archive

Exhibition

‘” ke’tabeses’” [Gk katatbasis: a going down, decent] 1: a going or marching down or back: retreat

The Or Gallery is pleased to present the new body of work Katabasis by Vancouver artist Julie Andreyev. The works in the exhibition refer to exploration, mining, collecting, and naming to illustrate humanity’s exploration of the global ecological context. Katabasis, derived from Greek, is defined as a descent, the going down to the foundations, a retreat. The exhibition uses the mythological archetype of Psyche in the tale of Psyche and Eros from The Golden Ass by Apuleius as a metaphor for katabasis of both the self and culture in general. The exhibition is specifically structured using Psyche’s Four Labors – the sorting of the seeds, the gathering of the ‘golden fleece’, the collecting of the ‘waters of life’, and the descent into the Underworld. Katabasis can also be seen as preparation for the restoration of the body and soul and the metamorphosis into symbiotic integration with the global ecological context. The exhibition also refers to the formative causation hypothesis proposed by the botanist Rupert Sheldrake centering on the theory of the ‘morphogenetic field’ which is believed to contain all the memory and history of a given entity and as such determine the entity’s form, development and behavior. In psychology the study of archetypal mythology reflects a similar understanding of a psychic stream of shared experience. Andreyev is exploring the re-evaluation of priorities in response to the hypercomplex condition of humanity and its influence on the natural world. There are fundamental changes occurring in the social and technological order of the global culture with the rise of the feminine, the deconstruction of the patriarchy, the sophistication of miniaturization of technology, the extension of cross-cultural communication and education, and the rebirth of spirituality. Andreyev theorizes that we may be at a critical point of fundamental growth and change – in the midst of a katabasis – preceding a sudden shift into an unprecedented coherent order.

The artist will be in attendance at the Opening and will give an Artist Talk at 3pm on Saturday December 10. The gallery’s publication for this exhibition has essay’s by the artist and Bill Jeffries.

Special-Event

Exhibition

Press Release:
The Or Gallery is pleased to introduce the work of Montreal based artist Doug Buis to Vancouver audiences.

Home and Oasis is a grouping of new and previously exhibited constructions. Buis scans popular media, political events, technological and scientific trends, focusing on the micrcosms and macrocosms within these consepts. He has created a series of ‘hand-crafted virtual realities’ in the form of small portable live gardens- Biycle Garden, Lap-top Garden and Dot-matrix Planter. There are also two depictions of the Earth; one which is part of Buis’ “neo-Geo’ series and models, in science museum aesthetic, our planet with an exposed organic interior of muscles, organs and nervous system. The politics of ‘green consumerism’ comes into focus in his other model of an entombed planet in ‘Earth with Protective Cover’/ Buits’ involvement in the controversy surrounding the siting of a propsed hydro-dam at Great Whale, Quebec and his concern about conflicting cultural priorites about conflicting cultural priorities, created a series of model home interiors which relentlessly flood and drain.

Doug Buis uses viewer participation, mechanical and electronic devices to increase our awareness of his subject matter. He exposes the humour and absurdity withiin the issues he depicts and illuminates the often arbitrary nature of Western belief systems.

The artist will be in attendence at the opening where he will be available to talk about the work. The gallery’s publication for this exhibition has been produced as a component of the installation.

Home and Oasis

The following text contains condensed excerpts of an article that appeared in the September, 1994 issue of SCIENCE AMERICA, concerning the recent geological discoveries by a team headed by Dr. Jane Knott-Guya. Dr. Knott-Guya began her research following the detection of what seemed to be a heart beat off the coast of California. Numerous theories arose as to the origin of the geological pulses, with no real answers until the astounding discoveries of the Knott-Guya team. The findings, including musculo-stratic tissue, parts of mechani-organic hydraulic systems and evidence of a silicon -based nervous system, have changed our world view as profoundly as the discovery of the spherical format of our planet. They have also sparked intense and, at times, acrimonious debate as to the exact organic structure of the earth. The following article is an overview of the debates surrounding this issue. The geo-models presented in this display illustrate the most widely held beliefs, although many are controversial. The models were made by sculptor Doug Buis.

The discoveries of Dr. Knott-Guya have turned the geological world on it’s ear. A few diehard geologists still maintain the view of a mineral based earth, suggesting that the artifacts are remnants of large, subterranean animals or of an extinct underground race of humanoids. Although there have been some compelling arguments put forth by the mineral-earth believers, they have generally been debunked. The true picture, however, is less than clear. One recurring facet of the debate (and one of the problems) has been the constant anthropomorphising of the earth’s functions. Although the comparisons to the human systems are perhaps inevitable, the biological systems of the earth are quite different from our own. Some experts question whether the earth itself is actually a living entity.

