Roy Arden

The colloquialism of Roy Arden’s exhibition title *UNDERTHESUN* suggests open-ended generosity. It may imply the act of finding one’s place, it can also, quite simply and implausibly conjure “everything.” Arden’s dense installation of nearly one hundred works, comprising broken antique toys, rusted objects, spinning sculptures, loud horns, colourful palettes, and graphic imagery, gives the exhibition a carnivalesque atmosphere, and the dynamism collectively draws a history that is at once playful and welcoming yet foiled by a cool elusiveness and criticality.

From intimate handmade collage to large-scale kinetic sculptures, Arden chronicles the progression and effects of modernity. Beginning with images and materials from his extensive digital and print library, Arden extracts a seemingly unsystematic selection: a short newspaper article of a domestic break-in is rescaled into a pencil drawing, the covers of out-of-date and small print-run books are painted, found and aged materials become assemblages on wheels. Yet the ostensibly diverse works are linked by lines and repetitions that provide crucial clues to our understanding of social and economic history, beginning with the industrial revolution. Depictions of technological advancements in textile and transport industries may simultaneously signify progress as well as the deteriorating conditions of workers; a reiteration of a mid-twentieth century illustration comically signals the machines domination over man as well as female liberation. *UNDERTHESUN* is a multifaceted compilation of works that combine to speak of a focused search to discover manifold causes of our present condition through relentless digging, quotation and reinterpretation.

Arden is well-known for his austere photographs depicting transformative effects on Vancouver's cityscape and its surroundings. As such this comprehensive exhibition at the CAG may seem a departure, but he has always performed a parallel combing of the larger image world. In the 1980s Arden produced a body of work that employed historical photographs to explore the social history of BC. Recently he has returned to working with found images in video, online works, drawings, sculpture, paintings, paper and digital collage, which continues his broader artistic interests.

This exhibition was sponsored by The Hamber Foundation.

### Biography

Roy Arden studied at the Vancouver School of Art and received an MFA from the University of British Columbia in 1990. Although best known for his photographic work, Arden’s artistic practice is multi-disciplinary, including collage, painting, sculpture, and video. Over the past three decades, Arden has exhibited extensively across Canada, as well as internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include *I Can Only Give You Everything*, Richard Telles, Los Angeles (2010); *People of British Columbia*, Monte Clark, Vancouver (2009);  *Roy Arden (Selected Works 1981-2007)*, Vancouver Art Gallery (2007); *Always the Sun*, Galerie Tanit, Munich (2006); and *Roy Arden (Selected Works 1985-2000)*, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2006). Arden lives and works in Vancouver. Arden is represented by Monte Clark Gallery, Vancouver, Clark & Faria, Toronto and Richard Telles, Los Angeles.



A collage of cut and pasted photographs on a red background; a sunset, black and white images of a couple, people lying on a beach, and a person in a suit all overtop of an image of a gallery space.

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Various artworks are installed in the corner of a gallery. Multiple two-dimensional works of different sizes cover the walls behind a large-scale sculpture installation resembling a cart.

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Multiple two-dimensional works of different sizes are mounted on gallery walls behind a large-scale sculpture resembling a wind wheel. The wheel is attached to a bicycle and moves as a person pedals.

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Artworks installed in a gallery. A sculpture of rusted wheels hangs from the ceiling. Behind it are large sculptures resembling a cart and a wind wheel along with many two-dimensional works on the walls.

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Multiple artworks by Roy Arden are installed in a gallery. Three, large multimedia sculptures occupy the gallery floor while various two-dimensional works cover the walls surrounding the sculptures.

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Detail image of an installation by Roy Arden. In this image, the top part of a white bike is visible below two graphic design works mounted on the wall; one is blue and the other is red.

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Various artworks are installed in the corner of a gallery. Framed drawings and photo-collage pieces are mounted on the walls behind a small-scale multimedia sculpture on a pedestal.

