Exhibitions

The Port / Matthew Buckingham: Obscure Moorings

October 3 to December 6, 2014
Satellite Gallery (560 Seymour Street)

Exhibition curated by Cate Rimmer
Opening Reception: Thursday October 2, 2014 from 6:00 to 9:00pm
Curator’s Tour: Saturday November 22, 2014 at 2:00pm at the Satellite Gallery

The Charles H. Scott Gallery invites you to an exhibition curated by Cate Rimmer at the Satellite Gallery. The Port / Matthew Buckingham: Obscure Moorings is an exhibition in two parts that looks at the points of contact between the maritime worker and the port city and, by extension, the maritime worker's place within the urban economy.

In Obscure Moorings—Matthew Buckingham’s film installation based on Herman Melville’s short story Daniel Orme—a sailor’s last days are spent in Liverpool, a once vital seaport which, like Vancouver, is being dramatically redefined by social and global economic change. Buckingham writes that without “using words the pictures and sounds juxtapose different archetypal sites from Liverpool’s city-scape, allowing places and their respective ‘pasts’ to resonate with and contradict each other.” The wave of change that impacts inhabitants of most port cities is akin to the drastic change that befalls Daniel Orme as he transitions from sea to land. This wave of change is physically manifested by Buckingham as the platform on which viewers sit when watching his film. An impressive curvilinear wave, the platform fills the Satellite’s largest exhibition space.

Alongside Matthew Buckingham’s installation is The Port, a companion presentation of objects and archival materials related to Vancouver’s own history as a port. Social spaces within our city catering to the moral wellbeing of maritime workers (along with those engaged in gratifying their more venial needs) are represented—from images of the Seamen’s Institute and the Sailors’ Home (which later became a brothel) to the model ship that hung for decades on the wall of the Marine Club. The conflicts between maritime workers and business interests are also explored, as are the ways in which many of the traditional functions of a port are increasingly at odds with the escalating economic value of waterfront property.

Matthew Buckingham, still from Obscure Moorings, continuous color video projection installation with sound, curvilinear floor, 25 minutes, dimensions variable, 2006