One would assume that the first point of investigation would have been the geological nervous system and the possibility of the earth being sentient. Probably due to the interest over the heartbeat phenomena, however, the first area of study concerning the geo-structure of the earth has been the circulatory systems. Few geotheories disagree on one point; there being at least three separate systems of circulation: the blood-like system of lava, the water-based system and the oil (petroleum) based system. Of the three, the latter (oil) is the least contentious. Most geo-experts agree that oil, functioning similar to our own hydraulic mechanical systems, drives most of the organo-mechanical structures particularly those requiring massive kinetic shifts in position. The bio-strata lateral movement muscle, also known as the earthquake muscle, utilizes a mechanism similar to a piston / crankshaft coupling. There are some arguments suggesting that water is the driving force behind the muscular systems considering the huge quantities needed for proper functioning of the systems. The low evaporative threshold of water precludes this as a probability, however. One role of water, particularly rivers, appears to be within the earth’s digestive system, perhaps to carry away the waste products.

There is some controversy as to the function of cities (or the broader question of the role of humanity for that matter). The two most widely accepted theories are also the two furthest apart. The more popular of the two theories is that of cities being part of the earth’s nervous system. The other popular theory (more interesting although less popular perhaps because of the nature of the theory and a natural bias against it) is that of the city as a form of skin irritation or dermal condition. The skin irritation theory is given a considerable boost in light of the probable function of earthquakes as a irritation response, not unlike a dog scratching behind it’s ear. There appears to be a considerable number of earthquakes (let alone a significant number of other ‘natural’ disasters) occurring in some of the more polluted global regions. When viewing cities from above, one can detect a resemblance to computer systems; a similarity extending to the nervous system of the earth itself. This leads to the question of whether or not the city is a nodule or closeknit cluster of nerve endings. Interestingly, both theories about the function of cities suggest the existence of an intelligent nervous system.

There is ample evidence from the core samples, to suggest a silicon based nervous system and hence the likeness to computer chips. How messages are transmitted is not certain, but one likely option is the metallic veins (i.e. a nickel vein) networking beneath the earth’s surface. (One wonders what the effect that mining has had on the nervous system.) How metallic veins and nodules interface is uncertain. One hypothesis assumes that the veins are connected through the sewer systems or underground wires and electrical systems, presupposing that humanity is an integral part of the earth organism.

The issue which has aroused the greatest interest and debate, not surprisingly considering general interests in this field, is the earth’s reproductive system. Some argue that the organic structures organized spontaneously within a natural rock planet independent of other planets. The other theory considers the idea of an earth spawned from other planets which immediately brings up the chicken / egg syndrome; how did the first reproducing planets appear? The two theories, incidentally, are not entirely mutually exclusive. One can imagine life occurring at one point within the planetary structure and eventually developing reproductive capabilities. This scenario, however, suggests a time frame many times longer that the generally accepted age of the universe.

T.L. Kerr discusses the function of gravity in the reproductive system: “… as volcanoes spew the genetic material into space, very little of the actual matter escapes the gravitational bond of the earth allowing only the strongest to survive. The free floating matter, with its’ own weak gravitational field, collects passing dust and other random material and over eons forms a bud planet. (Our own moon being one such example.)”

A debate has arisen in some circles as to the gender of the earth and of the various entities donating the dust and other materials. Geo-biologist Dr. G.H. Ellism of the Stanford Research Labs states: “If we intend to use the traditional biological model referred to in general and gender differentiation in particular, it seems clear that the earth, as it emits the ova-like projectiles into space, which then attract the passing sperm-like dust, is by definition female. As the sun generates most of material collected by the ova, it would have to be considered as the male counterpart.”

Many have suggested that Dr. Ellism’s comments, aside from an inherent sexist slant, are based on a simple arbitrary mechanical likeness of the volcanic projectiles and ova with little, if any, biological justification. One could also equate the propulsive action of the volcano with that of ejaculation. He does get some support from Ms. Carol Morgan who, taking a relational rather than physical structurist stance, states: “In considering the moon as a bud planet, we cannot dismiss the long-term relationship that has developed between the earth and it’s satellite. If we compare it to a mother / child relationship, we see the child residing for an extended time period within the local sphere of influence of the mother. In a geological time frame, the moon had spent a similar length of time clutching to it’s mother’s apron.”

