Jeffries’ commercial gallery creates a buzz
Buzz surrounds opening of new commercial art space on East Cordova
Experiencing Catriona Jeffries’ new space begins long before you see any art in the new gallery on East Cordova.
People in the Vancouver art scene have been missing the Catriona Jeffries Gallery since its East 1st space closed in June 2018. In recent days, a buzz has developed around the opening of a new iteration of what’s arguably the country’s top commercial art gallery.
Closer to the physical gallery, the experience starts with the exterior of the former workshop for Pilkington Metal Marine. It’s painted black, but not any black. The shade was chosen after many hours of deliberation by Jeffries and Elizabeth McIntosh, one of the gallery’s artists. They picked a black with a liveliness that not only invites you in, but also sets it apart from the other industrial buildings in the neighbourhood.
Once you open the grated gate sporting the double CJ, you walk into a lovely open space — something Jeffries describes as an “urban void” — an outdoor garden covered with tan gravel. Every step you take translates into a crunch, crunch, crunch as you approach the glass doors that open into the gallery.
In the gravel garden are three trees. They ’re not just any old trees. They’re honey locust trees.
Jeffries points out they were the favourite trees of great modernist architect Mies van der Rohe, and they’re the same trees planted in a grid in Paley Park in Mid-Town Manhattan.
The trees are native to China, turn brilliant yellow in autumn, and were the result of Jeffries talking about bringing nature into the space with Patricia Patkau of the award-winning Patkau Architects, who led the renovation.
They’re also an example of the kind of attention to detail that’s made Jeffries such a success.
“Every thing that we do, every detailed move we do in an exhibition, is so deeply considered,” she said.
Inside, the gallery’s public and private spaces have essentially been nestled inside the industrial workshop. You first step into a room with a lower ceiling called the room of translation, which uses texts in books and catalogues to put art in context.
It leads into the main exhibition room with its massively high ceiling and east-facing clerestory windows; beside is a smaller, more intimate exhibition area with a lower ceiling.
The East 1st space was about 604 square metres (6,500 square feet); East Cordova is close to 836 square metres (9,000 square feet).
The new space is being inaugurated with the exhibition Unexplained Parade, which takes its name from a work by gallery artist Jerry Pethick.
The expanded group show started with all 21 of the gallery artists asked to name an artist significant to them. During the next 3 1/2 months, the exhibition will unfold inside and outside the physical space of the gallery and include works by both gallery and invited artists.
Featured in the opening exhibition are Pethick, Brian Jungen, Nick Sikkuark and Christina Mackie.
“Works will be moving through here over this time, so we’re asking you to stay close to us,” Jeffries said.
Some works will be ephemeral. On opening day, for example, a dancer will perform the solo work Accumulation, a 1971 piece by choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown, one of the founders of postmodern dance.
The East Cordova space is Jeffries’ third significant home.
Although she started to amass a following in her first two art spaces, on Burrard and then Cambie, Jeffries really started to make a national name for herself when she moved to South Granville in 1994.
After more than a decade on the shopping strip at Shaughnessy, she did something in 2006 that surprised a lot of people: She moved to a light industrial area in East Vancouver.
“People couldn’t believe I could go east of Main Street,” she said. “It’s amusing now.”
Although there were artist-run spaces in the area, she was the first commercial gallery in the neighbourhood. The area around Great Northern Way, east of Main, has since grown into one of the city’s main art hubs, especially since the opening of the Emily Carr University of Art + Design in 2017.
There’s something about Jeffries that you won’t see in the new art space on East Cordova: the international scope of the gallery.
If there’s any ranking of the importance of art spaces, it’s those accepted to Art Basel, the annual international gathering of the top galleries from around the world. Getting into Art Basel in Switzerland means meeting a certain critical threshold.
This June, Jeffries will be at the 11th Art Basel — the only Canadian art gallery to make the grade.
Last year was also one of the biggest for Jeffries, when gallery artist Geoffrey Farmer represented Canada at the Venice Biennale, the world’s biggest international art fair.
More recently, Jeffries returned from the U.S. after attending a reception at the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts at Harvard in Cambridge, Mass. She was on hand for the opening of an exhibition by gallery artist Liz Magor.
Just a few of the other gallery artists with current shows outside of Canada include Rochelle Goldberg in Dallas, Myfanwy MacLeod in London, and Duane Linklater in New York.
Jeffries said the objective of the gallery is never fixed. She described it as self-reflexive, moving, and fluid.
“I remain a base camp, a translation out of studios from this place called Vancouver,” she said.
“I’m also very interested to participate in an international dialogue about contemporary art.”
People couldn’t believe I could go east of Main Street. It’s amusing now.