print October 2012

Ian Wallace

“IAN WALLACE: AT THE INTERSECTION OF PAINTING AND PHOTOGRAPHY”
Vancouver Art Gallery
October 27, 2012–February 24, 2013
Curated by Daina Augaitis

SINCE THE 1980s, Vancouver’s reputation in the international art world has been tied to the photographic practices of a relatively small group. Despite rejecting the name they were given (“the Vancouver School”), Rodney Graham, Ken Lum, Jeff Wall, and Ian Wallace have all promoted a rigorous commitment to understanding the art-historical and theoretical basis for photography’s interrogation of art in general. Writing has been an integral part of this:

print May 2012

Babak Golkar

Upon entering Vancouver-based artist Babak Golkar’s exhibition “Grounds for Standing and Understanding,” the visitor was greeted by a surfeit of blank walls: Numerous white partitions had been erected, dividing the gallery’s conventionally white shell in an unusual, concertinaed fashion. The spectator was required to proceed further into this field of blanks before the exhibition offered up any ostensible contents, but when it did, he or she was met with a familiar trope of Golkar’s recent work. In the rear of the gallery, white wooden sculptures resembling architectural models were laid on top

print Summer 2011

Ken Lum

“It’s no use walking anywhere to preach unless our walking is our preaching.” This methodological imperative, attributed to St. Francis of Assisi, is strangely instructive in thinking through Ken Lum’s mid-career survey, currently on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Lum rose to prominence in the late 1980s, quickly becoming emblematic of an international critical discourse concerning the photographic and the postmodern. Yet any discussion of the Canadian artist’s work must also account for how it directly engaged arguments about representation specific to his immediate artistic-intellectual

Gareth James