Capture Photography Festival unveils 26 Selected Exhibitions for 2024 event, April 1 to 30
Diverse and visually striking, this year’s lineup features works by Ian Wallace, Ho Tam, Sarah Anne Johnson, and more
Ian Wallace, Brenners Park-Hotel & Spa, Baden-Baden I (2014). Photo laminate and acrylic on canvas, 61 x 61 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist and Catriona Jeffries
Sarah Anne Johnson, PIB, from the Woodland series (2023). Inkjet print with oil paint, 152.4 x 101.6 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist
CAPTURE PHOTOGRAPHY FESTIVAL has just announced the Selected Exhibitions for 2024’s festival, which takes place from April 1 to 30.
Among the 26 chosen collections is Home and Away: Ian Wallace by Vancouver conceptual artist Ian Wallace, who received the prestigious $100,000 Audain Prize for visual art in 2022, as reported by Stir. Showing at West Vancouver Art Museum, Home and Away: Ian Wallace is a hyper-local pairing of drawings and watercolour paintings from Wallace’s youth in West Vancouver with new photographs taken from those same vantage points. By also incorporating 2014 works from the artist’s Baden-Baden, Germany collection titled “Hotel Series”, the exhibition embraces the idea of one’s home being an ever-present influence. Wallace’s exhibition, curated by Hilary Letwin, launches on March 12, on display at the museum until May 3.
Katya Lesiv, Works from the I am. Rada series (2018-2022). Inkjet print, 27.94 x 35.56 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist
Opening on March 1 at the SkyTrain’s Lafarge Lake–Douglas Station in Coquitlam, Sarah Anne Johnson’s Woodland employs a similar sense of place. The artist based in Manitoba uses Adobe Photoshop, paint, metal leaf, holographic tape, and photo-spotting ink to give her photos of the forest a magical, kaleidoscopic feel that’s representative of how she views the landscape. The eight images in Woodland, installed across the station, reflect splashes of whimsical, stained glass-like colour on the surrounding forest and concrete cityscape.
The barbershops and hair salons of Manhattan’s Chinatown are at the centre of Hong Kong-born, Vancouver-based artist Ho Tam’s A Manifesto of Hair, opening on March 23 at The News Room on East 4th Avenue. The densely populated neighbourhood built on the lands of the Lenape people is now home to a historic hub for the diasporic Chinese and Southeast Asian population. Tam’s precise photographs of salon scenes zoom in on the working class within the marginalized community while exploring how race, class, and commerce are related.
Ho Tam, Ting Ting Hair Salon, from the Haircut 100 series (2014). Inkjet print, 57.2 x 47 cm. Photo courtesy of the artist and Paul Petro, Contemporary Art, Toronto
Elsewhere at the festival in Her Presence (Womanhood in Ukraine), female Ukrainian photographers Katya Lesiv, Katia Motyleva, and Anya Tsaruk document the impact that the invasion of Ukraine had on the relationships between mothers, daughters, and sisters. The intimate exhibition investigating change, empowerment, and grief opens on April 3 at the CSA Space.
Launching at the Richmond Art Gallery on April 19, Unit Bruises: Theodore Wan & Paul Wong, 1975 – 1979 features rarely seen works from the ’70s by two Chinese Canadian conceptual artists, Paul Wong and the late Theodore Sasketche Wan. The pair ruminate on themes of illness, death, and the human condition as people of colour, using striking medical and procedural contexts to create hegemonic imagery.
Theodore Sasketche Wan, Bridine Scrub For General Surgery (1977). Silver gelatin print, 50.5 x 40.4 cm. Collection of Vancouver Art Gallery, Acquisition Fund
Preston Buffalo, Hawks Alley May 2023 (2023). Stereoscopic image, dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
There’s plenty more offerings at the festival to check out. These include Dani Gal’s Historical Records (2005–present), featuring the artist’s collection of over 700 commercially issued vinyl LPs, opening March 23 at The Polygon Gallery; and Go Home Yuppie Scum by Preston Buffalo opens April 11 at SUM Gallery, with quasi-dystopian scenes of Vancouver that protest gentrification.
Capture Photography Festival, founded in 2013, is Western Canada’s largest lens-based art festival. This year’s selections were chosen by an official jury made up of Emmy Lee Wall, Capture Photography Festival’s executive director and chief curator; Emilie Croning, curatorial assistant for the Arts of Global Africa and the Diaspora collection at the Art Gallery of Ontario; Monika Szewczyk, Audain chief curator at The Polygon Gallery; and Jin-me Yoon, professor at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.
For more details on all of this year’s Selected Exhibitions, visit Capture Photography Festival.
Dani Gal, Historical Records (detail), installation view at private office, New York City (2016–17). Photo courtesy of the artist
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