My creative project was in response to several things concerning my time at the Polygon, all in the form of a photo book/album/guide.

First, it was informed by the history of North Vancouver. As the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, N. Vancouver (what I have also titled my album), is concerned with the history of the North Shore, the text both engages with the history of the area by referencing significant events and spots either seen directly or alluded to in the photographs. It was also informed by the exhibition’s interest in history as made up of layers; the landscape of North Vancouver has changed radically over a few centuries, being torn down and rebuilt over repeatedly. Thus my use of paint to cover or highlight certain part of my picture is a product of this thinking.

Secondly, it was informed by my own project with the Polygon, the creation of talking points, to be used by front-line staff to answer visitor questions and help give exhibition tours. Some of the text in my album is lifted straight from my talking points and thus is also a showcase of what I’ve learned through my research, a guide itself to the photographs I took on those several seabus trips these past few months.

Lastly, it was influenced by the fact that the Polygon printed its own newsprint guide to the exhibition, which was mainly pictorial, to provide contextual images for the displayed works. I took photographs to record my own response and movements to and from North Vancouver, to create my own imagery of the area (also an aim of the exhibition, to show North Vancouver-specific works). With the newsprint guide also comes a desire for accessibility by the curators, an accessibility informed by gallery visitors (many, assumed to be from the area) relating to what they see in the works. So I include my own personal connection to/memory of North Vancouver at the beginning of the album as a introduction to the more impersonal talking-points-text.

Polygon Gallery

North Vancouver, BC

Research Assistant

2017

• Created an informational document as an aid in giving tours for the gallery’s inaugural exhibition, N. Vancouver.
• Conducted research by using both physical and online resources.
• Worked independently and used analytical skills to produce talking points for each artwork.
• Consulted my supervisor for information about the artworks and updates to the exhibition.

Pictures I took at the Grand Opening

“At a Grand Opening”:

I looked out the window into the darkness of the inlet. The usual scenic views of a seabus trip were gone, besides brightly lit industrial scenes, containers, cranes, and tankers. As the seabus approached the quay, the Polygon appeared out of the darkness too. I could see the gallery was lit up; it was finally alive and running. They were prepared for a big night. I was dressed up myself, not a suit, but a dress shirt and nice winter jacket. I was nervous and hoping I wouldn’t make a fool out of myself since this was a high-profile event. I already feel out of place at big events and more so now I felt like an outsider, some student among these established art world people.  

I approached the gallery, which was already crowded with people. It was the first time I actually saw the gallery in action, occupied by people who didn’t work there. I was dazzled; the suits, dresses, lights were a little overwhelming. I saw that you had to go through registration to get in. Hopefully, getting in would be easy. I was definitely invited, but I should’ve asked if I was put on the list. I approached one of the registration people who greeted me very nicely. She asked for my name and I gave it to her. She looked for me. As I expected she couldn’t find me. I mentioned I was “sorta-staff” (should’ve just said staff), having worked on the exhibition. She looked again. Eventually she said it was fine, I could go up. But she seemed to give me a look. She lost her former nicety and gave me a look that made me feel like a kid trying to sneak in. So I went up.

Upstairs, it was already packed. The small upstairs lobby was brimming with people. I tried to navigate the crowd, trying to find people I knew–the staff members that is–but often I would see them with other people. It made sense, they had to give attention to the important people, donors, artists, friends of the gallery, people with a larger stake in the art world. Eventually, after much wandering, I found my supervisor and we talked for a bit and he went off soon after. Then, I ran into the someone else I knew–lets call them M–, who had said she’d introduce me to some people, the exhibiting artists specifically, to get more information for my research. I was first introduced to one artist where I was quickly introduced. M then said she’d be off and she left me there. That was unexpected. I would have hoped she wouldn’t have pushed me into these situations so abruptly. Not that I needed to be babied around, but I was already in a somewhat alien environment. This didn’t help me become more comfortable and I needed to get into top art-knowledgeable-person form fast–don’t make a fool of yourself. I talked to the artist for a bit and it wasn’t too bad. I stumbled over my words a bit and they came out in a rush, but I got my point across (I think). Luckily, it was announced that speeches were about to be made so we all flowed into a large room.

