Libby Leshgold Gallery

Stan Douglas will be in attendance
Refreshments served


READ Books at Charles H. Scott Gallery and Arsenal Pulp Press invite you to the official launch of the new art book Stan Douglas: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971.


Stan Douglas: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971, an art book on the politics of urban conflict, is based on the work of Stan Douglas, one of Canada's most revered contemporary artists. His film and video installations, photographs, and other works use the conventions of cinema, music, and literature to construct historical and cultural narratives, many of which are grounded in the story of Vancouver, his hometown.


The book's eponymous image is a 30 x 50-foot translucent photo mural on tempered glass installed in the atrium of the new Woodward's complex in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. The image depicts the aftermath of an actual violent confrontation between police and the city's counterculture in what came to be known as the Gastown Riot, during which uniformed and undercover police officers attacked a peaceful "smoke-in" protest organized to oppose police narcotics agents' attempts to infiltrate the city's marijuana-smoking community. This book takes the riot, and Douglas's work, as points of departure to discuss the legacy and implications of this tumultuous time, not only for Vancouver but for all urban centres where dissent and conflict based on class, lifestyle, or other issues arise, and where the role of authorities is contested in the form of public demonstration.


The book contains five essays, whose writers bring together expertise on cinema, urban geography, modern art, conceptual art, mass media, and the history of the 1960s and '70s to bear on Douglas's work, as well as other images from Douglas's "Crowds & Riots" series and archival photographs from 1971.


Essays & Interviews include

  • "An Interview with Stan Douglas" by Alexander Alberro
  • "The Moving Still: Stand Douglas's Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971" by Nora Alter
  • "Performing Photography After Film" by Serge Guilbaut
  • "Lightning From The Past: Police, Pot, Public, and Stan Douglass Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971" by Sven Lutticken
  • "The Derelict, The Deserving Poor, and the Lumpen: The History of the Politics of Representation in the Downtown Eastside" by Jesse Proudfoot

About Stan Douglas
Stan Douglas is an internationally renowned visual artist who has exhibited widely, including at Documenta, the Venice Biennale, the Whitney Biennial, and the Carnegie International. In 2007, he won the inaugural $25,000 Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award for excellence in Canadian visual arts. He has been the subject of numerous books and catalogues, including Stan Douglas, Past Imperfect Works 1986-2007 (Hatje Cantz) and Stan Douglas: Every Building on 100 West Hastings Street. Stan Douglas is represented by David Zwirner, New York and Victoria Miro Gallery, London. He lives in Vancouver.


Read more information about Stan Douglas: Abbott & Cordova, 7 August 1971 on the Arsenal Pulp website.

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