Vestige: Selections from the Kazlaw Collection

Gallery Hours

Tu–Sa: 11 am–5 pm: Su&M: closed

Drawn from the Kazlaw Collection, a Vancouver law firm founded by Marc Kazimirski, the exhibition includes works by artists who established their practices in Vancouver, a city in which conceptual photography was once a dominant tradition. Many of these artists have focused their lens on the seemingly ordinary: abandoned mattresses, burnt-out cars, empty shelters, and vacant lots—objects, things, and places all marked by human activity but where people are rarely present.

Howard Ursuliak’s Vestige-(Shelter) (2004) provoked Kazimirski’s interest in collecting contemporary photography. The image, a frank depiction of an empty shelter with soiled floors and posters plastered to the glass—a banal structure at the side of a walkway—is a depiction of an emergency refuge at the University of British Columbia installed following a series of assaults on female students. For Kazimirski, the photograph is unsettling and provides a way of looking deeper into underlining societal issues.

The exhibition features works by Roy Arden, Karin Bubaš, Owen Kydd, Evan Lee, Scott McFarland, Victor John Penner, Howard Ursuliak, and Stephen Waddell.