The permanent collection at the Museum of North Vancouver is similar to the Red Deer museum in its chronicling of the region’s settlement and industrial development through dioramas of old kitchens and school houses.  The relative lack of a First Nations history in this part of the museum is interesting in its juxtaposition with the history of Maisie Hurley as told through the collection, as a white woman who was considered a close friend of and advocate for many First Nations people in British Columbia.

Entwined Histories was mounted in collaboration with the Squamish nation following Hurley’s desire for the collection to be housed in a museum.  This is meant to symbolically return the objects to the people and communities who had gifted them to her signaling the affirmation of friendship between Hurley and her First Nations friends (Fortney 2010).  The various items in the collection are thus displayed homogeneously under the rubric of ‘gift’ whether they originate from the Hupa (California), Assiniboine, Anishinabe (Ojibway) nations or from Hurely’s close personal friend August Jack Khatsahlano of the Squamish nation.

There is a thin line between Hurley’s gifts and the collecting practices of her parents who are seen as having participated in a salvage paradigm and collecting First Nations objects  as tourist souvenirs (Fortney 2010), which is not evident in the exhibition display. Many of the items are displayed in visible storage format in pull out drawers with small labels.  These issues seem to be avoided in favor of emphasizing Hurley’s harmonious relation with the First Nations people.  The series of pastel portraits of First Nations sitters done by Hurley serves to further emphasize this, as many of them were painted from photographs with the backgrounds removed, heightening their romantic quality (Fortney 2010).

The display of some of these items has been contentious in their communities of origin, as is the case with the Squamish nation. It is unclear if other communities were contacted about the exhibition.  It seems that Hurley’s documentation of some of her gifts was lacking, while her close personal relationship with Khatsahlano, who gifted Hurley several items, made collaborative efforts much more tenable with the Squamish.

A sxwayxwii mask made by Khatsahlano was removed at the request of members of the Squamish community, apparently after seeing pictures of it published in a Vancouver newspaper.  Although the mask was a replica that had never been used for ceremonial purposes, its removal highlights the sensitive nature of displaying such items and leads me to wonder about the display of some of the other items in the collection.

This is not to downplay the significance of this collection as a collaborative venture on behalf of the museum and the Squamish nation or Hurley’s contribution to First Nations advocacy in Vancouver.  Founder of the Native Voice, representative of the Native Brotherhood, Hurley and her husband Tom gave legal aid to many disenfranchised people, often without charge (Fortney 2010).  Certainly, this woman was an exception in many aspects.

Overall, however, I felt that Hurley’s relationships in the community in some ways excused the curators of contextualizing the collection in ways that signaled the problematic aspects of displaying such objects.  Perhaps I am overstating this too much, as I do think the removal of the sxwayxwii mask – but, importantly, not its label – demonstrates the museum’s willingness to have a sensitive ear to the wishes of First Nations peoples.

I welcome any thoughts or comments you have about the exhibition.

There have been some good shows happening lately in Vancouver that I can start with, even if some of them are over.

The first is (was) Brian Jungen at Catriona Jeffries, in which the artist set up a ‘workshop’ in the gallery over the duration of the exhibition to create works in progress for the public to view.  I saw the exhibition in its final week, after the works were finished, although the smaller of the two exhibition spaces in the gallery contained works not-for-sale, and not considered as art by Jungen.  This is an interesting juxtaposition with the sawhorse pile in the first space, which is reminiscent of the workshop that was created in the gallery.  These sawhorses however, are considered finished works and showed no signs of being ‘worked on’ on their surface.  I’m curious to see which pieces will go on to Ontario, where the new works are due to be exhibited next (at the AGO?).

The two large mixed media sculptures are what really stood out in my mind in the exhibition, which are reflective of Jungen’s new direction (according to Jeffries).  Similarly to his Prototypes, these works are a form of bricolage and have a certain hybridity to them in their mixing of commercial goods with First Nations imagery.  They include hides from Jungen’s home and are dedicated to his mother and father, therefore making them much more immediately personal than some of his earlier work, which were more focused on commodity fetishism.  The hides are stretched over car hoods and mounted like sails atop of white deep-freezes (one of which, coincidentally, was a ‘gallery’ edition).

