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27 January 1996 – 2 March 1996

Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery

Rodney Graham: Works from 1976 to 1994

  • Rodney Graham

    Artist

    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.

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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 lived, since 1988.

The exhibition features Graham’s massive installation piece The School of Velocity, a twenty-four hour musical composition that plays on a Yamaha Disklavier. As well, the gallery will install works related to Graham’s work on Freud and Wagner’s Parsifal. The gallery is involved in producing two new works for the exhibition. A tape of Graham’s Freud lecture will be produced and a poster for the performance of his Parsifal. In collaboration with students from the U.B.C. School of Music, sections of Parsifal will be performed during the exhibition. Graham’s score is a time based elaboration of some bars of Wagner’s music that begins in 1882 and will be complete in 3,969,364,735 AD. Using a computer, a small section of the score will be realized in the real/imaginary time of the score. A poster announcing the performances is being produced as a limited edition print as a fund-raiser for the gallery.

Support and funding for this exhibition was generously provided by the government of Canada, the Canada Council, 3M, Yamaha Canada Music Ltd. and the Government of British Columbia through the Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture.

Rodney Graham. Exhibition catalogue.

  • Rodney Graham

    Artist

    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.

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Funders

  • Government of Canada

  • Canada Council for the Arts

  • 3M

  • Yamaha Canada Music Ltd.

  • Government of British Columbia through the Ministry of Small Business, Tourism and Culture

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