Marian Penner Bancroft

The Contemporary Art Gallery presents a major new commission for Yaletown-Roundhouse Station by influential Vancouver-based photographer Marian Penner Bancroft.

Since the late sixties, Penner Bancroft has defined herself as a photographer, dedicating her practice to the medium, meditating on its conventions while also considering the dematerialization of the art object; combining conceptual art strategies as well as pushing the presentation and production of the photographic image into more immersive forms. She is known for drawing attention to the lines between where an image begins and what constitutes an image — at times using the physical framing device as a tangible three-dimensional photographic field.

The subject of Penner Bancroft’s work often resides in the personal, following her family, tracking their daily movements both real and, in the case of her ancestors, imagined. She embeds these inquiries into images of the landscape, using visual traces of a colonial transit to and across Canada as part of an individual yet generalized narrative of immigration and displacement. In recent years she has widened the scope of her research to include the histories of the fur trade, farming, music and religion in relation to the landscape and mapping.

For this new commission, details from a sequence of photographs of winter trees are grouped together in a mirrored formation around two of the station’s glass walls. As high-contrast translucent prints adhered to the windows, they create a lattice effect, casting patterns and shadows in the station when the sun shines through. Penner Bancroft deliberately selected these images from others taken along the Cambie Heritage Boulevard as the Canada Line forms a subterranean echo of the road. This green space, only fifty years old in 1993 when deemed a heritage site by the City of Vancouver, is a highly cultivated strip of land with nearly 450 trees, its significance as an example of Canadian urban design and planning — greatly influenced by the late nineteenth-century English garden city movement — providing a metaphor for notions of origin, belonging, history, and mapping.

Landscape figures prominently in Canadian history. Its scale, diversity, harsh climate, and terrain are inescapable and inextricably linked to the formation of the nation — its cities, economics, culture, and colonial beginnings. In Vancouver this interlocking of landscape and identity is heightened by its geographic location as well as its relative youth.

The Cambie Heritage Boulevard is made of a mix of grass, trees and ornamental plants, but featured prominently between 25th and 29th Avenues are the earliest plantings of two distinct types of trees: Golden Elms and Sequoias. The former originates in Germany, but is a staple of the English picturesque garden while the latter is a redwood indigenous to North America’s west coast. They are an unlikely pairing, but can be considered emblematic of attempts to cultivate space using landscaping strategies developed elsewhere. The contrast between these two trees heightens this sense of another place and time, and through Penner Bancroft’s images, the mural evokes both subtle and beautiful associations and dislocations, a sense of familiarity not simply as representations of trees but as something that is connected to an idea of home. At Yaletown-Roundhouse Station the commuter will be prompted to consider something we know as belonging to here, while, like many of us, also belongs elsewhere.

Presented in partnership with the Canada Line Public Art Program — InTransit BC.

### Biography

Marian Penner Bancroft lives and works in Vancouver. She has had various solo exhibitions including the Vancouver Art Gallery (2012); Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge (2001); the University College of the Fraser Valley, Abbotsford (1999); and National Film Board Gallery, Ottawa (1979). Bancroft has also participated in group exhibitions including at Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012); Vancouver Art Gallery (2008); Centre D’art Contemporain, Caen (2005); Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris (2002); Art Gallery of Windsor (1997); Portland Institute of Contemporary Art (1997); Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography, Ottawa (1994); University of California, Santa Barbara (1992); the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1982) and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (1975), among many others. In addition, she has created several public art works including *Root System, Pipeline Road, Stanley Park* (2007) commissioned by InTransit BC and the Canada Line, and a permanent site-specific piece— *Lost Streams, Kitsilano* (1995-96) — for the City of Vancouver Park Board.


ProgramGuideSpring2014.pdf

A mirrored black and white image of leafless entangled tree branches. 

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Exterior windows of Yaletown-Roundhouse Station installed with photographic prints in vinyl of tree silhouettes. Light from the station shines through the silhouettes, creating a lattice effect.

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A side view of Yaletown-Roundhouse Station. Its exterior windows are installed with photographic prints in vinyl of tree silhouettes. Two adjacent windows are installed with mirrored versions of the same tree forms. 

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An interior photograph of Yaletown-Roundhouse Station. The windows of the station are installed with photographic prints in vinyl of tree silhouettes. Outdoor light shines through into the station. 

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An interior photograph of Yaletown-Roundhouse Station. The windows of the station are installed with photographic prints in vinyl of tree silhouettes. Outdoor light shines through into the station.

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Boulevard

In celebration of its 30th Anniversary, the Contemporary Art Gallery presents an exhibition honoring its early years. On February 23, 1973, the Artists’ Gallery opened its doors at 555 Hamilton Street. Later to be renamed the Contemporary Art Gallery, the Artists’ Gallery was initiat­ed by an arts advisory committee under the umbrella of the City of Vancouver. Central to its early mandate and philosophy was the promotion and creation of local visu­al arts. 

During this time the City of Vancouver began a program, with assistance from the Federal Local Initiatives Program (LIP) to collect works by local artists. In support of this ambitious project, the Artists’ Gallery was con­ceived as both a depository and exhibition space. The Contemporary Art Gallery continues to act as custodian for over 3000 collected works, many dating from the early to mid 1970s when the majority of works were created. The history of this important collection of art, of the Artists’ Gallery and of the early years of the community that shaped what would become the Contemporary Art Gallery will be showcased this summer in an exhibition featuring selected works from the collection. 


Essay: “L.I.P. Service,” Reid Sheir

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Four coloured paintings are mounted on the gallery wall. These images depict people working in various natural environments including lakes and woods. Their gestures mimic some biblical stories. 

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A coil-shaped wood sculpture is placed on a pedestal. Two coloured prints and a pair of black and white drawings are mounted on the wall behind this wood sculpture.  

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A tall sculpture is placed in the middle of the gallery floor. It has two cube shapes; one is on the floor and another in the air supported by a thin leg. These two cubes are connected with a chain.

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A number of black and whire photographs are mounted on the wall. They are arranged in two rows running horizontally to the floor. A wood sculpture on a pedestal stands in front of this wall.

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Five artworks are installed on a gallery wall. A text-based work is placed in between a coloured photograph and a drawing. Two large black and white drawings are mounted in the back. 

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A large sculpture is placed on a pedestal. It looks like a flat square-shaped slab of white marble. This slab has a carved gun bullet shape placed in its middle. 

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Eight black and white photographs are mounted on the wall. They are placed in a row horizontal to the floor. Many of those photographs depict pedestrians on the streets. 

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On a large plinth placed in the middle of the gallery, six square-shaped sculptures sit. Four framed two-dimensional works are mounted on the walls around this plinth. 

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In a gallery space, a set of blue and white landscape drawings and another set of small coloured drawings are mounted on the wall. Two wood sculptures are placed on pedestals.

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Different two-dimensional images cover CAG’s window spaces. One window is covered by a detailed image of a black and white photograph of children standing outside. 

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A set of eight coloured drawings are mounted on the wall. Those images are dominated by blue, grey, and white. These depict different scenes of a city foregrounding blue mountains and the sky.

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Two of CAG’s window spaces are visible in this photograph. Different works cover those windows. One is covered by an enlarged image of a photograph of people at English Bay in Vancouver. 

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A set of three drawings are mounted on the wall. They all depict geometric shapes that could be found in geometry exams. None of the drawn shapes are shaded. 

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Two of CAG’s window spaces are visible in this photograph. Enlarged images from different black and white photographs cover those windows. Both images depict people but in different social settings.

Marian Penner Bancroft

Exhibitions