The speeches reminded me how much money was going into the gallery. Speeches came from the director of course, but all the various corporate sponsors of the inaugural exhibition, many who also donated to the gallery itself, the various gallery rooms bearing their names. It was one hugely-moneyed person or corporation representative after another. They were talking about culture; culture backed by a lot of money. It didn’t seem so much an inauguration of the gallery, a new cultural space in Lower Lonsdale, but that so much support, money, had gone into making this dream come true. In fact it’s announced that enough money was donated to back one of the curator’s job indefinitely. There were drinks being served once I stepped into the gallery upstairs. There was a full on bar, catering (I had venison). As well, the opening was supposed to be open only to ‘first members’, membership costing $250. This was a monied event.

Afterwards, everyone shuffled back into the exhibition spaces. Later, M introduced me to someone else, someone who could answer some questions about a work I didn’t totally understand. This person–let’s call them C–was talking to someone else already when M approached him with me in tow. We listened to them talk for awhile before M said something somewhat related and then introduced me. C’s face looked blank at first–who was this kid? Then when M said I was helping out with the exhibition, he flashed a bit of a smile. Then I was left to fend for myself again.

He was by far the hardest person to talk to there. As I said, he was already talking to someone when we approached him. And he continued talking to this person as I stood there. After awhile of talking to this other person, he turned to me and said something along the lines of “don’t be afraid to join the conversation”; I was trying, but it was hard to get what they were talking about. He finally finished his chat and I began to ask my question. In the middle of that, he saw someone else nearby and began talking to them. There was a business talk going on, which was very interesting to hear, but I probably shouldn’t get into it too much here. That ended soon enough as well. I thought I’d get an in again, but he recognized someone yet again. They started to talk about meeting up sometime soon and then that was when he started to explain the work in question (I hadn’t even fully asked mine). After probably 20 minutes or so of talking to C–or, really, not–, I had got some answers.

That’s the last thing I’ll talk about that night. It was an interesting night; I think I learned a lot.

The Pictures: The catalogue for “First Night”, Polygon Gallery’s annual auction and first night they allowed members of the (high-paying) public into the gallery.

More talks with the curators…

The Polygon had an auction recently, as they’ve done when they used to be Presentation House as well. Preparations for the auction also added to the general busyness of everybody in the office, organizing things, getting the above catalogue ready, etc. Luckily I was able to take a copy of the auction catalogue with me (circumventing the purchase of a $500 ticket). I had a little chat about the auction with one of the curators; I asked where the funds for the auction were going to afterwards and was told it was to their capital campaign (and to the artists too), their collection of funds to be used to help pay for their new space. I guess non-profits do have to run events like this (since they aren’t generating profit from admissions and whatnot); they do need money to run; though maybe my concern with this is the exclusivity (again, $500 for a ticket as I saw on the website), but also of course the price of the art as seen in the catalogue. This was all another reminder of the large amounts of money, the economic, market forces, that are an undercurrent of the art world (whether we like to think about it or not), forces that confer ‘value’. As seen in my pictures above, we have works by Marian Penner Bancroft and Rodney Graham, both Vancouver-based artists. The images may be too small, but Bancroft’s work starts at–according to market forces as the curator tells me–$5000, while Graham’s begins at $220,000! Out of the two, Graham is the much more internationally renowned artist, owned by several international galleries, which is why his work is worth way, way more. Go figure.  The auction was a great success though.