The car hoods instantly reminded me of Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’ Coppers from the Hood, though to a different effect.  While Yahgulanaas’ car hoods are polished objects that are recognizable in and of themselves as a sort of visual pun, Jungen’s are more obscured and rough, their final form containing shifting referents.  I found the works to be poetic and somewhat sentimental in their bricolage of objects, and definitely more ephemeral in quality than some of his earlier work.

Please contact Julia at 604 323 2434 or Tarah at 778 235 6928

The Gam Gallery and Studio is an open space for artists to create and to show, inclusive to all disciplines of artistic endeavors. Our goal is to encourage participation and motion toward creating a dynamic and thoughtful culture. It is a place to meet and learn from the talented people within our community, to get inspired and inspire others.

gam
–noun Slang.
a person’s leg, esp. an attractive female leg.
Origin:
1775–85; prob. < Polari < It gamba leg; see jamb 1

gam
–noun
1. a herd or school of whales.
2. Eastern New England, Nautical. a social meeting, visit, or the like, as between whaling vessels at sea.
–verb (used without object)
3. (of whales) to assemble into a herd or school.
4. Nautical. (of the officers and crews of two whaling vessels) to visit or converse with one another for social purposes.
5. Eastern New England. to participate in a gam or social visit.
Origin:
1840–50, Americanism; perh. dial. var. of game 1

We are calling for work that ranges in media and size, and reflects the mission and meaning of the Gam stated above.

SUBMIT work to thegam@live.com
Include: image, dimensions and media

DEADLINE is December 2nd 2009

We missed the opening band, which our seat neighbors informed us sounded like “they were jamming in a friends’ living room,” so no harm done.  Eugene Hütz, the bands’ mustachioed front man came on stage first to start off the show with the politically charged “Illumination,” with the other band members soon following suit. Hütz sings “realization number one: you are the only light there is for yourself, my friend,” and they’re off! The band barely paused for a breath between songs, leaving me to wonder if I could hack it at one of the Russian weddings they first started playing at.  They were certainly skilled at keeping us enthralled, as I have never been to a show where the audience was so unified.  Everyone around us (even up in the nosebleeds) was clapping and dancing along, often out of their own volition.

The cabaret like atmosphere of the show with its level of variety propelled everyone forward through the hour plus set, including the forty five minute encore and then the impromptu jam session the drummer and percussionist started afterward.  The percussionist, Pedro Erazo brought his Ecuadorian flavor to songs like “Not a Crime,” with bells and whistles (literally) and dub-like vocalizing.  His set up on stage also included a set of timbales and a sample pad which Hutz also played at one point.  One of the high points of the show for me was during “Immigrant Punk,” when Hütz put a garbage can over the mic and wailed on it.  The percussive elements of the show in general where amazing, held up by the solid rock beats of drummer Eliot Ferguson, who also sang some minor very Eastern vocal accompaniment. Both Pamela Jintana Racine and Elizabeth Sun added to this milieu with their big bass drum, cymbals, choreographed dancing, and vocalizing on songs like “Go Revolutions” (most of the songs played were from the bands’ latest album, Gypsy Punks).

The band members that stood out the most besides Hutz however, were violinist Sergey Ryabtsev and accordion player Yuri Lemeshev, if not for their talent then at least for their novelty. Ryabstevs’ powerful vocals have him sounding like an opera singer on “Start Wearing Purple.”  The part of that song which really gets me excited however, was when Hütz sings “I’ve known you since you were a twenty, I was twenty,” because it reminds me of Ryan and I, and how insane we both are (Hutz wrote the song for a girlfriend). I can’t forget to mention bassist Thomas Gobena, whose lines on “Undestructable” coupled with Lemeshev’s accordion makes for a truly great song. This was one of the last and most epic numbers of the show (with every member of the group on stage), and the line “all his hardcore when made with love,” to me at least, really sums up the message that Hütz tries to convey with Gogol Bordello.

