Season of Sex, the City, and Worlds in Between
Fall's banquet of visual arts explores consumerism, ancestral origins, the urban environment, and sensuality

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The season is already under way
at the Charles H. Scott Gallery,
ssigning an overarching with Toronto artist Kim Adams's
• • f t h e m e t o t h e c o m i n g Street Works. On until October 10,
visual-arts season is a bit the exhibition consists of three
like fishing in deep, dark mixed-media, interactive sculpwaters. In your attempts to make tures, w h i c h are stored in t h e
millennial generalizations, you gallery at night and sited in differmight reel in a flashing, leaping, ent spots on Granville Island durgorgeous silver creature. It might ing t h e day. "Kim is using t h e
gallery as a garage," says curator
and director Greg Bellerby. "The
pieces are on trailers or wheels and
are portable...like Gypsy art." Also
on display in the gallery are models and drawings related to these
projects.
be tender and tasty, too. But you
Bellerby says that Adams uses
also might drag up a rusted piece humour and everyday objects to
of garbage from the muddy bot- address issues of "consumerism,
t o m . And w h e t h e r t h a t m u d d y desire, and commodity capitalbottom constitutes the Zeitgeist or ism." Adams's positioning of the
your own unconscious, well, it's sculptures—on the streets of urban
difficult to say.
c e n t r e s — i s in k e e p i n g w i t h a
Since I've been fishing with a recent spate of exhibitions at the
net rather than a line, I've hauled Scott Gallery, all dealing with our
in a half-dozen wriggling themes, contemporary urban condition. As
the biggest and most wriggly of for our contemporary sexual conthem being Sex and the City. At dition, a group show titled Sexy
least, that's how I've identified it. Girl (at the Scott Gallery October
Whether they're working through 20 to November 28) threatens to
photography, performance, paint- blow the lid off representations of
ing, video, or mixed-media installa- women by women (and one crosst i o n , w h e t h e r their careers are dressing guy). The show's curator,
local, national, or international in Cate Rimmer, says she was interestscope, the artists exhibiting or per- ed in the ways in which younger
forming in the Lower Mainland artists are challenging the proscripthis coming fall and winter seem to tions of older feminists in their
be compelled by the nature of our examination of sexuality and genurban environment and the condi- der. "There's a certain amount of
tions of our sexual existence. Not bravado, a pushing [of] the envesurprising, really, in the last year of lope in terms of political correctthis most urbanized and sexualized ness," she says. Rimmer talks about
of centuries—and millennia. Other the "girlie" images in the show, a
themes emerging—or re-emerg- species of r e p r e s e n t a t i o n t h a t
ing—from the murky deep include would have been a n a t h e m a to
consumerism, voyeurism, ancestral feminist critics a decade ago. "The
origins, teen bedrooms, and the thing about these women [artists]
contested space of the art gallery.
is that they're very much informed
BY ROBIN LAURENCE

The eclectic photographs of Man Ray muse Lee Miller (above in Self
Portrait, 1932), will be at Presentation House Gallery in early 2000.
by earlier feminism," says Rimmer.
Sounds like M a d o n n a wrestles
Griselda Pollock to the ground—
and makes her wear a bustier. Eight
local artists ranging across nearly
as many mediums will participate.
At the Contemporary Art Gallery, an exhibition of works by the
controversial Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki opens at 8
p.m. on Friday (September 10) and
runs t h r o u g h October 16. CAG
curator Keith Wallace has chosen
to show some 1,200 images from
four separate series of Araki's work:
his confrontational photos of erotic
subjects and the urban environment
are contrasted, Wallace says, with
his luscious close-ups of flowers and
his cheery portraits of the residents

