An unusual exhibition, featuring the work of eight British Columbia artists , making great use of photography, was launched in Brisbane circa 1976 . It was organised by the Pender Street Gallery , Vancouver , Canada , as part of an exchange with the Institute of Art, Brisbane .
The introduction in the illustrated catalogue makes the point that it was a small exhibition , not a massive one , so cohesive , rather than comprehensive. It said there had been a current rehabilitation of "regionalism" in much art writing and practice in Canada . In the case of west coast Canadian art , all too often it was categorised as holding up a sense of romantic frivolity as its true spirit .
Some of that frivolity and ingenuity sure came through in the interesting exhibition. One of the eight artists , Fred Douglas , presented mock up pages for a proposed book about a jazz club in Vancouver in the early 1960s , The Cellar, linking the text with unrelated photographs , below, including mom and dad drinking beer . He had studied at the Vancouver School of Arts , exhibited widely, worked as an exhibition designer and photographer for museums , documented native Indian bands .
A close up pic of a horse turd in a dry part of British Columbia , by ( John ) Tod Greenaway , whose experience included layout and lettering for newspaper advertising in Calgary and Winnipeg , writing continuity for radio and television, script writing for documentary films in London and Canada, operating a fishing camp, teaching English in Spain and photographing artwork , must have caused much comment .
He had also written the libretto for a folk opera , two half hour radio plays , a radio drama and the commentary for No Place To Hide , a 10 minute film for the Committee for Nuclear Disarmament , produced by Derrick Knight , London .
The catalogue illustrations included Fingerprint Expert at Work by Christos Dikeakos , below, who had taught Modern and Contemporary Art at the University of British Columbia , exhibited widely in Canada , New York ,Tokyo , Uruguay, Poland and Czechoslovakia .
It was explained the things in the world that Dikeakos addressed were culturally and politically specific to Canada, but paradigmatic of a universal sensibility ... Similar in their intent to factographs of Heartfield in the l930s , they forsake the stark agitprop simplicity of the political "affiche " for the establishment of a more contemplative situation.They require reading , a reading in which the assimilated materials establish a continual jarring between image and text, repetition and interruption, horror and humour .
A photograph of a couple caught cuddling in a parked car was captioned: Inflagrante Dilecto (detail ) by Ian Wallace.
Born Shoreham, England , Wallace had been a resident of Canada since 1944 , received a M.A. in Art History at the Vancouver School of Art , and had exhibited paintings, sculpture and photography.
UPCOMING : The l957 Canadian art exhibition which toured Australia.