Most theorists tend to discuss the gender-typing of the earth as simplistic, yet in some ways predictable, as we seem unable to avoid athropomorphising the geological lifesystems.

Exhibition

Media Release. August 22, 1994
Textiles, that is to say Sheila Ayearst . Laura Baird. Bob Boyer. Naoko Furue Mindy Van Miller. Louise Noguchi. Ted Rettig. Robert Windrum

September 10 to October 8, 1994
Opening Reception Saturday September 10, 5:30pm
Preceded by Artists and Curators Talks at 3pm
Curated by John Armstrong and Sarah Quinton originally for the Museum for

Textiles in Toronto (1994), Textiles, that is to say, brings together the often separate communities of fine art and craft in the work of eight Canadian artists from diverse regional and cultural backgrounds. Textiles are explored here
as craft or as metaphor, with the intention of also reflecting discourses of contemporary art and society.

Sheila Ayearst (Toronto, Ont) disassembles the craft of Old Master oil glazing on industrially woven canvas, Laura Baird (Vancouver, BC/New York, NY) has made a needlework tapestry depicting the Jonestown massacre, Bob Boyer (Regina, Sas.) paints on imported, budget-priced blankets, wryly commenting on the history of First Nations and European contact, Naoko Furue (HalifaX, NS) reassembles nineteenth century silk kimonos with meticulous stitching, Mindy Van Miller (Montreal, PQ) works with human hair in labour intensive installations evocative of memory and bereavement, Louise Noguchi (Toronto, Ont.) paints and quotes camouflage pattern, making reference to the subterfuge inherent in military uniform, Ted Rettig’s (Weston, Ont.) limestone sculpture uses traditions of knotted and floral motifs, and Robert Windrum (Toronto, Ont.) embroiders tattoo imagery on household linen and clothing.

A catalogue accompanies this exhibition.

Exhibition

Vancouver artist Gwen Boyle’s sculptural installation at the Or Gallery is a re-configuration of elements she has used in other locations. The original research and inspiration for this body of work came from Boyle’s residency in the Arctic at the Polar Continental Shelf Project on Cornwallis Island, Northwest Territories in 1989. Here, looking over her shoulder for polar bears and amidst a community of research scientists, Boyle assembled the sculpture that has been the source of intrigue and creative output for the past five years. Unexpectedly the magnetized sculpture installed on the Arctic rock began emitting sounds that, to date, no one has been able to explain. A tape of these harmonics is incorporated into this installation.

Much of Gwen Boyle’s work is site-specific and she is interested in direct community involvement; allowing for the public to also experience the natural phenomenon she is fascinated with. Using natural and industrial materials, Boyle explores, in uncomplicated juxtapositions, the intangible forces of nature such as magnetism, gravity, harmonics and the earth’s rotation. The sculptures become devices that embody or refer to these invisible states and are a way of communicating her explorations. For this exhibition Boyle is using the gallery as an experimental space; an interior site configuration which parallels the original specific exterior site.

- Press Release

essay by Gwen and Melanie Boyle

What stands out during a sojourn in the Arctic and seems always part of travel in a wild landscape, is the long struggle of the mind fir concordance with that mysterious entitY, the earth. Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams

Where the influences to make one’s art come from and why they take the forms they do are often the first questions to ask an artist and the last things to define. In the sculpture and installation of Gwen Boyle structure is closely linked to content, and content to her relationship to people and things. Her practice of art involves observation and an enquiry into natural phenomen; she attempts to make visible and tangible those elements which permeate our lives but which we rarely stop to question or wonder at. ~ Boyle’s sculpture is public, site-specific and communicates to the viewer through play and interaction her curiosity about and relation to forces below and above the crust of the earth. She has for many years used the materials of bronze, steel, wood, glass and sound to bring into human terms the wind, sun, earth’s gravity, magnetism, wobble and rotation. Boyle’s sculptures are built to track or suggest the presence of these ephemeral forces and their resultant compositions strike a balance between formal abstraction and technical engineering. ~ Although Boyle admits she is not a scientist her interests do take her into the realm of science, and the oportunities she finds for consultation and collaboration with others outside the arts field form a significant part of her working process. The current exhibition “Arc” reflects one such opportunity – to work in the High Arctic – and presents, within an urban, art context, the richness of that experience.
Melanie, June 1994

Excerpts From an Arctic Journal:

June 15/89: It’s 2 a.m. air is still, in the silence my boots crunch rocks and ice as I install a sculpture on an exposed cracked mezoic rock… Holding the magnetic steel bar my hair starts to crackle with electricity. A faint electronic sound sings out from this magnetized steel bow. What’s happening… it’s responding to the … what? Out here on this seemingly empty tundra I was alone, excited, mystified and spooked. … Installation complete and harmonics continue to resonate along the shore as if it were “tuning” the shimmering sea ice. Can’t sleep… the sun is already high.