of his Tokyo neighbourhood. Something of a cult figure in Japan, Araki
has been likened to American photographer Nan Goldin. "He plays
with the dividing line between art
and obscenity, fact and fiction," says
Wallace. The viewer often cannot
tell if Araki's images are "constructed images or actual documents".
Following Araki, Vancouver
artist Judy Radul will create a stageset installation at the CAG (October 23 to November 6), in which
she, her viewers, and other collaborators may improvise periodic
performances. Next on the lineup,
Daniel Congdon will exhibit metal
sculptures whose shapes are based
on projected and refracted beams
of light (November 13 to Decem-

ber 18). The urban environment
will be featured again in the new
year, in an exhibition of paintings
by Winnipeg artist Eleanor Bond
(January 8 to February 20). Wallace
says that Bond's new works specifically address Vancouver as a site
and follow her practice of "looking
at areas of the city and creating
new, imaginative, Utopian possibilities for their redevelopment".
In a n o t h e r m a n i f e s t a t i o n of
urbanism and Utopian redevelopm e n t , t h e Or G a l l e r y recently
moved from its besieged location in
the 100 block West Hastings to
spiffy new quarters at 400 Smithe.
Inaugurating its fall-winter season is
Getting the Corners, a group show
of some dozen, u p - a n d - c o m i n g
British artists (September 15 to
October 23). Guest curated by London-based Matthew Higgs and making use of a "stealthy" aspect of the
gallery space (yes, its corners), Getting is the first in what Or director
Reid Shier hopes will be a series of
shows of international origin. (He's
been working with curators in Caracas, Los Angeles, and Tokyo.) Seems
like an ambitious program for an
artist-run centre, but Shier says it's
possible to put together an internationally based exhibition on a modest budget. "All you had to do was
ask," he says, alluding to the granting process. "And lo and behold, it's
happened."
Lo and behold, another international project is happening out of
an artist-run centre. Live at the
End of the Century is an expansive
performance festival, organized by
Brice Canyon at the grunt gallery
and taking place at the grunt and
10 o t h e r galleries a n d v e n u e s
throughout the city. It runs from
October 1 to November 6 and fea''''SEEPAGE48

Season of Sex
FROM PAGE 46

tures dozens of artists from around
t h e world and down the block.
Some galleries will sponsor exhibitions associated with performance
art or artists; some will present
video documentation and some
will host lectures on the subject.
(The essays from the lecture series
will be collected in book form following the festival.)
Artist-curator Canyon says that
grunt staff were searching for a way
to mark the millennium when he
came up with the idea of the festival. Given the city and the gallery's
long association with performance,
a project celebrating this underground phenomenon "seemed like
the right thing to do". It's been 20
years since the last such festival in
Vancouver and, Canyon observes,
interest in the art form is growing. A
new generation of performance
artists is emerging from our local art
schools, he says, and books are
more widely available on the subject. A new audience is emerging,
too, "looking for something more
stimulating than a movie".
T h a t s t i m u l a t i o n could take
place in your m i n d or in some
other sensitive part of your body.
From nudity to cross-dressing, and
from fetishism to censorship, sexuality will be well-explored through
the festival. Among the more daring sexplorers is New Zealand
punk artist Satina Saturina, who
will take viewers on an "autoerotic
journey through orgasm"—or so
the festival brochure promises—in
Sector X, at t h e ANZA Club o n
October 7. Also on t h e performance program are works dealing
with First Nations spirituality, public versus private space, cults and
psychoanalysis, and the nature of
performance art itself. The series
kicks off with a Performance Art
Cabaret at the Vogue Theatre on
October 1. Information brochures
will be available at participating

