Scott Watson guides a tour of Melancholy Bay: Images of English Bay, Burrard Inlet and Howe Sound from the Collection.

Melancholy Bay began as a response to the recent oil spill in English Bay. The University of British Columbia, located on unceded Musqueam territory and only kilometres west of the ancient city of c̓əsnaʔəm, looks out over English Bay, Howe Sound and the Georgia Straight, all bodies of water renamed by George Vancouver in the 1790s. The title Melancholy Bay is a reference to Vancouver’s dispirited response to what he saw as “a sublime, though gloomy spectacle.” The settler culture that followed Vancouver to establish jurisdiction and displace the indigenous villages and place names has been consistent in admixing descriptions of majestic landscape with ideas of frontier and resource extraction. As a result we tend to naturalize the large visual imprint made by the resource extraction industries as the picturesque.

Melancholy Bay presents a variety of artistic perspectives that illustrate how the port of Vancouver and its environs have been represented over several decades. The University’s Art Collection yielded works that can be seen as historic documents as well as works of art. These range from the bucolic examples of B.C. Binning and Irene Hoffar Reid, social/historical ruminations of Roy Arden, Jack Shadbolt and Anne Ramsden, to poetic evocations by Mark Lewis and Marian Penner Bancroft. Other artists included in the exhibition are Christos Dikeakos, Carole Itter, Michael Morris, Al Neil, Gordon Smith, Mark Soo and Stephen Waddell.

Photo: Michael Barrick