Pictures and Promises

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Vikky Alexander, "Obsession," 1983

silver gelatin print, vinyl type, coloured Plexiglas, Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Artist

Drawn from the Vancouver Art Gallery’s rich photographic holdings, Pictures and Promises focuses on lens-based works that employ the structures, conventions and formal qualities used in mass media, fashion and advertising. The works then deploy these strategies to play on collective understandings of the world around us and to investigate the iconography of consumerism. Given advertising’s shift from denotative to connotative meaning, both artistic and commercial production have created chains of signification to imply meaning that surpasses the work or object itself.

Featured artists include Vikky Alexander, Eugène Atget, Walker Evans, Gu Xiong, Richard Hamilton, Barbara Kruger, Ken Lum, Yasumasa Morimura, Andy Warhol and O Zhang.

Pictures and Promises is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery in collaboration with Capture Photography Festival and co-curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art, and Emmy Lee Wall, Executive Director, Capture Photography Festival.

This exhibition is generously supported by the Audain Foundation.