June 16: Announcement: “Art Opening Down by the Big Rock on the Beach, artist in attendance.” Scientists from the camp came by, checked it out and toasted the invisible force with invisible drinks. The harmonics remain a mystery.

June 19: We land within seven degrees of the geomagnetic pole, and we have a couple of hours before the ice becomes unsafe. Out of this sea ice, the light is even more intense and pure, everything is sharp edged, even the ice crystals in the air. I’ve lost my sense of perspective, what is far seems so near. The silence is silencing. I sit listening. In this light I see the Arctic’s long unbroken bow of time.

June 21: Summer solstice, I’m as close to the north pole ever I’ll be. Lying on my back, I watch the day turn completely on its inclined axis toward the sun before I turn southward.

To bring ARC into a parallel gallery has given me the venue to explore and express other aspects of my arctic experience, and to experiment with the magnetic sound in a different context.
GWEN BOYLE

Exhibition

essay by Noel Harding
May 28 to June 25 1994
Opening: 3pm Saturday May 28
Artist talk: 2pm Saturday June 4

Press Release:

The Or Gallery is please to indtroduce the work of David Acheson, in the form of this exhibition entitled Zoophyte, for the first time to Vancouver audiences. Acheson is a Canadian artist who divides his time between Southern Ontario and Europe. Some of the work in this exhibition was previously shown at Het Apollohaus, Eindhoven, Holland.

Zoophyte consists of series of contemporary sculptural works reflecting Acheson’s comments on the state of things; especially our flawed and damaged relationship to nature. Deidre Logue has written of the work in Zoophyte “Radioactivity has touched the horn of plenty. The work feels like opening the refrigerator, looking in that bin in the bottom and finding ‘all is now one’”

At the end of this century, we in ‘developed world’ find ourselves enmeshed by the products of our making; our food is manufactured, we drink our filtered sweage water, out tampering resides in our bodies. With experience of this knowledge, Acheson creates a built environment with a difference; Zoophyte presents to us poetic visions, humour and bitter-sweet reminders as we hover on the knife-edge of our indecision.

There will be a publication to accompany this exhibition with a short essay by Noel Harding.

A LIGHT COMEDY OF PASSIONS…
David, let’s talk about your work … I sit back straighten myself in the chair… my coldness arises … I cannot allow my bias.

One could seize on the function of poetic intuition, visual poetic signatures as a way to transcend the personal, to objectify and translate the body of experience. Your eyes seem so different to mine.

I listen to what you said, all the particles made little sense though I first recognized the understandings of your work, in your own writings: ‘’/ had a leak in my gas tank. I kept fixing it, it kept leaking …one drop a minute that kept following me around. I could smell gasoline at unexpected times andplaces. I don’t really like the smell, but some people do. “

Delicious 4 legged body (reminds me of seeing the hind quarter of an Elk at the zoo … made me lick my lips … mmm delicious; defining the balance between bestial sex and eating) Is that why the breakfast menu includes a final coffee with ‘HAVE A NICE DAY”? I really hate that sunny smile expropriated from the supermarket of the banal. Though how true is of all of us … the words I use in my endearments … sweetie … dear … plastic fruit maybe … Nah … the work is an ad for a raffle at Loblaws expounding the bounteous seductions available in a package tour to the Bahamas … I knew you would exploit the sexual. The work really evolves around a social consciousness … shopping …

And on another wall remembering ‘Big Angels’. Three human figures, a happy family unit, each a figure composition of differing back lit images, as if within the unconscious (milk shot out of a syringe, a brick as a hand) the images perceptibly float and hover in space. The unlit black wall creates illusionary space as a grounding in the abyss. The black and white images pin reflections. The photo of the centre line of the highway, not only forms the leg of a hypothetical figure but also generates subjective thoughts in the viewer … you remember and enter the vague daze of the highway… photo of a tire track water deep in the mud … prickly bits of thistles as the heart in a torso … an emblem of things carried in the soul.