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UNDERTHESUN

This solo exhibition of Berlin and Vancouver based artist Stephen Waddell is curated by Roy Arden and will present works from 1997 to 2006 in paint, film and photography. Waddell began his career as a painter but eventually came to concentrate on photography. Studying at Simon Fraser University and the University of British Columbia, he moved to Berlin in 1998 but now maintains a studio in Vancouver and spends time living and working in both cities. Waddell's early paintings focused on anonymous urban spaces. These were usually unpopulated, lonely scenes that seemed like memories of experiences of derealisation. He used the camera to make studies for his paintings and these snapshots and polaroids lead him to take up photography full-time. Waddell also made super 8 film studies of urban pedestrians that paved the way for his tableau-scaled photos of solitary figures for which he has become known. These photos are largely unposed studies of strangers caught at work, in transit or at leisure that reinvent the Impressionist project of "the painting of modern life." Like other painters turned photographers, Waddell's indifference toward criteria established within a strictly photographic tradition permitted him to breathe new life and purpose into the medium. His works are better understood as pictures than photographs in that they draw as much from the history of painting as the history of photography.

Guest curated by Roy Arden


Essay: "Stephen Waddell’s Depictive Art," Roy Arden

Two large scale framed photographs hang on adjacent corner walls in the gallery. One depicts tree roots covered in litter and the other a figure sitting on a tree stump near a body of water.

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Various two-dimensional artworks are installed on the gallery walls. Some of them are small-sized photographs and others are paintings. They all depict urban landscapes. 

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Six photographs are installed on the gallery walls. Two of them are framed photographs depicting a shutter gate. A large photograph on the left depicts a mannequin beside a fire truck. 

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Two video works are projected on the gallery walls. Both videos record a person walking in a city. Two black benches are installed near where those videos are projected. 

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Various large-sized coloured photographs are installed in a gallery space. The photograph on the left depicts a young person sitting on a tree stump beside a body of water. 

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Four large-sized photographs are installed on the gallery walls. One photograph depicts a person standing in a body of water. The other photograph captures two people walking in a park. 

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Stephen Waddell

*Supernatural* proposes a look beyond obvious differences to examine commonalities of intention, technique and effect in the distinct work of two artists. Vancouver artist Neil Campbell’s abstract, quasi-geometric paintings are scaled to the human body, and despite their apparent flatness, are performative in nature. They exact a calculated effect on the viewer's bodies and senses. Far from “abstract,” the experience is both physical and spiritual.

Beau Dick is a Kwakwaka’wakw chief, one of the most accomplished and talented traditional carvers and artists on the West Coast. Actively engaged in all aspects of Kwakwaka’wakw culture, he is highly regarded as a teacher and mentor. Dick has concentrated on studying and revivifying the traditions of carving, dance and storytelling, and this exhibition presents several of Dick’s masks in the admittedly compromised and alienated context of the Contemporary Art Gallery, far from their purpose integrated into rituals of dance and Potlatches. Dick mitigates these circumstances by preparing a dance for the exhibition opening.

The work of both Campbell and Dick share a basis in bold graphic design and theatrical effect. *Supernatural* sheds light on these parallels while questioning the aesthetic apartheid which separates the conditions under which similar artworks have been (and continue to be) displayed, with the aim of producing a serious dialogue on the relationship between artistic cultures and traditions.

Guest curated by Roy Arden


Essay: "Supernatural," Roy Arden

Installation image of Beau Dick’s carved wood mask in front of a black background. The mask has a pair of very long black eyebrows. The mask has a pair of wide-open eyes, a sharp nose, and a mouth opened in a shape of making a “u” sound.

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Installation image of four carved wood masks made by Beau Dick hanging in a gallery space. Each mask shows different faces with different facial expressions. The space is dimly lit and the walls are painted dark blue.

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Installation image of paintings by Neil Campbell. The work is a pair of black circles. They are installed on the walls near the corner. The paintings are as tall as the gallery wall, and twice as tall as a person standing in front of them. 