Overall, this was one of the best shows I’ve ever been to. The nature of the conglomeration itself is significant, with many of its members coming from different Diasporas coming together to form a force of resistance and joy. Hütz himself was a refugee for many years, first displaced by the Chernobyl meltdown , which he references in “Sally,” when he sings  “and I survived even fucking radiation.”  A punk band with gypsy hearts, not only is Gogol Bordello the most fun to watch, but they actually have something real to say in a world that grows smaller by the day.

Here’s a couple vids for your enjoyment:

Start Wearing Purple

American Wedding

Wanderlust King

Before meeting everyone at our first stop I finished off my flask of Disaronno to get in the mood, which was a good thing because the show at 221a Artist Run Centre, “Future Expansion, Today”, by Daniel Oates-Kuhn, wasn’t my favorite.  The installation with a Vancouver-under-construction theme was awkwardly placed in the exhibition space, and overall seemed very simplistic. Plastic sheets hung from one wall, a box of asphalt on the floor was covered with fencing, and that was basically it.  So we waited for the rest to join our tour in the other room of the gallery and had a beer.

The sculptural pieces at Access Gallery were more thoughtful, albeit very different in nature from those at 221a.  Daniel Laskarin’s fibre glass forms resembled both precarious industry, and homage to Jospeh Bueys.  The words written in clear tacks on the wall, “Things, Not Pictures,” invite consideration of the relation and separation between the two categories and how each signifies meanings.  Jen Hutton’s wooden ‘C’ shaped sculpture that reflect the viewer’s feet when looking into the top, similarly played with how the viewer interacts with and perceives the material object before them.

Across the street from Access is Artspeak, which had a collection of video and books entitled “Speaking Truth to Reconciliation”.  The show, like at last years’ Swarm, was arranged on Christian Kliegel’s ONSITE installation of white blocks that created a viewing area for the two videos.  The combination of the installation and all the people trying to awkwardly funnel through to the back room for drinks made our stop at Artspeak a short one, as it intensified the hive effect of crawling over other people and made viewing the works difficult.

My favorite stop of the evening was at a gallery whose name I did not catch due to the darkness and the wine I drank while watching a video of a child running through a field toward the camera in very slow motion and negative colors that made the process disturbing.  There were a street art style manatee painted across multiple wooden blocks, and canvases with stenciled Western figures and broken bits of wood and rusted metal on them that were stunning.  I plan to find this magical, dark hole of a gallery again, and will tell you all about it then.

The most socially responsible show of the evening was at Gallery Gachet, which is no surprise considering their mandate to demystify issues surrounding mental health (and I would add race, class, and gender issues) by exhibiting the work of outsider artists.  SD Holman’s “Stealing Masculinity” was very illuminating in its showcase of the physical transformation from female to male through the use of testosterone and surgery.  Through personal journal entries on transparencies tacked on and around photographs, a more subjective account of one person’s gender identity was able to shine light on larger issues faced by transgendered people.

Our last stop of the evening was at the Or Gallery for “Death and Objects,” a group show featuring Debra Baxter, Dawn Cerny, Barb Choit, and The Goggles (Michael Simons and Paul Shoebridge) that consisted of sculpture and photography.  I enjoyed the Sci Fi show I saw at Or Gallery earlier this year, and the arrangement of sculptural objects on and around a centrally placed table had a similar flavour.  I especially enjoyed the belted pillow with quartz growing out of one end.  Some of the pieces showed death in objects very literally; a series of photographs of light fixtures with one less light every picture, or the large photographs of books with holes cut in them that resembled ghost faces a child might cut in a sheet.  I get a very whimsical feeling from the Or Gallery, and I like it.

All of the walking and drinking  took its tole by this time, and we parted ways with our posse to get some pizza before heading home.  We ended up skipping out on the Fillip launch party, which was really too bad, because they do good work in the area of contemporary art criticism and theory.