I do talk with David by telephone and my writing needs questions. I’ve brought myself to memories of my past, my associations to the ambiguities of the self recreating, each individual image a bond with my meaning in it. I get a dose of intensities, I hear some things from the inside out and I will use some of your words: “male and female figures manifest ambiguity … inferring new creatures formingandinforming… half way between the real and the image. Milk shot out of a syringe … see the tip… fax of sperm.

The mousetrap and the dead mouse foreshadowed within the figure, an empty bird’s nest as the head of the figure as in the emptiness of death, the echo of the flight of the mind. The transformation of the nest as a home of birth into an echo of past life … worms giving legs, eroticism, food for non present birds and toys for the childish mind. This little figure being tossed between two seeming adults the elements comb the insight like an impish boy’s fascination with death, fat toads and snail slime. The bright and bulbous eyes of the mouse crushed out, popping and mesmerizing that last vulgar moment.

You fax me a message … explaining the ideas in this new work … under construction … I get a news clipping:

SNAKE ATTACK
In Seremban, Malaysia: a man who became angry with a snake that bit him swallowed the reptile alive. Authorities say Krishnan Muniandy swallowed the 30cm snake “to teach it a lesson” Muniandy said, ‘’/ caught it but it bit me and I got so angry that I swallowed it. “ He rushed to a nearby hospital after he developed stomach trouble. Doctors there x-rayed his stomach and confirmed that the snake was dead Mundiandy said however ‘‘I can still feel something moving in my stomach. “

This is no chance encouter or quip. The story embodies the memory and it’s ation in perception. The work is clothed in the tools of memory, tools that pry open viewers experience. Maybe the mind acts like memory of the amputated limb imposing life into it. I cannot advance my reactions to what I haven’e experienced and the view through my past is tainted and bloats a tint and frame. The matter of the everyday, a light comedy of the passions.

Noel Harding, 1994

David Acheson has exhibited work in Canada and Europe since 1983. He has also worked in commercial film, television and theatre as well as assisting artists such as Michael Snow, Toby McLennan and Noel Harding.

Exhibition

Helen Sebelius and Laura Vickerson ‘Camera Florae’
April 23 to May 21 1994
Opening Saturday Spril 23, 3pm (the artist will be in attendance)

‘Camera florae’ is collaborative installation by Calgary artist Helen Sebilius ad Laura Vickerson. Sebelius’ contribution involves the creation of ‘non-objects’ by making images, which are etheral and transitory, directly on the gallery walls. The artist has written: “the work, comprised of plant and garden images and related text, is made in a way that speaks about the passage of time. Ironically, while the process utilized is labour intensive, the traces left only suggest that a ‘making’ has occured. The traces are like memories – the work comes near to not existing. The process is a analogy for the nurturing and eventual demise of something of nature.
Laura Vickerson is also interested in the transitory quality of the natrual world and has created garment like objects using wax forms and plant ans flower fragments that elude to the inner workings of the body. The skin-like quality of the waz and red flower petals; like fatty tissue, create a layer of trasnparency acknowledging that these garments neither conceal nor protect. The artist has stated: “The work deals with contradictory qualities of strength and fragility, physical confinement as well as confinement within stereotypes (as in the references to recognizable ‘fashion styles’) and, perhaps most importantly, it speaks about vulnerability.”

essay by Laura Lamb

Laura Vickerson
Ambivalences around ways of looking and discovering, penetration and vision are also central to Laura Vickerson’s work. Vickerson has taken from the garden, not images of plants, but blossoms themselves. She begins by giving the flowers a skin of wax. This preserves them and also transforms them to fleshy things with the shiny density and plumpness of viscera or overripe fruit.

These already meaningful objects (is there anything more culturally loaded than the flower?) become even more heavily burdened with the waxy connotations of morbid wax museums and the sexual activity of bees.

The pins which fasten the blossoms are another material which produce allusions with a remarkable economy. Perhaps their strongest association is to butterfly collections, those cruelly aesthetic objects, which, framed like pictures, ruthlessly exploit a natural decorative beauty commonly thought of as feminine, all the while (to ease the conscience of any morally squeamish aesthete) cloaking themselves in the empiricist authority of entomology.

