suzor-Coté, Paul-Emile Borduas, Guido Molinari, Jacques de Tonnancour, Claude Tousignant, Charles Gagnon, Yves Gaucher, Alfred Pellan and Jean-Paul Lemieux. The Gallery has acquired major works by Quebecois contemporaries such as Genviève Cadieux, Jana Sterbak, Jocelyne Alloucherie and Betty Goodwin. The Gallery’s European historical collection includes Dutch paintings from the seventeenth century by Jan Anthoniszoon van Ravenstyn, Jan Wynants, Isaac van Ostade, Pieter Neeffs the Elder, Jacob Marrel, Jan van Huysum, Balthasar van der Ast, Ambrosium Bosschaert the Younger, Jan Josefsz van Goyen, Abraham Storck, Roelof de Vries, Willem van de Velde the Younger, Adriaen van der Kabel, Salomon van Ruysdael , Flemish-Cornelius de Heem, Roelandt Savery and a fine first edition of Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes' "Disasters of War". Visit the museum's website at ... www.vanartgallery.bc.ca

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