past touring exhibitions

Past Exhibitions

The Vancouver Art Gallery presents exhibitions of work by artists ranging from historic masters to leading-edge contemporaries. These include major thematic exhibitions, presentations of solo artists and smaller, more focused showcases. In a typical year, 2 to 3 exhibitions are borrowed from other institutions and 10 to 12 exhibitions are developed in-house, drawing on our permanent collection and loans of works from around the world. In addition, the Gallery tours a few of its exhibitions each year.

Past Exhibitions

Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures

December 3, 2016 to April 17, 2017

Video Guide
For a self-guided tour experience, our *new video guide for Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures* is now available for download.** Featuring exclusive video interviews with the artists and curators, the video guide offers an opportunity for an enhanced exhibition experience.

Tamara Henderson
The Scarecrow’s Holiday, 2015
textile, wood, glass, sand, pigment, rope
Courtesy of the Artist and Rodeo, London
Photo: Robert Wedemeyer, Courtesy of China Art Objects

Since its inception in 1931, the Vancouver Art Gallery has regularly organized survey exhibitions of local art. Building on this robust history, which began with the BC Annuals (1932–68) and continued with significant curatorial projects of recent decades, the Gallery now introduces Vancouver Special, a survey exhibition that will occur every three years. The triennial model offers a sustained engagement with the contemporary artists who make Vancouver a dynamic art community. The title of this initiative, Vancouver Special, is borrowed from the housing archetype that was popular in Vancouver between the 1960s and 80s. Originally affordable and easily adaptable, this regional house style is experiencing renewed attention in the midst of the current housing crisis.

Ambivalent Pleasures is the first iteration of this series and it features works by 40 artists produced within the last five years—Vancouver’s post-Olympic period. The exhibition includes many emerging artists as well as those who are more established but whose ideas were prescient. Some are recent arrivals to Vancouver, while others are long-term residents who have already made significant contributions. Others are nomadic, less settled in one place and are working energetically between several locations.

The featured artworks do not adhere to a singular subject or style, but instead offer a set of overlapping conversations:

A number of artists engage with Surrealist strategies and ideas. They explore the unconscious and diverse modes of perception, speaking to notions of alienation, escape, romanticism and even the grotesque. In some instances, the works exude a comic tone; in others, a sense of the uncanny points to spirits of unrest that lurk beneath the surface.
Several artists present a range of approaches to abstraction. This naturally includes a number of painters, as well as sculptors and artists working with textiles who implicate the meaning of gesture or the history of modern painting without necessarily putting brush to canvas.
Other artists are invested in the possibilities of working conceptually to address today’s social contexts. Questioning dominant systems of knowledge, these artists make sense of the world through material processes, recurrent gestures and other types of interventions.

The title of the exhibition, Ambivalent Pleasures, refers to the complex nature of pleasure in the early 21st century as we become increasingly aware of the social, economic and environmental costs of our desires, habits and patterns of living. We can see artists in this exhibition preserving capacity for pleasure in a variety of ways. Pleasure is present in the processes of making and the sensory nature of materials. It is discovered in the wilds of the mind and in uninhibited exploration. It lies in political awakenings and socially responsive ways of working.

These artists live and work in an uncertain context of economic slowdowns, widening divisions of wealth, technological acceleration and global warming. Their disciplined expressions of pleasure may offer ways of perceiving the gaps between where we are as individuals or a society and where we would like to be. At a time when our experiences of pleasure are often too fleeting or superficial, encountering these artworks reminds us to be conscious of finding our own modest pleasures as we interpret and navigate the often contradictory conditions of contemporary life.

Artists:
Derya Akay | Maya Beaudry | Raymond Boisjoly | Eli Bornowsky | Rebecca Brewer | Colleen Brown | Matt Browning | Mark Delong | Kim Dorland | Barry DoupÉ | Michael Drebert | Julia Feyrer | Jeneen Frei Njootli | Tamara Henderson | Colleen Heslin | Julian Hou | Allison Hrabluik | Gareth James | Garry Neill Kennedy | Tiziana La Melia | Khan Lee | Arvo Leo | Lyse Lemieux | Glenn Lewis | Anne Low | Elizabeth McIntosh | Jordan Milner | Antoni Oko | Ryan Peter | Sylvain Sailly | Rachelle Sawatsky | Walter Scott | Krista Belle Stewart | Angela Teng | Mina Totino | Ron Tran | Tristan Unrau | Charlene Vickers | Brent Wadden | Alison Yip

Organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Daina Augaitis, Chief Curator/Associate Director, and Jesse McKee, Head of Strategy at 221A, with curatorial assistance from Mandy Ginson.

Generously supported by:
Artworkers Retirement Society
Chan Family Foundation
Phil Lind
Michael O’Brian Family Foundation

Supporting Sponsor:

Mark Delong, Double Nite, 2016
cotton thread on cardboard
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Ryan Peter, Autogram (Double 2), 2016
unique gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Lyse Lemieux, Skirted Baroque, 2015
custom wood frame, acrylic, ink, wool felt on paper, wool tartan skirt
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Allison Hrabluik, The Splits, 2015
digital video with sound, 15 minutes
Courtesy of the Artist
Antoni Oko, A Poem for Emily Carr, 2015
printed paper, sewn bound portfolios
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Arvo Leo, Anthill Sculpture, 2003
aluminum from the housing of the transmission of a 1984 Ford Mustang
Collection of Dave Harmon , Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Maya Beaudry, Soft Place in a Soft Room (A Couch is Like a Friend), 2016
wood, fabric, paint pillow stuffing
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Robert Wedemeyer
Elizabeth McIntosh, Mathematics, 2015
flashe and oil on canvas
Collection of TD Bank Group, Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, Courtesy of Diaz Contemporary
Walter Scott, Octavia & Lick, 2016
acrylic and coloured pencil on paper
Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery

Events

EXPAND +

DEC 6 TUE 7pm In the Gallery	Curators’ Tour / Daina Augaitis and Jesse McKee
Join Chief Curator/Associate Director Daina Augaitis and guest curator Jesse McKee for a tour of Vancouver Special. This is an opportunity to hear the curators talk about the artists and ideas that are current in Vancouver’s contemporary art scene.