In the Learning Spanish series Vickerson uses these materials to re-construct pictures of emblematic objects used in language lessons. Her images are reminiscent of the work of Guiseppe Arcimboldo, the Renaissance painter who assembled grotesque and humorous portraits out of pictures of flowers, fruits, vegetables and other objects. Like Arcimboldo, Vickerson’s work combines comic irony with a childlike wonder in the mysteries of representation. The shifts in meaning which take place when one object stands for another while at the same time remaining itself are one of the pleasures of both the modernist practice of collage and of children’s make-believe.

In the Armour Amour series the connotations of both wax and pins shift away from the insects of the garden and towards what the garden has so often stood for – the female body. Wax is utilized for its uncanny resemblance to flesh which so profits Madame Toussaud’s, and the pins while still piercing the blossoms sadistically, refer directly to dressmaking.

Clothing performs cultural functions, both decorating and hiding the body which, unclothed, is supposed to be, like flowers, natural. Vickerson’s work challenges that duality and allows neither cultural artifice nor biological organism to maintain a sense of complacent integrity. Clothing, rather than being a “second skin” here melds with skin and flesh. The costume/body is pierced, slit, and variously opened as if to uncover a hidden interior truth. However each opening up, reveals only an ambivalence between clothing/body, skin/muscle, appearance /reality, artifice/nature.

In Bone Corset the floral pattern on a dress is represented by actual flowers. As the floral decoration becomes literal and three-dimensional, even the decoration on the decoration of the body, the exterior of the exterior, takes on its own corporeality and interiority.

These works, although they are busy with opening up or seeing through the flesh and revealing apparent interiors are more like striptease than autopsy. They tease the viewer by offering a view of an interior which turns out to be no more natural, revealing or truthful than the exterior.

What we encounter when we enter Flora’s Chamber may not be as unrelentingly sweet and pleasant as we expected. If we look closely we find that the Flora’s garden has as much corruption as it has fragrance and that invading the privacy of its mistress risks finding the worms as well as the fruit.

Helen Sebelius- Camera Flora

Today, more than ever we think that we know and love flora. But what of Flora, the feminine personification borrowed from the ancients by two artists and given a room of her own. What will we find on entering Flora’s chamber?

Helen Sebelius’ work revolves around problems of knowledge. In Nascent all drawings recall botanical illustrations, pictures which depict plants not as we usually experience them, in the dirt among the other organisms which give them context and life, but instead attempt to deliver empirical information by presenting each plant as a discrete entity. The plants pictured here have been uprooted and now, upended, are laid out in a neat row. Far from being in a state of being born as the title suggests, they are in a state of dying.

Again in Conjure the earth has been stripped away from the roots, exposing them to the clinical gaze. Like a cadaver in a morgue, the plant is getting the scientific treatment. Hanging over it is the gardening implement which may have done the uprooting. Reminiscent of some archaic surgical device, the tool is an instrument of vision. It aids a kind of looking which sees only what is there, which studies it, analyzes it, produces knowledge by digging up, opening up. How different from the kind of knowledge produced by a vision which is conjured up, the vision which sees only what isn’t there – the imagination.

Between each layer of images and text Sebelius has applied a thin layer of wall paint. The paint forms a skin or a veil, a surface which is important to her work in a number of ways. As a skin the paint represents the very surface of bodily integrity which is threatened by penetrating empirical vision. By drawing our attention to a surface which invites at the same time as it resists penetration Sebelius causes us to become uncomfortably aware of the violations which are part of the production of rational knowledge.

The layer of paint also works as atmospheric perspective (the use of muted colour and haziness to enhance the illusion of distance in traditional landscape painting) to create a space in which a narrative of appearances and apparitions can unfold. At the same time the veil suggests the paradox of imagination. Whatever is there is not quite there.

Like scientists, collagists also remove objects from their contexts. But unlike the data collector, the artist’s interest is not in the object as a singular entity but in the changes in meaning which occur when an element is recontextualized. Sebelius has extracted the text used in A Gentle Plea for Chaos from a book on gardens of the same title. But her extraction is much less severe or radical (of the root) than the surgical act of the botanist. It is an appropriation which seems wholly sympathetic to the artifact she has dismantled.

In the dialogue she has set up between visions, Sebelius answers the rigorous argument of empiricism not with another set of linear propositions, (which might be found in the whole of the text she has appropriated) but with a distillation of the romantic, luscious sensibilities contained in those arguments: an extract of ideas which is presented as a tone.

Sebelius’ work avoids the usual appropriator’s irony which reverses the meaning of a found text. Instead the irony emerges from an ambivalence produced by the coexistence, both in things described and in descriptive methods, of contradictory ways of knowing.

