The Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects

×

Expand

Detail view of the Mount Pleasant Furniture collection (photo by Jason Payne/Vancouver Sun)

Down the street from where I live, in the neighbourhood I have lived in for more than 20 years, is a 1911 split-level building that stands across the street from a massive warehouse – each packed to the rafters with vintage furnishings and novelties. 

This is Mount Pleasant Furniture, owned and operated for 40 years by three generations of the Madsen family. It has fueled my curiosity for so long. I think it takes a person of a particular mind to be comfortable in the accumulation and management of such a vast library of objects that span all scales and periods.

The Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects is on view at Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver, with satellite screenings at the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen and a storefront installation at Mount Pleasant Furniture (MPF) in Vancouver until August 18. The exhibition celebrates the multitude of objects that make up this local institution and explores the stories these pieces can tell. Curated by Lisa Baldissera and Paul Wong, The Prop House is an investigation into the mythology of things. 

The Prop House Film, made by Wong, flies a drone through the crammed 35,000 square-foot warehouse while animated text overlay lists the hundreds of film and television projects the business has contributed to. These shows, some you know, some you don’t, roll by like the opening lines of a Star Wars film. Accompanied by Hell Money, also by Wong, an installation featuring a living room set with a TV that loops an episode of the 90’s series The X-Files, in which both Wong is featured as an actor and is furnished by MPF, betrays the artist’s fascination with the film industry and celebrates MPF as a backbone of local film.

×

Expand

Detail view of the Mount Pleasant Furniture collection (photo by Jason Payne/Vancouver Sun)

Further into the gallery, installations from Jay Senetchko and Bagua Artist Association experiment with the tropes of set design, play with the intended use of objects and create spaces that revel in leisure and the pleasures of television. 

Similarly, Charlene Vickers also assembles something like the set of a kitchen but imagines an antique hutch as a portal towards her mother, “an open listener,” and the voices of the departed that she would channel as she cooked. She Listens for Her Voices brings together old letters from her mother, vintage kitchen equipment, and a Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. Children of the ’80s may remember its red checked ring binding and might feel beckoned by the voices of their own moms.

Cathy Busby, Parvin Peivandi, Lisa Baldissera and Germaine Koh have installed beautiful collections of items with similarities. Busby’s assortment of portraits, Baldissera’s gathering of starburst clocks, Peivandi’s mirrors and Koh’s lighting and lamps each startle in the abundance of their uniformity and the subtleties of their difference. Koh’s is particularly successful, using a motion sensor to trigger an uncanny sensation to passersby. 

×

Expand

Detail view of the Mount Pleasant Furniture collection (photo by Jason Payne/Vancouver Sun)

The Prop House is not a deep exhibition, nor need it be. While there is kind of a frivolous quality to the show as a whole, it is refreshing to experience the work of artists engaging with a sense of play as they reimagine new uses for a million objects. ■

The Prop House: A Collection of One Million Objects is on view at Griffin Art Projects with satellite screenings at the Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen and a storefront installation at Mount Pleasant Furniture (MPF) in Vancouver until August 18.

PS: Worried you missed something? See previous Galleries West stories here or sign up for our free biweekly newsletter.