JAN 14 SAT 3-5pm In the Gallery Annex Workshop	The Materiality of Clay / Derya Akay, Glenn Lewis, Rebecca Morgan and Brendan Lee Satish Tang
Visit three of the Gallery’s four floors and you will find contemporary approaches to ceramics within vastly different exhibitions. In this talk, artists from Vancouver Special, Juxtapoz X Supterflat and We Come to Witness: Sonny Assu in Dialogue with Emily Carr will discuss the materiality of clay and its place in contemporary art. Derya Akay, Glenn Lewis, Rebecca Morgan and Brendan Lee Satish Tang will talk about their art practices, sharing their perspectives on clay as an artistic medium and how artists working with this ancient material employ new technologies and apply contemporary ideas.

JAN 26
-MAR 30
THURSDAYS
4:30-6:30pm
Emily Carr University, South Building, Room 301
Directions »

Emily Carr University of Art + Design
Curatorial Lectures Series
Topics in Global Art:
Call-Convene-Collect

In this weekly open course, international curators from renowned cultural institutions share their curatorial research and vision in the context of globalization. In collaboration with Gallery 221A, Vancouver Art Gallery, and supported by the Province of British Columbia’s Creative Economy Strategy, Emily Carr University of Art + Design hosts this curatorial lectures series as part of Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures International Visitors Program.

January 26 – Hafthor Yngvason, Director, Western Gallery, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA
February 2 – Dr. Fuyubi Nakamura, Curator, Asia, Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, BC
February 9 – Stephanie Smith, Chief Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA
February 23 – Sohrab Mohebbi, Associate Curator, REDCAT, Los Angeles, CA
March 2 – Richard Birkett, Curator, Yale Union, Portland, OR
March 9 – Kari Conte, Director of Programs and Exhibitions, International Studio & Curatorial Program, Brooklyn, NY
March 16 – TBA
March 23 – Alexandra Klein, Curator, Institute for Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, PA
March 30 – Gayatri Sinha, art critic and curator, Critical Collective, New Delhi

MORE INFO

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia.

JAN-MAR 2017 221A E Georgia Street Hours & Directions »	221A Ambivalent Pleasures Library and Public Program
In response to Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, Gallery 221A, a non-profit organization in Vancouver’s Chinatown, is presenting a series of public programs that implicates some of the practices of the artists in this exhibition and expands on the vital conversations taking place in Vancouver’s contemporary art community. For full details, visit 221A’s website and follow 221A on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. MORE INFO

FEB 25 SAT 1-5pm UBC Robson Square Theatre C300 Directions »	Vancouver Special Forum
Vancouver Special includes work by forty visual artists, as a survey of the contemporary art activity in the city over the last five years. The featured works of art do not adhere to a singular subject or style but instead point to overlapping and ongoing conversations about abstraction, Surrealism and conceptual practice. In this afternoon of talks, artists and writers offer perspectives on these aspects of the exhibition and highlight the nuanced and stimulating spaces in-between definitions. 1pm: Perspectives on Surrealism presented by catalogue contributor Steffanie Ling with further reflections by artists Julia Feyrer & Rebecca Brewer 2:20pm: Two perspectives on Abstraction presented by artists Mina Totino & Eli Bornowsky with further reflections by artists Colleen Heslin & Sylvain Sailly 3:45pm: Two perspectives on Conceptual Practice presented by Raymond Boisjoly & Gareth James with further reflections by artists Matt Browning & Krista Belle Stewart Presented in collaboration with 221A, supported by the British Columbia Arts Council PRESENTER BIOS Following the forum please join us at 221A for Walter Scott's book launch of Wendy's Revenge (Toronto: Koyama Press, 2016) with reading from 7–9pm.

APR 4 TUE 7pm in the Gallery Annex Building Courtroom 302	Curator’s Talk Daina Augaitis From the BC Annuals to Ambivalent Pleasures: The arc of the local at the Vancouver Art Gallery Work in Progress Curators' Talks
Daina Augaitis, Chief Curator/Associate Director, will trace the history of local survey exhibitions at the Vancouver Art Gallery. This talk will look at the trajectory from the Gallery’s long history of BC Annual exhibitions, which gave many artists between 1932 and 1968 their first exposure to a broad public, to the myriad of group exhibitions in the intervening decades, to the current exhibition Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, the first in a series of triennials that reaffirms the institution’s commitment to the local. Free for Members or with Gallery Admission.

TOURS
THUR, SAT
& SUN
English & Chinese Language Tours

Gallery Tours »
Schedules & Times
Enliven your experience of current exhibitions with a Gallery tour. Guided tours are a great way to learn about the cultural and social contexts of artworks on display. Free with Gallery admission.

Publication

EXPAND +

Past Exhibitions

Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures

Video Guide

Events

Publication