Have you checked out Gallery 295 yet? The recently opened space is associated with The Lab, offering a unique opportunity for artists to use their photo printing and processing facilities when exhibiting at the gallery. The Directors and Curators, Michael Love and Jason Gowans (artists themselves), have been doing an excellent job of inviting emerging and mid-career artists furthering photographic discourse to exhibit in the space. Victor John Penner’s recent exhibition for Capture, Not Safe to Occupy, is no exception.
The exhibition follows Penner in his role under a law-enforcement agency photographing Marijuana Grow-Ops as they are busted across Vancouver. He puts it poetically in his artist statement: “History has shown that prohibition makes for strange bedfellows. Ceremonial barrels are smashed, their golden contents flowing freely through open grates only to be, ultimately, funnelled back into the barrel, again.”
Here are a few photos from the night, courtesy of Christopher Fadden (documentation photos) and Julie Lee (event photos):
Jean Cueta, one of Capture’s volunteer event photographers, Victor John Penner, the artist, and Katie Huisman, Co-Curator of An Evolutionary Look into Vancouver Street Photography and Photographer
