Vancouver Art & Economies

Since the mid-1980’s, the once marginal city of Vancouver has developed within a globalized economy and become an internationally recognized centre for contemporary visual art. Vancouver’s status is due not only to a thriving worldwide cultural community that has turned to examine the so-called periphery, but to the city’s growth, its artists, expanding institutions, and a strong history of introspection and critical assessment. As a result, Vancouver art is visible and often understood as distinct and definable.This anthology intends to complicate the notion of definability. It offers nine essays to address the organized systems that have affected contemporary art in Vancouver over the last two decades.

The essays in Vancouver Art & Economies collectively remark, both compatibly and contradictorily, on the economies at work in Vancouver art – its historical, critical, and political engagement; its sites of cultural production; and its theoretical and practical intersection with technology or policy. Considering a selection of conditions, focuses, and resources within the community, Vancouver Art & Economies marks shifting ideologies and perspectives on art, politics, society, and capital in Vancouver.


Table of Contents

1. Notes on a Cover Image, Geoffrey Farmer

2. Preface

3. Introduction: Specious Speculation, Melanie O’Brian

4. Late Empire, Clint Burnham

5. Cinematic Pictures: The Legacy of the Vancouver Counter-Tradition, Sharla Sava

6. Adventures in Reading Landscape, Marina Roy

7. Specific Objects and Social Subjects: Industrial Facture and the Production of Polemics in Vancouver, Tim Lee

8. In Another Orbit Altogether: Jeff Wall in 1996 and 1997, Shepherd Steiner

9. Vancouver Singular Plural: Art in an Age of Post-Medium Practice, Randy Lee Cutler

10. Dealing (with) Cultural Diversity: Vancouver, Art, Race, and Economies, Sadira Rodrigues

11. Do Artists Need Artist-Run Centres?, Reid Shier

12. Whose Business Is It? Vancouver’s Commercial Galleries and the Production of Art
Appendix: Vancouver Commercial Gallery Chronology, Michael Turner

14. Contributors

15. Index