A movable fest: Artists switch to mobile galleries
Soaring cost of exhibition space sparks idea to use vans to show photographs
Two Vancouver artists are bypassing the traditional route of showing their work in a stationary art gallery by going mobile in vans.
Frustrated by the lack of affordable venues, artists Kent Lins and Sally Buck have created a temporary art gallery on wheels. They ’ve rented two panel vans to show their photo-based work during the Capture Photography Festival. Depending on the availability of parking, they will drive the vans into spots close to one another during weekends in April.
Lins said artists like him without gallery representation find it’s virtually impossible to find venues to show their work.
“We were looking at spaces for short-term rentals to do a show for Capture and found the prices were astronomically high,” he said. “We decided this is our solution.”
On Thursday, The Vancouver Sun reported that the median price of apartments and condos in Vancouver hit $962,500 in March, just under the magic $1-million mark. That’s up 26 per cent compared with a year go.
Lins said the idea to create a mobile art gallery started last September and October when they were looking for venues to show their work. They were being quoted prices for spaces in Gastown and on Beatty Street close to $1,200 or more for two nights. As well, spaces wouldn’t allow the kinds of crowds that can show up at an art opening or were designed for meetings or rehearsals.
Lins said he’s not sure how the leap to thinking about a mobile art gallery occurred. It might have had something to do with being a selfemployed generation Xer, thinking about not having a pension, and looking into retiring in a mobile home.
There have also been a number of stories in the local media recently about people living in vans and cars around Vancouver.
“I’m not sure how my mind works,” he said.
“Suddenly, things line up and it’s: ‘I know what we’re going to do: We’ll rent a van.’ “
They’re able to rent a van for about $60 a day.
Buck said there are so many photographers who want to participate in Capture that the festival can’t provide exhibition space for everyone.
“It is up to you to provide a venue,” she said. “You have to be a little creative about how to do that.”
She said once they decided to use a van they realized it resonated with the kind of urban work both artists are showing.
Buck’s exhibition of photos shows women protesters in Vancouver. Each photo in her exhibition, Open City, is colourized blue or red. That’s a reference to a national protest that took place in 1990 over Barnett Newman’s Voice of Fire, a painting of two blue stripes separated by a red stripe bought by the National Gallery for $1.8 million.
Lins takes photos of construction sites in Vancouver and then spends hours using Photoshop to build an image of lines and repeating patterns. He works standing in front of a 55-inch flat screen in his studio-living room. His photoworks in Sweet Dense City will be displayed for several seconds at a time one after another on the same-sized flat screen.
Both photographers will be showing their works in separate panel vans. They’ll open Van Galleries every Saturday and Sunday in April from 2-6 p.m. They ’ll post the location on vangalleries.com and on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.
Lins and Buck plan to continue to use Van Galleries to curate more mobile art shows.
Asked what it means to have no alternative but to show her work in a van, Buck said it was an example of the precariousness of art and artists in Vancouver.
She also cited the proposed demolition of the old Finning International industrial building housing the Equinox and Monte Clark galleries for the subway line to Arbutus.
“Transit is important for a city, but there’s lots of room to go around,” she said. “I think the precariousness of space for artists to work, live and exhibit is a real issue in Vancouver.”
Lins said the fact they had to move to a mobile gallery reflects the city’s priorities when it comes to art and artists and for people like the two of them who can’t afford to buy luxury condos.
“It’s a real sad state we’re in right now,” he said.