galleries and elsewhere throughout
the city by mid-September.
In association with Live at the
End of the Century, the Vancouver
Art Gallery will present an exhibition of works by internationally
acclaimed American artist Ann
Hamilton (October 16 to January
23, 2000). Hamilton's subtle, sensuous, and cerebral practice weaves
together many media and disciplines, including installation and
performance. Her exhibition at
the VAG, says senior curator Bruce
Grenville, will include book projects, photographs, and "residues"
of earlier artworks. "These are
o b j e c t s t h a t are p r o d u c e d ' i n
process', " he explains, "because so
much of her work is process-based
and performative in nature".
The VAG will also be developing
exhibitions from its permanent collection through the coming season.
"We looked at all kinds of end-ofthe-millennium possibilities," says
Grenville, "and one of the things we
decided to do was to focus on the
collection." This old focus is realized
by new lenses, however, in Out of
This Century (October 23 to February 27, 2000). Six local celebrities,
none from the visual arts, have been
invited to choose and interpret artworks from the VAG's collection.
"So often, the collection is interpreted solely through the eyes of the
curators," Grenville says. "This way,
we're able to bring [the process]
back to the community, to bring out
a whole different set of works and,
in some instances, to show them in
very different ways." Novelist Doug
Coupland, playwright Tom Cone,
landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander, radio host David Wisdom,
and filmmakers Mina Shum and
Loretta Todd are the guest curators.
Some of the most potentially
exciting exhibitions this season are
the historical ones, which promise
to bring overlooked or forgotten
artists to light, or to revise, reinterpret, or re-evaluate the careers and
c o n t r i b u t i o n s of those already

The work of Barkerville photographer CD. Hoy, including the untitled
photo above, is showing at Presentation House Gallery until October 17.
established and acclaimed. Among
such historical recoveries is First
Son: Portraits by C. D. Hoy at Pres e n t a t i o n House Gallery until
October 17. Hoy, who immigrated
to Canada from China in 1902,
worked variously as a gold miner,
fur trader, and railroad surveyor
before establishing a successful photography studio in Barkerville in
the B.C. Interior. "He produced a
huge body of photographs—portraits of people living in the Ques-

nel area," says Presentation House
director Karen Love.
Self-taught, Hoy undoubtedly had
a great eye; he also had a feel for his
era and the peoples of his adopted
homeland. His clientele was drawn
from three distinct cultural groups,
Love explains: Chinese, European,
and First Nations. Hoy's negatives,
in the collection of the Barkerville
Historic Town, have been painstakingly researched by guest curator
Faith Moosang, who has also writ-

ten a book on the subject, copublished by Presentation House and
Arsenal Pulp Press. (A book launch
and curator's talk will take place at
Presentation House at 2 p.m. this
Saturday [September 11].)
Ancestral histories, religious and
economic persecutions, the migrations of peoples, and the shaping of
nature by culture, all are enfolded
into Marion Penner Bancroft's new
body of landscape photographs, By
Land and Sea: Prospect and Refuge,
at Presentation House Gallery November 6 to December 19. Politics
and family, sex and the city, war
and wealth and deprivation, all figure in the travelling exhibition, The
Legendary Lee Miller. As beautiful as
she was talented, Miller (1907-1977)
was artist and muse, image maker
and model, sexual rebel and partner
of American surrealist Man Ray and,
later, British surrealist Roland Penrose. Her beauty and sexuality, however, fade in juxtaposition with her
eclectic photographic career, beginning with her invention (along with
Man Ray) of the solarization process
and her spirited explorations of surrealism, and running through her
stints as a fashion photographer and
celebrity portraitist and her service
as a combat p h o t o j o u r n a l i s t in
Europe during the Second World
War. Organized by the Lee Miller
Archive in the United Kingdom and
spanning the years 1929 to 1964,
this exhibition is, Love believes, the
first solo show of Miller's work in
Canada. It runs from January 8 to
February 20, 2000.
It's curious looking at Lee Miller's
Nude Bent Forward, taken in Paris
circa 1931, and then looking at a
similarly posed n u d e from
Nobuyushi Araki's recent series,
Tokyo: A City Heading for Death.
Half a world and more than half a
century separate these two works,
and yet they bear m a n y formal
likenesses. Cities fall and sensibilities shift, but the artist's fascination
with sex and the human body? It's
older than the millennium. •