Image & Light • History & Influence: Film and Photographic Works, Vancouver

Organized by Charles H. Scott Gallery, this exhibition presents an overview of film and photographic practice in Vancouver from the mid-sixties to the present. Vancouver has been and continues to be an important centre for film and photographic production both nationally and internationally. The intent of this survey is to focus on the development of these practices and acknowledge the various influences and individuals responsible for the high level of innovation and success of these artists and filmmakers.

The photographic exhibition will take place in Charles H. Scott Gallery and the Concourse Gallery at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. While the film component will be presented as a series of screenings at the Pacific Cinémathèque and an installation in the Media Gallery at ECIAD.

The development of photographic practices will move from early influences and activities to more contemporary work, with groupings related to style and approach to material. The early influence of the work of Roy Kiyooka, Ian Baxter and Nina Raginsky will be featured as well as Jim Breukelman, who was instrumental in the establishment of the photographic department at the Emily Carr Institute. The exhibition will feature the work of over fifty artists and represents different aspects of photographic work. Vancouver is best known for the work of artists like Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace and Roy Arden who developed and promoted their photo-conceptual work internationally. Yet the work of more “straight”, photographers such as Nina Raginsky, Robert Keziere, Chick Rice and Diane Evans continued to develop and also defined photographic work from this region.

This will be the first time that a survey of this kind has been presented focusing on what is undoubtedly the most important and influential art practices in the past thirty-five years. It has shaped the discourse on our ideas of not only photography, but painting and sculpture as well. It is appropriate at the beginning of a new century and the 75th Anniversary of the Emily Carr Institute that an acknowledgement of the strength and innovation of photography and its’ contribution to the visual culture of Vancouver be presented.

The development of filmmaking also shares a similar place in this region. The experimental work of David Rimmer and Al Razutus are well known, as are the documentaries of Peg Campbell, Colin Brown and Jan-Marie Martell, also animators like Martin Rose and Marilyn Cherenko. Through screenings at the Pacific Cinémathèque the richness and diversity of filmmaking from the sixties to the present will be revealed.