Another conversation I had with the same curator began with some social media problems. Sitting near the curator’s office (as I had found my usual space had been taken over by a computer), I overheard and conversation she was having with another staff member along the lines of advertising, through social media, a talk about archives. At the moment I was just acting as an aural voyeur–whatta term–but the staff member came out and tapped me and patted me on the shoulder, saying “Well, you’ve got a writer here” (I think the curator would’ve just asked my supervisor–the curatorial assistant–usually, but he was doing something at the Toronto Art Fair that day). So I got drafted into service, not that I wasn’t glad to help out with something else. Basically, the curator just needed help sifting through a long abstract sent by a curator they asked to come and give a talk during the new exhibition. The curator asked if I had written a press release before and I said no, but that’d I’d take a look at it. My idea of dealing with this was just to summarize the most important points of the abstract, to isolate the most attractive and ‘punchy’ bits, especially sentences that included such academic buzzwords as “systemic violence” or “trauma” (not to trivialize what these words mean of course, but I was told to keep in mind people like me, fellow undergraduate and graduate students, as the potential audience). So I both summarized and lifted certain choice sentences. I’ve had a bit of experience with this kind of stuff; it’s similar to the  Luckily once I sent my draft back to the curator, she said that it was just what she was looking for. We then talked a lot about the event itself. The event is inviting a curator who is interested in looking at the overlooked aspects of Iranian history. He was invited partly because of North Vancouver’s large Iranian population (something I was unaware about before doing research at the Polygon). We discussed how does one define a ‘successful’ event (large attendance numbers?), who to target and invite as potential audience members–the visiting curator actually was against inviting members of the immigrant Iranian public, because of how they apparently tend to romanticize the homeland and may be adverse to talking about aspects of their history they fled from (the Iranian Revolution for example). We also discussed the problem of geographic areas, labels like, for example, “Asian” compared to “South Asian” compared to “East Asian”–where do these boundaries begin and end?

Again, more interesting conversation and what-goes-on-in-curators’-heads.

The pictures: Notes I took during my talk with the gallery’s curators

Recently, in my partnership with the Polygon, I have been able to meet two of the gallery’s curators, one who also is the director. Both were rather enlightening experiences. On my second shift at the gallery, I was able to get a personal tour (with my supervisor) of the new exhibition the gallery is mounting to coincide with the opening of their new space. The purpose of this tour was to give me a better sense of what the exhibition was all about, so as to help me write about it my talking points (my project). It was a bit funny how he repeated how the Polygon (when it was known as Presentation House Gallery), always put on high caliber exhibitions. I would generally agree (from the many times I’ve gone to Presentation House in the past). I guess it was just funny to hear someone having to say that, to justify the gallery (I suppose some of that happened to get this new space too). It was nice to get to walk around the gallery though and hear how a curator made their decisions on how to curate various works, their reasons for including them, and how they fit within the exhibition’s theme. It was definitely helpful to myself to hear about the exhibition in this way for my project. Interestingly though, apparently, much of the reasoning behind the exhibition lay in accessibility; as they are opening in a brand new, shiny space, they wanted to make sure the space, and what it exhibited, would be relatable for North Vancouverites. The director said something along the lines that he wants people to see the artworks (many made in North Vancouver) and see places they have seen themselves. I thought it very good that a gallery did want to be accessible, in this case, to people who may not always look at art, but also interesting to hear an exhibition that included many other complex ideas (e.g. First Nations land claims) being boiled down to one simple concept; it was interesting to hear this from a “high-caliber” institution. Not that it is bad thing, just interesting.

My talk with the other curator came a few shifts afterward. I was asking my supervisor if there was any information I could access about the gallery’s history, mandate, etc. (for the poster assignment). As I was talking about this, the gallery’s other curator was walking around at the same time and politely interjected: “I have a pretty good institutional memory; are you Brandon?” And we introduced ourselves to each other. I asked if I would be able to talk to her about the gallery’s history and she agreed, which was very kind of her to give her time to. We sat down in her office and I explained the nature of the assignment to her and she began to talk. Fortunately, she had a lot to say (not that I doubted that she would) and we ended up having a nice chat for what felt like an hour at least. I knew a bit about the different projects that Presentation House/Polygon had done in the past, but hearing about them from her was very informative. She was generous enough to show me many of their publications (and let me use one for my research) and literally almost went through everything there was to go through (mandate-wise at least). We talked a bit about my work at the Belkin Gallery (work very similar to what I’m doing now) and about my practice (we shared an interest in physical photographs, and though I worried about not catching up with digital technology, she suggested that that may be an interest in materiality, something I hadn’t thought of before).

All in all, both very interesting conversations to have. And fun fact, my shift talking to the other curator ended with someone playing this as they left: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ImvYEq1GTs

Ashita Ga Aru Sa….