Carol Sawyer

Carol Sawyer is a Vancouver-based artist who has been exhibiting since 1986. Her work from the early 1990s explored how the shapes and forms of objects assume a gendered reading. During the past three years she has developed a series of installations that employ opera as a point of departure for an investigation of nineteenth-century representations of women, and how aspects of these representations persist in the present. Sawyer's own training in music and voice has contributed to her interest in this particular field.

The installation *Ophelia* is a theatrical environment dominated by images of female dementia as represented in opera. The images are composed of film transparencies depicting operatic singers in the role of mad characters  — either sleepwalkers, murderers or sufferers of delusions. In the centre of the gallery an oscilloscope and tape deck with headphones are placed on a table. The oscilloscope, a scientific measuring device, displays the fluctuations of an electric current caused by an aural collage of singing, speaking and other sounds. A continuous soundtrack, built around an excerpt of Ophelia's mad cadenza from Thomas' opera *Hamlet*, also plays from speakers placed in the gallery.

Sawyer's exploration of nineteenth century opera unveils a subtext that madness or hysteria are characteristics perceived as particularly female, an attitude that continues to exist today. The exaggerated form of opera presents this condition as a possible scenario for women to vent frustration, anger or grief within a social system of constriction and control. Sawyer's approach is suggestive rather than didactic. She uses the sensual and pleasurable appeal of the operatic medium as an entry point for a re-examination of female stereotypes that have negatively affected real women.

Carol Sawyer's work has been exhibited at the Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Or Gallery, Vancouver; Gallery 44, Toronto; G. Gibson Gallery, Seattle; and New Gallery, Calgary.



A detail of an artwork installed in a dimly-lit gallery space. A small slide installed in front of the light projects the enlarged image onto a gallery wall. The projected is a black and white image of a person in a dress. 

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A series of four images are installed on a wall of a dimly-lit gallery. It is an enlarged  black and white photographs of women in white robes. A stage light is placed in front of each image of a woman.

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CarolSawyerEdited1.jpeg

An installation image of a dimly-lit gallery. A pair of stage lights are installed closely to each other near the middle of a wall. Several black and white images of women in dress are projected on the walls.

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CarolSawyerEdited2.jpeg

An installation image of a corner of a gallery space. A curtain is installed on a back wall. A small chandelier is hanging from the ceiling. A small box-like shaped object is installed on a pedestal. 

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CarolSawyerEdited4.jpeg

An installation image of a dimly-lit gallery space. A pair of stage lights are installed closely to each other near the wall. An image of a person in a dress is projected next to that pair of the lights. 

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CarolSawyerEdited5.jpeg

Ophelia

Vivan Sundaram

> "Originally from New Delhi and trained as a painter, Vivan Sundaram studied at M.S. University in Baroda and at the Slade School in London… The "historic awareness" manifested in Sundaram's work has translated itself in a series of installations but also in drawings, paintings, sculptures, and fabricated objects that participate in the sedimentation of memory and its representation."

> "Placed diagonally from the entrance, the house offers itself as a structure made out of steel, glass and paper – the latter richly textured and crinkled…Graphic marks evoke the assault of modernity and progress through chromatic plays with rust (grid) and black, whereas the white of the paper; both matter and support, absorbs unfamiliar traces dripping down the house's glass roof. To the corroded treatment of the industrial ele­ments, Sundaram opposes the sensual and sensorial plasticity of the hand-made volume, the house becoming a box – a figure as light as air recalling children's folding games with paper."

> "With its prow end raised by logs of wood and its stern floor covered with rusted tiles that also constitute its bottom, the boat seems to emerge from the ground or in the wake of its own displacement. It is a wrecked ship, crashed into, one of its flanks left open by an invisible battle. At the rudder-end, as from an imaginary observation post, a telescope is directed towards two video monitors showing a woman – one focusing on the back of her head, the other on her face – adorned and made up, expressing various feelings in traditional, theatrical movements."

> "The artist is acting against historical amnesia, inscribing the place and context of his encounters and questionings, thus prompting himself and the viewer to take a stand and become aware."


Excerpted from “House / Boat: Sculptures in Steel, Glass and Video” (cat.), OBORO, Montreal, 1994, pp. 19-26.

