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THE VANCOUVER SCHOOL
OF COLLAGE
Exhibition: UBC Fine Arts Gallery 1971
billbissett, Christos Dikeakos, Gilles Foisy, Gary Lee Nova
Al Neil, Terry Reid, Gregg Simpson, Ed Varney, davis uu, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace,
Michael Morris and Vincent Trasov.
Review by Richard Simmins in the Vancouver Sun
A
little known fact
about today's so-called Vancouver
School of photo-based conceptualism is that the original
exhibition at UBC, which used this term first, also included
several
other
artists who were not part of any academic coterie. This was a time when the battle lines hadn't yet been drawn between the different groups in Vancouver's developing avant garde art scene,
which led Vancouver Province reviewer, Joan Lowndes, to write: "As though through some time-warp surrealism has returned, along with alchemical visions, pop, eroticism, political satire
and protest in the free-wheeling spirit of the West Coast".
What is amazing is that five of the six artists in the Canadian West Coast Hermetics exhibition, which was also launched from the UBC Fine Arts Gallery to tour Europe and eastern Canada
in 1973-'74, were also in this show. However, following the mid-1970's the photo-conceptualists in this exhibition began an un-precedented, but well documented, collusion with the
Vancouver Art Gallery to promote the idea that theirs was the only artistic movement that Vancouver would be known for. Protests over this were met with threats of defamation lawsuits.
With a dismissive attitude, they advocated exluding all traces of West Coast Surrealism from not only the VAG' s collection, but any further exhibitions, discussions, historical surveys, or publications
at the gallery in the future. Their treatment of Ladislav Guderna was one of the most shameful episdoes in recent Vancouver's art hisitory. Serious critical attention did keep coming for the
surrealists in the exhibition, but it was almost all from Ontario, or Quebec, and even more so from Europe and Latin America.
Thus the "free-wheeling spirit of the West Coast" demonstrated in this exhibition in 1971 was buried in the mid-1970's by an unprecedented cronyism, characterised by a desire to keep out any
other group of artists with a different philosophy from the inner circle of the Vancouver art scene.
artists who were not part of any academic coterie. This was a time when the battle lines hadn't yet been drawn between the different groups in Vancouver's developing avant garde art scene,
which led Vancouver Province reviewer, Joan Lowndes, to write: "As though through some time-warp surrealism has returned, along with alchemical visions, pop, eroticism, political satire
and protest in the free-wheeling spirit of the West Coast".
What is amazing is that five of the six artists in the Canadian West Coast Hermetics exhibition, which was also launched from the UBC Fine Arts Gallery to tour Europe and eastern Canada
in 1973-'74, were also in this show. However, following the mid-1970's the photo-conceptualists in this exhibition began an un-precedented, but well documented, collusion with the
Vancouver Art Gallery to promote the idea that theirs was the only artistic movement that Vancouver would be known for. Protests over this were met with threats of defamation lawsuits.
With a dismissive attitude, they advocated exluding all traces of West Coast Surrealism from not only the VAG' s collection, but any further exhibitions, discussions, historical surveys, or publications
at the gallery in the future. Their treatment of Ladislav Guderna was one of the most shameful episdoes in recent Vancouver's art hisitory. Serious critical attention did keep coming for the
surrealists in the exhibition, but it was almost all from Ontario, or Quebec, and even more so from Europe and Latin America.
Thus the "free-wheeling spirit of the West Coast" demonstrated in this exhibition in 1971 was buried in the mid-1970's by an unprecedented cronyism, characterised by a desire to keep out any
other group of artists with a different philosophy from the inner circle of the Vancouver art scene.
The main point is that
by using a publically funded gallery for the sole advancement of their
own
careers, the so-called
Vancouver School of today made a once open minded
public gallery into
their private club with no inclination to return to the 'free wheeling spirit of the West Coast."
One can only surmise what things would have been like if fairness and objectivity had prevailed instead.
their private club with no inclination to return to the 'free wheeling spirit of the West Coast."
One can only surmise what things would have been like if fairness and objectivity had prevailed instead.