Exhibition

Media Release March 7th 1994

Kati Campbell, Daniel Laskarin, Phillip McCrum

March 22 to April 16 1994
Opening: Tuesday March 22 at 8pm
Artist Talk: Saturday April 9 at 2pm

Or Gallery Board member Warren Murfitt has programmed this upcoming exhibition which brings together new works of three Vancovuer artists; Kati Campbell, Daniel Laskarin and hillip Mccrum. The artists’ individual works in this exhibition share an exploration into uses of ordinary materials which require a reading beyond their obvious meaning and association.

Kati Campbell uses everday elements such as double bed and crutches to compose scenarios which are as enigmatci as they are container for pouring ones own narratives into.

In Daniel Laskarin’s work, the use of taxidermy and high frequency vibrations moves the spectator into the position of hunter whose line of sight is blurred.

Phillip McCrum’s constructions act as viewing devices using quotidian materials such as donaconda and naugahyde to engage the viewer not only in the physical experience of the work but also the viewer’s relationship to the act of viewing.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a publication with a short essay by Judy Radul.

Performance

Diana Burgoyne, Mark Parlett

Exhibition

Douglas Scott’s installation at the OR Gallery consists of shelved plaster tablets which contain randomly selected library texts about the city of Vancouver. The showcase window at the gallery entrance contains a related work and will be the Or’s first showcase installation.

Scott’s interest in the various ways in which Western society’s dependence the written word as a defining structure, has led him to create several works based on the functions of libraries. The plaster tables in ‘JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER’ (the time period of the research) contains excerpts of texts from 270 books about Vancouver from every section of the Vancouver Public Library. These arbitrary selections reveal a reliance on certain types of information, certain academic concerns, certain biases; in particular the fundamental flaw that ‘literacy’ exemplifies ‘civilization’. Unlike an archive, this installation deliberately does not function as a reference tool. Instead it can be seen as one person’s examination of how a library’s material defines the city. In establishing his relationship with the library the artist also establishes his own relationship with the city. It is also the artist’s intention to explore new roles for the use of text within a decentralized structure.

essay by Madonna Hamel
JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER
Douglas Scott
Or Gallery February 19 to March 19, 1994

The first lantern on the delta was owned by uncle. It was made of lacquered tin and glass and was about four inches square and ten inches high. 917.1133115m

A phrase floats on a plaster plaque. A dedication. An explanation. A tombstone. A reminder of a thing that no longer exists. A quirky, cryptic little detail is now a recorded ‘memory’. It makes its way up the hierarchy of history. From a spoken story, to typewritten fact, to printed matter, to the Library of Congress, to the library in your town. This memory gets reinforced each step of the way. Seeing a thing in print helps legitimize it for us. Seeing it molded on a plaster slab sitting on a shelf in a gallery confuses it for us.

Most people in Kitsilano were content with things the way they are. 790.097 11 v22k

Scott spends the warm months of July, August and September , in the city library. He types his subject heading ‘Vancouver’ into the computer. He jots down the call numbers and makes random samplings from the corresponding titles. They range from the history of churches in Vancouver, to the botany of Stanley park, to psychedelic drug use in Vancouver schools. The phrases are then typed and placed carefully in a manual to later be transferred to labels and eventually plaster slabs that sit displaced on a shelf.

Birdie had set up shop at the corner of Water and Cambie streets about five or six years earlier – a modest establishment with a white painted porch, just next door to the Methodist parsonage. r364.9 711 k290

Douglas Scott is a man who likes libraries and despite the fact that he feels he has to live in a city in order to become established as an artist, he likes Vancouver. He seesJJULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER’ as an acknowledgment to the city; something he has to do before he can really li~e here. Before he can protest the destruction of any heritage he needs to learn what he can about it. “It’s a kind of rite of passage” he says “and being compulsive it followed that the acknowledgment would take this shape. I know the library exists, I know it contains information about the city, I know we’re a literate society, therefore I have to go through all the books.”