This is a side view of a boat head sculpture. White panels that seem to be made of parchments or pulp sheets cover the body of the boat. The boat is placed on the wooden bars placed on the floor. 

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This is a side-view of a big cubical-shaped sculpture on the gallery floor. The surface is painted in white and some abstracted shapes of wheels and gears, a house, and birds are drawn. 

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This is a side view of a big cubical-shaped sculpture on the gallery floor. The surface is painted in white and a grid pattern drawn in dark brown unevenly covers the surface. 

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Two large sculptures are installed in the gallery. A white boat head with wood tile flooring is placed in the front. Two CRT TVs are placed on the boat. A cubical-shaped sculpture is in the back.

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The installation view of the gallery shows three artworks. A pair of white sheets are installed on the back wall, foregrounded by a white boat head. A white cubical-shaped sculpture is in the front.  

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A close-up view of a pair of two artworks installed on the wall. A white pulp sheet on the right is moulded out of the round metal pan embedded in the sand-coloured rough pulp sheet. 

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House/Boat

Claudia Hart

Claudia Hart is a Berlin-based artist whose recent projects are a pastiche of illustrations derived from children's books and writing from various influential texts which explore how individuals compromise themselves within systems of power. These projects have been realized both in the form of exhibitions and published books.

For the Contemporary Art Gallery, Hart is presenting a new series of thirty-two gouache paintings on paper entitled *Dr. Faustie's Guide to Real Estate Development* plus a new video projection entitled *Face Dancing*. In *Dr. Faustie*, as in her earlier work, she tackles the theme of evil and the ways in which people ingratiate and adapt themselves to power. It synthesizes various sources, among them *Faust, Parts I and Il* by Goethe; *Goethe and His Age* by George Lukacs; *All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity* by Marshall Berman; and *How to Win Friends and Influence People* by Dale Carnegie. With irony and humour, Hart interprets Carnegie's course as a dialogue between Mephisto and Faust that plays off the original Goethe text. This project is directly inspired by issues of real estate development, speculation and a pumped-up economy written about allegorically by Goethe in the early 19th century. Hart proposes that this example has its parallels in post-unification Berlin and post­-Expo Vancouver.

Having exhibited widely in Europe and the United States, this is Claudia Hart's first exhibition in Canada.

Essay: “Not an Angel: Claudia Hart,” Peter Culley

A detail of work by Claudia Hart. It is an illustration of a blue dog popping his head out of a yellow paper bag. A poem is written above the dog's head. 

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Eight works of drawing are mounted on the gallery walls. They vary in size but share the same light pink background. The style of drawing mimics comics: texts and pink bears appear in the squares.

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An installation view of a gallery space shows drawings by the same artist on the walls. Drawings vary in size but share the same light pink background. The style of drawing mimics comic books.

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Eleven drawings are installed in the gallery. In a comic book style formatting, certain characters such as a pink bear dressed in blue and blue docs are repeatedly depicted in different scenes.

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Two artworks are visible in this photograph. A comic-styled drawing of a pink bear is installed on the back wall. A video work of a woman in a dark blue background is on the front wall. 

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Dr. Faustie’s Guide to Real Estate Development and Face Dancing

Louise Noguchi

Ginette Legaré

Ginette Legaré and Louise Noguchi are two artists based in Toronto. The pairing of their work in this exhibition arises from parallels in their working process rather than a similarity of materials or iconography. Although the work differs visually, it converges in the play with a psychological space between the familiar and the unknown, and how we as viewers perceive what we are looking at.

Ginette Legaré collects commonplace objects consisting of various materials such as wood, glass, leather, and metal. These objects are discreetly altered and arranged on the wall. The familiarity of the materials, and the evidence of some former use value, is transformed by their placement within a new and ambiguous matrix of meaning. Louise Noguchi melds together two photographic portraits; one of a murderer or murderer's victim culled from the mass media and one of herself mimicking their pose. By cutting each photograph into thin strips that are then woven together, the identity of the individual, and by extension any determination of innocence or guilt, is thrown into question.

Michele Theriault, in her catalogue text for this exhibition, identifies their strategy as one of claiming a space for the "in between," that is, a space that "opens up an imaginative zone for relationships that can't be easily circumscribed." These elusive relationships are central to the work of Legaré and Noguchi and create an often perplexing reading of things we might take for granted.

