Vikky Alexander

On invitation from the Canada Gallery at the High Commission of Canada to the United Kingdom, the Contemporary Art Gallery (CAG), Vancouver is pleased to present the first UK solo exhibition by Vikky Alexander, a leading practitioner in the field of photo-conceptualism. The program builds on CAG’s existing off-site work with Canadian artists abroad, seen most recently in the five museum venue tour begun in 2015 with artist Liz Magor.

In the 1980s Alexander played a significant role in the group of artists now known as “The Pictures Generation”, who posed a new set of questions concerning art and the nature of representation. The core of Alexander’s artistic proposition lies in the fantastic – in both the literal and figurative senses of the words. While playful, she uses a variety of media and techniques to make her point: mirrors, photographic landscape murals, postcards collected on her travels, photography and video.
The title of the exhibition is taken from the 1882 book by Frederick Olmsted, who designed Mount Royal Park in Alexander’s resident city of Montreal. Highlighting that the needs of the city’s parks were always subservient to the needs of the political machine, this exhibition similarly explores conflicts between nature and culture, urging us to consider how the natural world is often there merely to service human civilization.

*The Spoils of the Park* comprises colour photographs and pencil/watercolour drawings that reflect Alexander’s interest in histories of architecture and design, and focus on locations such as the opulent grounds and interiors of European stately homes, places that speak to desire, aspiration and wealth.
Depicting surreal juxtapositions between the locations selected and the animals collaged into such scenarios, Alexander creates these works by overlaying one or more cutout images of toy animals onto postcards of lavish historical sites devoid of people. These constructed images ask us to consider a multiplicity of meanings. Blown up in scale and presented as colour photographs, we read the pixelated surfaces of the original postcard prints against the often ungainly scale of the animals. The grand interiors seen in *Deer in the Wallace Collection Study* (2013) or *Gazelles at the Harrogate Baths* (2013) for example, depict a world which reveals mankind’s extreme affluence and consumption, contrasting to the comparatively modest use of resources by animals, to which wealth means very little.

In addition to this series of collages, Alexander presents a large-scale, black-and-white photo-mural adhered directly to the wall. Taken from her Island Series originally shot in 2010, the mural brings together several individual views of the exotic tropical plant greenhouses at Kew Gardens, which alongside other works, creates an immersive environment that raises questions concerning issues of how the more complex and affluent our societies become, the more we dominate the earth, annexing land, and the more we force nature to either adapt to artificial conditions or withdraw into ever-shrinking habitats.

Curated by Nigel Prince


### Biography
Vikky Alexander lives and works in Montreal. Selected solo exhibitions include Tomorrow Gallery, New York (2017); Cooper Cole, Toronto (2016); Trepanier Baer Gallery, Calgary; Atelier Daigneault/Schofield, Montreal (2015); Wilding Cran Gallery, Los Angeles; The Apartment, Vancouver (2014); The Engine Room Gallery, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand (2010); National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2000); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (1999); Catriona Jeffries Gallery (1997); Vancouver Art Gallery (1992); Kunsthalle Bern (1990) and CASH/Newhouse Gallery, New York (1987). Recent group exhibitions include Project Native Informant, London (2017); NGC @ MoCCA Project Space, Toronto (2015); Artist’s Space, New York (2014); Museum for Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Switzerland; CultureGest, Lisbon, Portugal (2013); Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver (2012); MuHKA, Antwerp, Belgium; Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, Halifax (2005); Yokohama Civic Art Gallery, Japan and Taipei, Korea; Seattle Art Museum (1996); The New Museum, New York (1992); Barbican Art Gallery, London (1991) and Whitney Museum of American Art (1990). Her work is in many international public collections including National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; Hammer Museum, UCLA, Los Angeles; Vancouver Art Gallery and Winnipeg Art Gallery. Alexander is represented by Trepanier Baer Gallery, Calgary; Wilding Cran, Los Angeles, Downs & Ross, New York and Cooper Cole, Toronto.


Three large-scale, black-and-white photo-mural adhered directly to the wall of a gallery space.  The imagery displays views of the exotic tropical plant greenhouses at Kew Gardens. 

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Five framed images hang on the wall of a gallery space. The images display a variety of lavish indoor and outdoor spaces, with irregular animals, like a tiger and a moose, existing within these spaces.

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Four framed images hang on two walls of a gallery space. The images display a variety of lavish indoor and outdoor spaces, with animals, like a tiger or a moose, existing within these spaces.

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The Spoils of the Park

Andrew Bartee

Following on from the series of individual performances made at CAG during autumn-winter 2017, Ballet BC dancer, Andrew Bartee will present a performance that draws together this period of research examining gesture and movement with a particular interest in audience in consideration of permeability of the fourth wall as a conversation between art and each other.

### Biography
Andrew Bartee, from Everett, Washington, joined Ballet BC in 2014 and was the Artist in Residence for the 17/18 season. He studied on scholarship at the Pacific Northwest Ballet School in Seattle, WA and attended summer courses at the School of American Ballet, American Ballet Theatre, and the Pacific Northwest Ballet School. He was also the first recipient of the Fleming Halby exchange with the Royal Danish Ballet, a 2007 Princess Grace Award, and was one of Dance Magazine’s “25 to Watch” in 2015.

A gallery space with people lined against the wall watching one person perform at the center. The performer is wearing all yellow clothes and is holding a dance pose. 

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A gallery space with people standing around the perimeter of the room watching one person perform at the center. The performer is holding their leg up at a ninety degree angle in yellow loose clothes. 

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A dancer lays in a partial split on the floor of a gallery space with audience members watching at a distance. Their arms are bent behind them with the tips of their fingers touching.

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A performer dressed in yellow lays on the floor of a gallery space with audience members standing around the perimeter. They are laying on their side, propping their head up with their arm. 

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A performer dressed in yellow sits on the floor of a gallery space with audience members standing around the perimeter. They are curled up on their knees, propping their head up with their hands.

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A performer dressed in yellow stands with audience members by the wall of a gallery space. Five audience members are visibly standing on the left side of the performer, and three on the right. 