Sorting Through the Seventies

“Viewers can catch a crash course in Vancouver art of the 70s just from the pieces on the CAG walls. Works such as Wing Chow's four images of rough concrete or earthen surface illustrate the 70s’ obsession with surface and texture: after all, this was the decade that popularized corduroy, velour, interior stucco, and shag carpets. Another obsession emerges in an entitled geometric drawing by Gary Lee-Nova: maniacally intricate and detailed pencil work. Scrapped with a painstaking zeal rarely seen today. The influence of album art and acid can be seen in two works by Jed Irwin, whose biomorphic shapes appear to borrow from Martin Sharp’s cover for Cream’s Wheels of Fire, and pop still makes its mark in Eastcoffe’s bright silkscreens of industrial valves and faucets. … This exhibit smacks so viscerally of a place and time that now seems ancient history that it is both provocative and pleasurable.”

Excerpted from Alexander Varty, “Civic Stores Contain Tack and Treasure,” The Georgia Straight (Vancouver, BC), July 30 – August 6, 1993.