The Vancouver School

Although discussed ad nauseum by well dressed Emily Carr Grads and maybe those who saw the recent Roy Arden or Frew Herzog shows at the VAG, I still think The Vancouver School, as loosely defined as it is, may be unknown to the majority of Vancouverites. I've pointed towards the Flickr group I started out of frustration with the Conceptual Group, which I found to be full of photoshopped abstract-surrealism, but I've never done a full post dedicated to the movement (although I did find this). So at the risk of watering down the original meaning or becoming another cliche of Vancouverism (Everything's Gone Green), and at the risk of coming across like a total amateur or at the very least a pretentious wannabe, here goes:

Typified by a calculated distance from its subject and an oblique, difficult beauty, of utmost importance to The Vancouver School, or at least the photorealism aspect of it, are the semiotics of the street; the secret meanings that unfold from a carefully composed snapshot. The imagery produced will inevitably be one of social critique vis a vis the seemingly banal built landscape. The subtle yet complex typology created are unassuming and vaguely cinematic. The large scale format often employed only magnifies the careful attention to detail, and sometimes absurd subject matter, leading the viewer to ask themelves, 'why am I looking at this'?

Diane Augaitis, in an audio essay on CBC Radio3, dedicates much of this unique perspective to the isolation and newness of the Vancouver; bound by mountains, water, and nature, the group of conceptual artists that emerged in the 60s explored the relationship between an ever growing suburbia and natural frontier and asked, "what about those spaces in between?"

Indeed my recent attempts at psychogeography were an attempt to answer that question. I was first introduced to the style through a Karin Bubas image in Adbusters, then again later through Chris Gergley and others at Monte Clark Gallery, which was just steps away from my AA homegroup at the Alano Club. Former Radio Berlin member Chris Frey's work highlighted the aesthetic discipline of point and shoot realism, albeit in the form of social documentary. Douglas Coupland's City of Glass and Bill Jeffries' Unfinished Business are both great introductions. They made me look at Vancouver in a completely different way, although I had already began shooting much of the same subject matter in the DTES. In particular, an essay in Unfinished Business titled, Transient Vancouver: A Difficult Typology was perhaps most revealing. The essay discusses the aforementioned spacial relationships and explains how the DTES was formed out of historical/geographic and socio-economic patterns. Among the artists featured are Fred Douglas, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Dick Bellamy, Michael de Courcy, Jack Dale, Christos Dikeakos, Svend-Erik Eriksen, Robbert Flick, Greg Girard, Fred Herzog, Curt Lang, N.E. Thing Company, Henri Robideau, Brian Stablyk, Bruce Stewart, Tony Westman, and Paul Wong.

Today the Vancouver School is kept alive by: Stan Douglas, Rodney Graham, Stephan Waddell, Brian Jungen, Una Knox, Ken Lum, Geoffrey Farmer, Scott McFarland, Howard Ursuliak, Evan Lee, Dan Siney, Jody Rogac, Adam Harrison, Wayne Webb, Jeff Otto O'Brien, Christopher Alex Olson, Toby Marie Bannister and many who were in this year's Cheaper Show.

See also:

Flickr Groups: New Topographics, Are You Shore, and At War With the Obvious.

Galleries: Monte Clark, Catriona Jeffries, Presentation House

Roy Arden- Construction Site with Suntower, 1992