VAG announces the 40 participating artists in its new triennial "Vancouver Special"

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"Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures"

Image credits (left to right): 1) Walter Scott, "Octavia & Lick," 2016, acrylic andcoloured pencil on paper, Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery 2) Charlene Vickers, "Accumulations of Moments Spent Underwater with the Sun and Moon," 2015-16,watercolour, gouache, pencil crayon on paper, Courtesy of the Artist, Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery 3) Alison Yip, "Gazebo," 2016, site-specific mural at the Vancouver Art Gallery, produced for Vancouver Special: Ambivalent Pleasures, Courtesy of the Artist and Monte Clark Gallery, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery 4) Elizabeth McIntosh, "Mathematics," 2015,flashe and oil on canvas, Collection of TD Bank Group, Photo: Toni Hafkenscheid, Courtesy of Diaz Contemporary

The Vancouver Art Gallery is pleased to announce the 40 participating artists in its new triennial Vancouver Special. This exhibition offers a comprehensive survey of the city’s contemporary art scene and its shifts since the 2010 Winter Olympics. The inaugural edition Ambivalent Pleasures is co-curated by Daina Augaitis, Vancouver Art Gallery’s Chief Curator/Associate Director, and guest curator Jesse McKee, Head of Strategy at 221A, Vancouver. Featuring artworks ranging from painting, drawing, animation, ceramics, textiles, audio and installation, the exhibition will be on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery from December 3, 2016 to April 17, 2017.

Over a four-month period in the spring of 2016, the curators conducted over 90 studio visits, mostly with emerging artists, but also with a few established artists who are either re-emerging or under-recognized in Vancouver. The range of participants echoes the breadth of Vancouver’s vibrant art community. The result is a multigenerational exhibition that will engage its visitors through a myriad of styles, approaches and practices.

“Vancouver Special echoes the archetypal housing style that was popular in Vancouver between the 1960s and 80s, and has been embraced again as an iconic symbol of the city. The title of the inaugural exhibition within this new triennial format, Ambivalent Pleasures, points to the ever-present gap between where we are and where we’d like to be. The artworks in the exhibition offer many possibilities for visitors to negotiate today’s complex world and these works remind us to locate the pleasures in our own experiences of encountering, considering and navigating the pluralistic conditions of today’s city,” said co-curators Daina Augaitis and Jesse McKee.   

PARTICIPATING 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

Click here for artists' biographies. 

CURATORS

Daina Augaitis has been Chief Curator/Associate Director at the Vancouver Art Gallery since 1996, where she works with a team of curators to conceive and develop the Gallery’s exhibitions, publications, collections and public programs. Among the solo exhibitions she has curated or co-curated are those by Rebecca Belmore, Douglas Coupland, Stan Douglas, Charles Edenshaw, Geoffrey Farmer, Bharti Kher, Kimsooja, Muntadas, Brian Jungen, Ian Wallace and Zhu Jinshi. She was formerly Director of the Visual Arts Program at the Banff Centre for the Arts, where she organized thematic residencies for artists and curators as well as spoken word, pirate radio and performance art projects, and has held curatorial positions at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff; the Western Front, Vancouver; Convertible Showroom, Vancouver; and Franklin Furnace, New York.

Jesse McKee is the Head of Strategy at 221A, Vancouver. He is responsible for the organization’s research-based programming model and for aligning all aspects of 221A’s work with a strategic plan that develops self-organized cultural infrastructures. Previously, McKee was Curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, and Exhibitions Curator at the Western Front, Vancouver. He has developed new commissions with artists such as Lee Kit, Tamara Henderson and Julia Feyrer, Andrea Büttner and Neïl Beloufa. He recently was a curatorial resident with tranzit.org, Romania, and curated Stopping the Sun in Its Course, a group exhibition on contemporary depictions of the grotesque at Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles (2015).

Source: Vancouver Art Gallery

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