Satellite Gallery presents a rare glimpse into the video archive of the late activist and filmmaker Lenore Herb. Between 1979 and 1982, Herb, also known as Doreen Grey, documented Vancouver’s vibrant punk music, poetry and visual arts scene amassing an archive of some 1,000 hours of video tape. As Jaime Clay, exhibition curator and close friend of the filmmaker, recalls, “Lenore hauled heavy camera packs, boxes of video tapes, cables and love the same way the musicians did. Her rich archive of the time reveals interviews during breaks in the music, secured in back alleys, down hallways, in bathrooms. Then back to recording the performance from the bottom of a makeshift stage, on stage, backstage.”
The exhibition at Satellite Gallery includes still images from her archives, video projections, ephemera, collections and video equipment, with an emphasis on the local music production in Vancouver between 1978 and 1980.
Lenore Herb (1947 – 2010) was an activist, environmentalist, filmmaker, writer and curator. She became active in Vancouver’s art scene in the 1960s, when she began working in the collating and distributing department at blewointmentpress. During this time, she was also a participant in the Sound Gallery and Trips Festival, the Floating Free School (started by Peter Hlookoff) and Knowplace Free School (started by Warren and Ellen Tallman). She has worked with artists such as Dan Graham and musicians such as Henry Rollins, as well as acted as the long-time archivist and curator for the work of bill bissett. In the area of film, Herb was actively involved with the Pacific Cinémathèque and Cineworks for much of the 1970s and 1980s, and worked as Community Producer for Metro Media (1979 – 1983).
This exhibition is curated by Jaime Clay with assistance from the Friends for the Preservation of the Lenore Herb Archive, Dennis Mills, Diane Keenlyside, Dorothy Trujillo Lusk and Michelle Normoyle and organized by the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery at the University of British Columbia and Satellite Gallery, and made possible with funding from the Doris Shadbolt Endowment for the Arts and the BC Arts Council. Special thanks are due to Saphira Coutts and Taliesin Foley-Herb for allowing access to Lenore’s personal materials and video archive.