The evacuees had few people willing to fight for their own interests and in fact there was considerable opposition in Vancouver to the ‘good’ treatment being netted out to the Japanese. 607.34 B83v

While working on this story I would walk with Scott to and from his studio. It became evident that he was learning a great deal of Vancouver’s recorded history, more than we can glean from his random excerpts. Parts of the city have a profound
effect on him. Scott’s initial impression of the Pacific National Exhibition grounds has been changed by the fact that Japanese citizens were interned there during the Second World War and their Vancouver homes sold at bargain prices. The freefloating effects of bigotry, prejudice, racism and chauvinism show up everywhere yet are not easily acknowledged by the fair citizens of Lotusland more concerned with the ample parking and good views. While Douglas Scott never states his political views I draw my own conclusions. My fascination moves from the poetical to the political because “the more you learn about and acknowledge a place, you mark it and change it forever. There are ghosts here marking their territory even as we try to enforce our own.”

The attitude of many police officers does little to dispel the Native Indians’ conviction that the police view them with disdain. 363.209711 v22f

Back to Scott, jotting down call numbers, checking out books, he goes home with books under his arms. He is deceptive in his inconspicousness, a wizard in a big coat carrying a piece of the library to slice and to serve up. There are three hundred slices in all stacked in twenty~five hundred pounds of wood shelving. What will the viewer do with these fragments, these snippets? As we stroll the burgundy wood stacks of this impressive and aesthetically compelling monument with its traces of mildew and its inaccessible top shelves, are we more interested in the look of history than the stories within the stories? .

“Because of your regret and pity for my suffering, never again shall the dogwood grow large enough to be used as a cross.” 971.1002 66361

Some postmodernists believe that the individual story is really all there is. That is, totell a story is to be honest, up front, that all versions are subjective and so there is no official story.1 Or, as Scott muses, perhaps this fragmented library, this decontextualization, is simply a reflection of the impossible relationships we have with all this information, language, codification and recordings. Perhaps this “deconstruction is a way of understanding the role of the library without necessarily complying with it.”

Vancouver’s history is that of Topsy, it just growed. 333.77v22p

Moving from the poetical through the political, I arrive to a place of pure aesthetic appreciation. I feel somewhat subverted by the work’s formalism because the piece does not function as a library. I cannot look up a particular topic and find it on one of the shelves. Scott has subversively made all the choices for me. His rendering the library dysfunctional forces me to view it as an aesthetic object. I think of Marcia Tucker’s description of the function of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. The museum “was founded on the premise that works of art are not only for visual delectation and assessment, but are repositories for ideas that reverberate in the larger context of our culture“2 ‘JULY, AUGUST, SEPTEMBER’ does the same with libraries in the reverse. A “repository for ideas” becomes an object for “visual delectation and assessment”. It puts recorded memory into art and has us look at it in a new way, raising new considerations around ‘legitimacy’.
Her real name is Peggy Middleton and she was born in Vancouver in 1922. 971.133h49v

1. Tucker, Marcia, ed. ‘Art After Representation: Rethinking Representation’ (New York: the New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1984)

2. ‘Art After Representation’ (New York, 1984) p.vii.

Foster, Hal. Recordings – Art, Spectacle, Cultural Politics (Seattle: Bay Press, 1985)

Wallis, Brian, ed. ‘Blasted Allegories’ (New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1989)

Douglas Scott is a Vancouver artist. He is also a board member of the artist-run centre,Access.

Madonna Hamel is a writer and performance artist working in Vancouver.

Exhibition

‘Development and Desire’ an installation by
MICHAEL BANWELL
January 15 to February 12, 1994 Opening Saturday, 2 to 6pm Artist Talk: January 29, 2pm
Michael Banwell is building an administrative office within the Or Gallery. Banwell’s constructed space includes fabricated oak panel walls, an administrator’s chair and desk, a hand-made row boat, two windows with a view and brass coloured letters which read ‘Development and Desire’. Is this the office of a government agency, a forest company or an environmental organization?

Banwell carefully chose the words ‘development’ and ‘desire’ to accurately reflect two views of the way many Canadians value nature. There is the view that the value of nature is in its ‘development’ for industrial production and profit and the view that nature, due to our ‘desire’ for untouched landscape, can be ‘developed’ for its recreational and wilderness values. The ‘Words ‘development’ and ‘desire’ not only identify opposing positions but are also interchangeable. There exists the patriarchal ‘desire’ for dominion over nature. Also, increasingly there are shifts away from industrial models towards the ‘development’ of sustainable resource models.

Michael Banwell is a professional artist and art school instructor. He has been a community activist for some years, often making art projects that deal with neighbourhood issues. His current work investigates those areas where social constructs and culture intersect. The artist’s publication, which is free to visitors, has been created as a component of this installation.
Banwell will be giving an artist talk at the gallery on Saturday, January 29 at 2pm.