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Contemporary Art Gallery

555 Nelson Street
Vancouver, Canada
Open from Tuesday to
Sunday 12 pm → 6 pm

Admission always free
ArchiveExhibition
6 Mar 86until29 Mar 86

Cornelia Wyngaarden

As A Wife Has A Cow from Luminous Sites

555 Hamilton St

A blue-toned video still of a person sitting in a chair outside with tall grass and trees around them. They are wearing a denim shirt and a cowboy hat.

Luminous Sites is an exhibition of video installations taking place in nine Vancouver galleries and city spaces beginning at the end of February and continuing until April 1986. Canadian artists including Kate Craig, Paul Wong and Cornelia Wyngaarden from Vancouver; Ian Carr-Harris, Vera Frenkel and Randy & Berenuccu from Toronto; Barbara Steinman and David Thomas from Montreal; Max Dean from Ottawa; and Tomiyo Sasaki from New York have been invited to present site-specific works involving video medium. The works represent a range of personal styles and approaches to the use of video in an arts context, linking an aesthetic history with contemporary communications technology. Artistic priorities in the various works encompass the areas of painterly use of colour and light, the sculptural designation of form and space, the social discussion of contect, theatrical references to cultural motifs, the contemplation of place and time, and the realities of technical presence.

In these installations the viewer enters into a site-specific construct in which the audio and video elements project into the space and affect it in distinct ways. The sculptural parameters are defined by these non-material forms as much as by the physical elements of the installation which act as landmarks within the electronic presence, defining its context. The installation is experienced on the multiple levels of sensual and didactic, connotative and evocative information in which the viewer is encompassed. The dynamic presence of the video installation, with its convergence of the physical and the electronic, focuses the aesthetic discussion on developing a language which includes technical media in the tradition of art.

Luminous Sites invites Vancouver audiences to participate in this dialogue which has been centered primarily in the Eastern cities of Toronto and Montreal. This selection of works is derived from a pan-Canadian context and is representative of the current range of the genre, the video installation. Luminous Sites is a Video Inn/Western Front presentation curated by Diana Augaitis and Karen Henry.

Curated by Diana Augaitis and Karen Henry Co-presented by Video Inn and Western Front

In a dark gallery space, 3 bales of hay on the floor hold a tube TV atop them. The TVs are playing the same video synchronously, showing a group of people at a barn.
In a dimly lit gallery, there are 6 bales of hay with 6 TV's playing the same video. The entrance is painted yellow-orange, and black text on the walls reads "As A Wife Has A Cow: A Video Love Story."
A blue-toned video still of a person sitting in a chair outside with tall grass and trees around them. They are wearing a denim shirt and a cowboy hat.
In a dark gallery space, 3 bales of hay on the floor hold a tube TV atop them. The TVs are playing the same video synchronously, showing a group of people at a barn.
In a dimly lit gallery, there are 6 bales of hay with 6 TV's playing the same video. The entrance is painted yellow-orange, and black text on the walls reads "As A Wife Has A Cow: A Video Love Story."