By no means was this an exhaustive coverage of Swarm. On Friday alone we went to ten or so different galleries, and the night before had just as many openings in another part of Vancouver.  I sincerely hope that this is not my last Swarm, and so do many galleries of the Pacific Association of Artist Run Centres (PAARC), which puts on Swarm each year.  As a number of galleries highlighted with information sheets at the door, the provincial government has proposed major slashes to arts funding in the next year. For more information on this, see the post below.  Swarm 2009 is a wonderful event that supports a lot of artists and the artist run culture that has been an integral part of Canadian art history for many years.  It would be a tragedy if the government fails to see the importance of this aspect of Canadian culture.

A website dedicated to the radness of Vancouver’s arts and cultural scene, without the bad.

About the cuts in BC arts funding and the need for BC artists to toughen up.

As he made his way out of the water, he moved slowly to where my two friends and I had a beach picnic spread out for the afternoon and were sunbathing.  He mumbled something, giving away his German identity, but thoroughly confusing the rest of us.  He didn’t seem to mind, and settled close by, leaning back casually on one of the huge logs that dot the beaches in Vancouver.  My two companions decided to cool off in the ocean, so I took the opportunity to grab my notebook and started talking to this character.

He was a small, fit older man who obviously had a love of the outdoors: his wrinkled skin was leathery tanned.  His black swim trunks clung damply to his stout legs, and he wore a small denim hat upon his head, which he removed briefly to run his fingers through his brownish-red hair before plunking it back down.

“I was here yesterday and today,” he said when I asked him if he came to the beach often, “I came all the way from New Westminster because I love it here.”

He told me he had moved from Germany years ago to work as a draughtsman in Canada, and has mapped the entire Horseshoe Bay area for the water and sewer board, streets and land contours, from a small plane.  “I like forestry mapping the best,” he says, “because I get to be in the forest.”  He laughed to himself, adding “except I like going home the best because I get to have a hot shower or bath after camping for a week.” 

When he first moved to Canada, he tells me, “if somebody would have told me,” he paused, recalling the memory, “the cedar trees, how huge they were… I wouldn’t have believed them.”  He shows me with his forearm how big the cracks in some of the fir trees can be, with a sense of awe that he hasn’t lost over time.

The conversation ended as naturally as it had started.  He moved away a bit and took some biscuits wFrapped in plastic from a black backpack he had hidden in the logs.  He munched them solemnly and slowly moved off down the beach as my two friends returned from the water.  We laughed about our chance encounter with the German while watching him wade out into the ocean once more to float on his back, a little brown figure appearing and disappearing with the roll of the waves.

The crowd hanging outside the theatre alone is daunting, and the room is packed to the doors with people standing in line-ups, and pushing toward the escalator that conveys the humming throngs to their place of destination: Angels & Demons, Star Trek, X-Men.  It is loud and it reeks of that yellow stuff they put on your popcorn and call butter.  There’s no turning back now, onwards and upwards toward the box office. 

A chaotic cue of people fills the room, a stoned pair of lovers grip eachother tightly, pushing their way to the back of the line.  They glare with glazed eyes as a father, speaking Russian to his son, pushes his way in front of them. 

The hubbub of the room bounces back and forth between groups of people as they watch the lit up listings board for their movie times.  Anticipation grows as times disappear of the board: first 6:30, then 7:00pm.  A pair of tickets cost $25, and the young couple looks dubiously at eachother as they purchase two tickets to the 7:20pm showing of Angels and Demons, and head up the escalator to begin the second phase of the adventure: finding a seat.

A chorus of “Excuse me, is this seat taken?” sounds out in the theater, as –still 40 minutes prior to the film – the room is all ready bustling with movie goers.  Jackets are thrown haphazardly across chairs as people mark their territory and head back out to the concession.  Advertisements and movie trivia plays as the couple settles into their seats, armed with a small popcorn and vitamin water that added another $10 onto their trip.  The low hum of their conversation is perforated with bursts of laughter as they tease and quiz eachother about the trivia on screen.

Having reached their point of destination, the atmosphere of the theatre becomes considerably more comfortable as the masses get cozy and munch away at their snacks.  The lights dim, and the buzz subsides as everyone, relieved that their journey is over, prepares for the advent of the long weekend movie.