1. The super hip mooncruise* gallery (235 Cambie St.) opens a new show, "PLASTIC*" (I'm not really sure what the deal is with all the asterisks, but let me assure you that no footnotes will be forthcoming) next week. It's going to be a group photography show, focusing on images created with toy cameras. I've posted a few reviews of toy camera shows in the past, and if you haven't made it to any of those, you really need to make an effort to get to this one! We are inundated with digital images in our every day, something that you really don't realize until you look at photography from a more creative angle, as these artists have done.

Photographers Steve Barry, Levi Wedel, Jesse Louttit, Warren Harold, Rachael Ashe, Tanya Goehring, Laura Burlton,
Clare Yow, Ina Jang, Sean Frith, Noel Bullock, Eleanor le Gresley, Brent Bennett, and Vadim Marmer all have work in this show.

Yes, it is a group show and it is massive, but there excellent talent in there! I will definitely be going to this one.

Reception is next Friday, July 14th from 7.30 PM to 10.30 PM and if you miss it the show will run until Aug 31st.

2. At the Presentation House Gallery in North Van (333 Chesterfield Ave.), is "Territory".

"Territory is a visual art project concerned with mapping urban experience, civic space and contested terrains. The project includes installations at Artspeak and Presentation House Gallery as well as in public sites around Vancouver, guided walks, lectures, a film series, and publication.

The works in Territory involve navigating real and imagined territories - geographic, political, economic and social. The exhibition expands on earlier articulations of the notion of derive, or wandering, as a way to investigate urban environments. Cities are understood as essentially unreadable cartographies, fragmented and unstable. This project points to the spatial collisions of urban life, such as those resulting from rapid urban development and increased privitization of public space. The works in Territory reveal how cultural mythologies, both local and global, are scripted into built environments and determine human interactions. The social impact of the often invisible boundaries delineated by political conflict, gentrification, security, and communication systems becomes apparent as the artists call attention to the intersections of psychological, social and physical space."

Obsessed as I have been lately, with urban lifestyles, cities and whatnot, this series of artworks strikes me as particularly interesting.

"Territory" has been on for a while, but you still have until August 6th to get over there to see it. Artists involved in this one are Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, Roy Arden, The Atlas Group/Walid Raad, Yael Bartana, Cao Fei, Germaine Koh, Gonzalo Lebrija, Jayce Salloum, Seripop, Ron Terada, Michael Barnholden, nnabel Vaughan, Neil Wedman. More information about each of them, as well as about the artworks, is available here.

Image by Ron Terada, courtesy of the PHG

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