Ginette Legaré's work has been exhibited in Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, and Amsterdam; Louise Noguchi's work has been exhibited in Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto, Saskatoon, and Calgary. 

*Modus Operandi*, organized in collaboration with Cold City Gallery in Toronto, will travel to the Canadian Embassy Gallery in Tokyo in November 1996. The Contemporary Art Gallery is the only Canadian venue.


Three pieces of sculptures are mounted on the wall. Wooden pieces including a cutting board, monocular lenses, and the identical image of a hand are repeated throughout the composition.

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An installation view of the gallery. Various artworks including black and white large-scale photographs of people’s faces and found objects are mounted on the walls.

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An installation view of the gallery shows four black and white portrait photographs on the right-side wall. On another wall, a group of black sculpture works are mounted. 

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An installation view of the gallery shows artworks mounted on the walls. A group of black sculptures are on the right-side wall, and six black and white portrait photographs are on the left-side wall. 

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Two artworks are mounted on the gallery walls. Both are wooden sculptures, and one on the left has a sentence, “1 4LW4YS W4NT3D TO SP34K 4BOUT TH3 4RCHIT3CTUR3 OF N==D” typed on the space above it.

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Ginette Legaré, Louise Noguchi

Modus Operandi

Marco Arce

Aurora Borealis

Eduardo Cervantes

Saúl Villa

Daniela Rossel

Yisha Jusidman

Rodrigo Aldana

Silvia Gruner

"Art," writes Octavio Paz, "cannot be defined according to nationality, which is an imprecise, late, and rather modern concept." Paz's observation hints at the problems inherent in a category like "Mexican art," an umbrella term that refers to Mayan temples and contemporary photography, to Colonial baroque as well as to postmodern kitsch. In recent years, a number of young artists from Mexico City have been producing work that playfully questions the assumptions inherent in categories like "Mexico," "Mexican culture" and "Mexican identity."

Their project could be seen as a reaction to the ideology of artists like Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and Manuel Alvarez Bravo, who in the 1930s and 1940s sought to depict the essence of Mexican culture in their murals and photographs. Seeing art as the perfect vehicle for the expression of nationalistic ideals, these older artists had created murals, paintings and photographs that awakened patriotic feelings in every citizen.

Now, the artists in *Tendencies* have engaged in a critical investigation of how the notions of "Mexico" and "national identity" have been constructed and disseminated through visual art and other cultural productions in the past decades. They have discovered that the symbols and images used to inspire nationalistic feelings always conceal an ideological baggage that includes assumptions about history, politics, gender and even sexuality.

Rather than entering the debate about what constitutes the essence of Mexico or Mexicanness, the artworks grouped in *Tendencies* poke fun at any attempt to do so. With a sense of irony, these pieces point at the limitations of any positive construction of national identity in a culture so marked by heterogeneity. Some of these artworks appropriate the most "Mexican" of symbols — pre-Columbian objects or traditional food — and use them in ways that exceed their traditional meaning. Other pieces challenge the stereotypical images found in works by artists like Manuel Alvarez Bravo — rural landscapes, impoverished villagers, exotic rituals — by depicting the habitat and lifestyle of the other Mexico — the mansions of the fabulously wealthy, the eccentric habits of middle-class urban dwellers.

As opposed to the didacticism found in art from the 1930s and 1940s — murals that present the one and only way of looking at history, manichean portraits of the "good" and "bad" citizens — the artists in Tendencies have produced open works that suggest many possible readings. The ambiguities that structure these pieces reflect life in Mexico City — a bustling capital where incongruous historical periods and realities coexist in everyday life.

-Ruben Gallo

Guest curated by Ruben Gallo and Terence Gower



A front view of an installation artwork. Ten brown colored clothes are hung on the white gallery wall. There are Spanish texts written both above and below the clothes.  

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Six artworks are installed in the gallery. Four drawings on the wall resemble collages. The piece on the back is a video work played by the black CRT TV on the floor. 

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Two artworks are installed in the gallery. The one is a video work played on the CRT TV on the pedestal. The other work is a set of seven vertically rectangle white panels leaning against the wall.

