Born in Abbotsford, just outside of Vancouver where he lived and worked, Rodney Graham (1949-2022) is one of the most celebrated artists in the history of Canadian art. His work traverses a wide and diverse area of knowledge from psychoanalysis to music, from the poetics of Mallarme to contemporary cinema. His art is known for its rigorous conceptual architecture and dazzling interior logic. Among his recurring concerns are the camera and modern technologies of picture-making and notions of historical modes of self-representation. Graham is part of a generation of Vancouver artists—including Ken Lum, Stan Douglas, Ian Wallace and Jeff Wall, some of whom he played with in the punk band U-J3RK5—who established the city’s reputation for photo-conceptualism. Graham studied art history at the University of British Columbia from 1968 to 1971 and at Simon Fraser University from 1978 to 1979. He represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale, Italy (1997) and among awards he has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis (2006) and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts (2011). Graham’s work is held internationally, including in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate London, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art. Rodney Graham was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2016 for his contributions to Canadian contemporary art.
A recent acquisition to the Belkin Gallery, Vexation Island is a 10-minute loop, shot on 35mm, edited on video and presented on laser disc. The “Robinson Crusoe” scenario invokes multi-layered readings from issues of colonialism to the impasse of modernist skepticism. In addition to a continuous screening, presented is a small selection of archival material from the production of Vexation Island.
Exhibited at the 1997 Venice Biennale, Vexation Island was filmed in the Caribbean, tourist paradise and point of first contact between Europe and the ‘New’ World.
Vexation Island was purchased with the financial support of the Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, Belkin Gallery Endowment for Acquisitions, and the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program.
Born in Abbotsford, just outside of Vancouver where he lived and worked, Rodney Graham (1949-2022) is one of the most celebrated artists in the history of Canadian art. His work traverses a wide and diverse area of knowledge from psychoanalysis to music, from the poetics of Mallarme to contemporary cinema. His art is known for its rigorous conceptual architecture and dazzling interior logic. Among his recurring concerns are the camera and modern technologies of picture-making and notions of historical modes of self-representation. Graham is part of a generation of Vancouver artists—including Ken Lum, Stan Douglas, Ian Wallace and Jeff Wall, some of whom he played with in the punk band U-J3RK5—who established the city’s reputation for photo-conceptualism. Graham studied art history at the University of British Columbia from 1968 to 1971 and at Simon Fraser University from 1978 to 1979. He represented Canada at the 47th Venice Biennale, Italy (1997) and among awards he has received the Gershon Iskowitz Prize (2004), the Kurt Schwitters-Preis (2006) and the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Visual Arts (2011). Graham’s work is held internationally, including in the collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou, the Tate London, the National Gallery of Canada and the Museum of Modern Art. Rodney Graham was appointed as an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2016 for his contributions to Canadian contemporary art.
Morris and Helen Belkin Foundation, Belkin Gallery Endowment for Acquisitions, and the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program.
This spring and summer, three Vancouver galleries join forces with exhibitions that celebrate renowned Vancouver artist Rodney Graham. Internationally known for his humour and deep engagement with exploring ideas about art in our era of mass communication, Graham works in several media—film, video, photography, sound, text, sculpture, installation and painting—to reflect his ongoing concerns that are part autobiography, part detective novel, part psychoanalysis and part philosophy of consciousness.
[more]Rodney Graham is one of Canada’s most inventive and innovative artists. His exhibition, organized by York University, Toronto and the Renaissance Society, Chicago, will be the largest exhibition of his work shown in Canada to date. The exhibition, augmented for Vancouver, will be the first showing of Graham’s in Vancouver, the city where he was born and lives, since 1988.
[more]We join the art community in mourning the passing of artist Rodney Graham, who died on October 22, 2022.
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