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Installation image of a painting by Neil Campbell. The work consists of many yellow circles outlined by thick bold black lines. The painting is as tall as a person standing near it.

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Neil Campbell and Beau Dick

Supernatural

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new colour photographs by Vancouver based artist Roy Arden. Arden has been exhibiting for a decade and in the mid-1980s gained an international reputation for his photographic works incorporating retrieved or "appropriated'' archival photographs that encouraged the viewer to reconsider how history is constructed through photography. Arden's work is in the collections of the Vancouver Art Gallery; Winnipeg Art Gallery; Art Gallery of Ontario; Fond Nationale d' Art Contemporain, Paris; Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart; and the Foundation de la Photographie, Zurich.

The exhibition at the Contemporary Art Gallery is Arden's first solo exhibition in Vancouver since 1990. It also marks his return to taking his own photographs. In a departure from traditions of picturesque landscape photography, Arden depicts seemingly anonymous aspects of landscape undergoing transformation such as residential and commercial development sites and waste dumps, and constructs a matrix of images that provoke a reading directed to the social and economic change that continues to affect British Columbia.

Essay: "An Artist and his Models," Jeff Wall

5 vertical, framed photographic works on a white wall. The three frames in the centre contain 2 photos each, all of construction sites. The two on the ends each have one small photo of a landscape. 

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A closeup of 2 framed photographic works on a white wall. On the left, a horizontal photo shows stacks of plywood and cell towers. The vertical one on the right, shows what looks like a museum lobby.

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A gallery space with two walls framing a hallway in the background. The walls on the left and the right have a large framed photo work on them. In the centre, the hallway has three framed photo works.

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A gallery space with 6 framed photographic works mounted on the white walls. The works are both vertical and horizontal and depict city scenes, such as construction sites, houses, and underpasses.

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The walls of a gallery space and a hallway. On all walls, there are framed photo works. The frames in the hallway contain 2 photos, and the frames in the interior walls have 1 larger photo in them. 

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A closeup of two framed photo works on a white wall. On the left, there is a  birds-eye view of a city with waterways. On the left, there is a photo of a mining truck and an excavator, digging dirt.

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UNDERTHESUN is an artist publication by Roy Arden, produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2011 as part of his solo exhibition, UNDERTHESUN at the Contemporary Art Gallery, January 28 – March 27, 2011.

The publication documents the majority of the nearly one hundred works on view. It serves as a representation and record of the exhibition, as well as providing the artist with an opportunity to formally reconsider the excess of images, his reasons for selecting them and their relational context.

Mimicking commercial advertising layouts, Arden’s design is a cacophony of colour and image. The publication has a refined newspaper-like quality. Printed on large broadsheets folded down to loose sheets, each page opens into individual collage posters.


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*LANDSCAPE* is the first in a series of three publications that used the petit genres of landscape, still life and portraiture to reflect programming at the Contemporary Art Gallery which framed tendencies in contemporary art.

Published by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2010, contributing writers include Michael Turner and Jenifer Papararo, as well as interviews between Tim Gardner and Stephen Waddell; and BGL and Adrian Blackwell. This publication includes the exhibitions; BGL, Tim Gardner and *Sentimental Journey*.

### Other publications from this series:

*STILL LIFE*

*PORTRAIT*

Purchase all three publications for $25 below.

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petit genres

LANDSCAPE

This publication, produced by the Contemporary Art Gallery in 2008, accompanied the exhibition by Stephen Waddell at the Contemporary Art Gallery, April 4 – June 1, 2008. The exhibition was a survey of the artist’s paintings, photographic studies and films ranging from 1995 to 2008 and was curated by renowned artist Roy Arden. The publication includes a foreword by Christina Ritchie and critical texts written by Katrin Blum and Roy Arden with colour reproductions of 25 artworks.

Roy Arden

Exhibitions

Publications & Editions