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Various artworks are installed in the gallery. A pop-up changing room is placed in the middle of the floor, and a series of four photographs of a headless mannequin is mounted on a wall.

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A series of three identical images on different colored panels are installed horizontally on the gallery wall. Each panel has a tiny image of a person sitting on an office chair reading a newspaper. 

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Multiple small-sized wooden framed paintings are mounted on the gallery wall. The one in the front depicts calligraphic lines that form a shape that resembles the capital letter H in a circle.

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A gallery installation view of various paintings and photographs. On the front wall, there are two photographs of a human’s arm handing a black donut-shaped stone on a red plastic bag.

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A series of three art pieces are mounted on a gallery wall. They are identically framed in silver, and in the middle each has black and white portrait photograph of a person. 

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Saúl Villa, Yisha Jusidman, Eduardo Cervantes, Silvia Gruner, Aurora Borealis, Rodrigo Aldana, Marco Arce, Daniela Rossel

Tendencies: New Art from Mexico City

Henry Tsang

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new work by Vancouver based artist Henry Tsang. Since 1987, Tsang has worked both as an artist and a curator whose subjects have included issues of the social urban landscape, identity, sexuality, and race. Having exhibited nationally and internationally, this will be his first solo gallery exhibition in Vancouver since 1992.

*The Crowning* is an installation that divides the gallery into two distinct and theatrical spaces. Upon entering the gallery, one is confronted by elements common to children's playgrounds: swings, a park bench and rubberized playground flooring. Directly behind the swings a wall of glass separates the viewer from the other space which presents a large photographic image of the emergence of a baby's head during the birthing process. This space reverberates psychologically between the wondrous event of birth and the corresponding familial expectations and responsibilities. While the birthing room projects the dramatic emergence of new life, the playground represents a sense of abandonment associated with play. The park bench that overlooks the installation functions as a means of surveillance. The swings, however, are placed precariously close to the glass and the piece provokes questions and tensions between the idea of life-giving and caregiving and the vulnerable relationship between the two.

The Contemporary Art Gallery thanks Play-tech Distributors Inc. for their advice and assistance.


Essay: "To Be Just," Scott Toguri McFarlane

An incomplete shape of a children’s hand shovel is carved on the metal surface. The handle is fully visible, but the blade is half recognizable as if it is stuck in the sand.

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A blue wooden bench is installed in the gallery space. The background wall is covered by the navy blue curtain, and the gallery floor is covered by the oranger rubber tiles. 

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Three swings are installed right next to the glass wall in the gallery. On the white wall over the swings, a large photograph of the emerging baby's head during the birthing process is installed. 

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A shape of a small carving knife is carved on the metal surface above the floor covered by the rubber tiles. The depicted knife looks skinny and half of its entire body is made up of the handle. 

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A two-dimensional image of a manual air pump is carved on a metal surface. The image of the air pump is horizontal, with the bottom of the air pump on the left, and the top of it on the right. 

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An installation view of three swings in the art gallery space. The black rubbered seats with silver chains are hung from the ceiling. The swings are placed right next to the large glass window.

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The Crowning

The Contemporary Art Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating its twenty five years as one of Vancouver's most prominent visual arts organizations. Initially formed as a government sponsored make-work project for artists in 1971, the Contemporary Art Gallery has over the years also been known as the Odyssey Gallery, the Greater Vancouver Artist's Gallery and the Artist's Gallery before assuming its present name in 1984. The Contemporary Art Gallery now presents a varied and provocative program featuring artists of regional, national and international origin and manages the City of Vancouver's art collection of 3,000 works that are circulated in civic buildings.

*Telling Moments* will be drawn from the Gallery's archives and will incorporate photographs, drawings, artwork, project proposals, letters, invitations, and various other eclectic material. It will illustrate the unusual story of this Gallery and the unique place it holds in the history of Vancouver. We will also feature a bulletin board of faxes and e-mail transmissions presenting recollections and opinions from the many artists and individuals who have been directly involved with the Contemporary Art Gallery over the years and from those who have visited at various points in its history.



A scanned exhibition invitation. It has a white background with yellow text that contains information about the exhibition and gallery. The exhibition title is written in bold black text.