The ‘ Ampersand Man’ returns
Iain Baxter& opens a new exhibition at multiple venues in North Vancouver
Metro Vancouver’s original conceptual artist who was a key figure in catapulting the local art scene to international prominence in the 1960s and 1970s has a new exhibition opening Sunday at multiple venues in North Vancouver.
Back then, he was known as Iain Baxter. In 2005, he changed his last name to Baxterand, which he writes Baxter&.
From 1965 to 1978, Baxter& lived in North Vancouver. The exhibition — Iain Baxter& Information/ Location, North Vancouver — features his work from the early years as well as newer works — and is hosted in four venues: North Vancouver Museum, North Vancouver Archives, the City of North Vancouver Library and Loutet Farm.
Baxter& made the change because he’s fascinated with the ampersand and with the power of the word “and” as an artist. Baxter& believes it emphasizes a take on art that he calls an “unending collaboration with the viewer and the means to question the artist’s role.”
Baxter& is so serious about “and” that he has had ampersands tattooed on the top of his right and left hands. During our interview at the North Vancouver Museum, Baxter was wearing a baseball cap with another ampersand on the front. On the back is his name and the statement “Masturbating Life/ Makes Art.”
If Baxter& sounds provocative and playful, he is. Ever since he rose to prominence as an artist, he has been an agent provocateur in the art world. He’s used humour and wordplay and made installations that made people question whether what he’s doing is art at all. He’s constantly disrupted systems, whether they’re corporate, artistic or bureaucratic. Now 75, he has been making art for about 50 years and shows no signs of slowing down.
One project that’s ongoing is trying to figure out a system to measure the number of “ands” he says in a day and a year. Once he has a figure, he wants to make an equal number of sculptural ampersands and stack them in a big pile.
“If there were no ‘ ands’, we wouldn’t be able to hold our thoughts together,” Baxter& said in an interview. “We wouldn’t have that connectivity.”
He first came to the notice of the public in 1966 when his plastic and vinyl Bagged Landscape was picked by the Vancouver Art Gallery as a winner of $ 500 in the Centennial Award. In an editorial, The Vancouver Sun criticized the jury for awarding public money to “such frivolity.”
Shortly after, he left the University of B. C. to start the visual arts program at Simon Fraser University.
Within a year, Baxter&’ s fame had spread to the point where Time magazine called him the “Jolly Bagman” in a story because of the numerous objects he bagged in plastic — including an entire room. Shortly after, operating as the N. E. Thing Co, his work was on the cover of the magazine Art in America.
He was the first to use light boxes to display photographs, an innovation later adopted by other Vancouver photo conceptual artists such as Jeff Wall.
At the National Gallery in Ottawa in 1969, Baxter& turned the corporation into a social sculpture by creating an office with Muzak, desks, potted plants and secretaries. It was such an unusual installation that many people checked to see if they were in an art gallery.
In 1977, he opened a restaurant on West 4th called Eye Scream that served dishes such as Group of Seven Snails and Cubist Salad. Baxter& was also a former creative consultant for Labatt Brewing Company. Baxter& is a professor emeritus at the University of Windsor.
As part of his current exhibition at North Vancouver Museum, Baxter& has made several interventions into the permanent collection.
They include modifying two concrete- like lions made by Charles Marega. Smaller copies of the lions on the Vancouver side of the Lions Gate Bridge, the two statues sat for years in the garden of A. J. T. Taylor, the entrepreneur who developed the British Properties and the bridge. Between the paws of the regal lions, Baxter& has placed a jar called “Animal Preserve” with a fluffy toy lion inside in distilled water. Referring to his lifelong environmental and ecological interests as an artist, Baxter& said it’s meant to make us think about the future of other species and whether the changes we’re making to the environment will mean the only lions in future will be preserved ones.
At the city’s library, the works include examples of Baxter&’ s wordplay. The east facing windows displays the phrase “until the/& of time”; upstairs on the third floor looking west to Stanley Park and the Lions Gate Bridge on the windows is the text “L& SCAPE.”
The exhibition, curated by David Bellman and Meirion Cynog Evans, is spread over several venues because in part it reflects Baxter&’ s history in North Vancouver. Loutet Farm, for example, where Baxter is creating a new site- specific installation with mirrors, is the site where he found material for his vacuum- formed landscapes in the 1960s.