"CLASSIFIED MATERIALS: Accumulations, Archives, Artists," Oct 15, 2005 — Jan 2, 2006, Vancouver Art Gallery

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"Hunchback Kit"

Geoffrey Farmer, "Hunchback Kit," 2000, mixed media, no dimensions given. Photo: Don Gill, courtesy University of Lethbridge Art Gallery.

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"Happy Days (detail)"

Steven Shearer, "Happy Days (detail)," 2005, digital e-print, edition of 4, no dimensions given. Photo: courtesy of the artist.

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"Hunchback Kit"

Geoffrey Farmer, "Hunchback Kit," 2000, mixed media, no dimensions given. Photo: Don Gill, courtesy University of Lethbridge Art Gallery.

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CLASSIFIED MATERIALS: Accumulations, Archives, Artists

Vancouver Art Gallery

Oct 15, 2005 — Jan 2, 2006

By Kay Burns

The Vancouver Art Gallery press releases assert thatClassified Materials: Accumulations, Archives, Artists"examines how artists find creative ways to produce meaning through the process of collection and classification" and offers "key insights to the much debated function of archiving and accumulation." This is an intriguing concept, leading to expectations the exhibition will present a critical vantage point about the long-embedded practice of public institutions to collect and archive work.

The exhibition is huge. It includes works by forty-four artists from around the world, including a substantial amount of material from the gallery's own collection. There are challenges with such a large volume of work assembled by four curators (itself perhaps an example of excessive classifying processes). Some of the disjointedness might have been resolved if the exhibition was organized in thematic groupings — political issues, obsessive practices, documentation, cataloguing — that emerged within the selection of material. Works addressing all of these themes were in themselves interesting, such as the The Great Survey of Papercuttings in Yanchuan County, the documentation of an expedition of artists retracing the 6000-mile route of Mao's Long March; several photography series and book projects, and Eric Camerron's Thick Paintings. The most interesting works, however, were the ones that critically investigated the practice and purpose of collecting and archiving.

The File Room, Antoni Muntadas's electronic archive of censored materials examines the history of censorship and addresses notions of cultural suppression. It is a system that is always growing and evolving through participant input. The pieces of N.E. Thing Co., particularly the certificates that recognize certain "aesthetically rejected things" as art, and "aesthetically claimed things" as act, provide direct comment on aspects of what the art institute stands for. The most intriguing piece was Geoffrey Farmer's Hunchback Kit. Farmer's work offered a tongue-in-cheek look at the institutional mandate for collection and archiving by selectively removing and displaying a variety of oddments and debris from the Vancouver Art Gallery's storage catacombs. Some of his selections were prominently located in the rotunda area, others were interspersed in locations throughout the exhibition; broken track light pieces in the middle of the gallery floor, old file cabinets, old technology, crates, and packing material stuck in back corners and alcoves. The elements in the rotunda were elevated to importance through their placement on the ubiquitous gallery plinth. The act of selecting and signifying objects as relevant is a curatorial act associated with the role of the institute to preserve and disseminate. Farmer's approach mocks that act through his choices, providing the critical edge that I had anticipated in this exhibition. The fact that Farmer did this (and N.E. Thing Co.'s work alludes to similar kinds of institutional mockery) indicates that the exhibition's curators were not opposed to opening up that interpretation.

Self-criticism, however, is generally not the forte of large public institutions, so the dominant content of the exhibition pertains primarily to processes of accumulation regarding political issues and to individual art practices, not on questioning the evolving role of the art institution in regards to the practice of collections and archives. Yet, the best place to pose such questions, to seek ways to comment on past practices, is from within the walls of the institution itself. How else can the transient and ephemeral aspects of contemporary art be contextualized without examining what has gone on before? Classified Materials: Accumulations, Archives, Artists provided the perfect context for asking those questions. More work addressing that critical focus would have been welcome.