Apparently you can take a girl out of Vancouver, but it’s much much harder to take the Vancouver out of a UBC art history grad. Despite feeling pretty overstimulated by what Toronto and its environs offers in terms of art and cultural events, I still manage to keep an eye on what’s happening on Canada’s West Coast and occasionally find myself wishing I could hop the breadth of the country a little faster so I could see some of the work on offer.

Luanne Martineau, Bespoken, 2008,

Which is how I feel about “How Soon Is Now,” the massive group show opening this weekend at the Vancouver Art Gallery that aims to survey “contemporary art from here [meaning BC]”. Apparently the product of a staggering 120 studio visits, the show is curated by the VAG’s assistant curator Kathleen Ritter and boasts an incredible roster of emerging and mid-career BC and Vancouver-based artists, many of whom definitely deserve the institutional recognition.

Kristi Malakoff, Target, 2005/8

Among the artist projects (some of them newly commissioned) that I’d love to see are Abbas Akhavan‘s audio installations of starling’s calls in the trees outside in the gallery’s courtyard (especially great given the VAG’s ongoing sonic battle against the seagulls attempting to nest on the building’s rooftop); Hadley + Maxwell‘s new incarnation of their Godard-inspired 1 +1 – 1 installation; Samuel Roy-Bois‘ soundproof recording studio for visitors to use; and Kevin Schmidt‘s mysterious “event” on the Fraser River, currently being advertised as Epic Journey.

Aaron Carpenter, Insomnia Study, 2009, felt, Courtesy of the artist

Despite sharing some of the concerns voiced by Chris Brayshaw on his Anodyne blog that the PR for the show is slightly overblown (I think he called it “intellectually blinkered and deeply weird”), I am continually impressed that group exhibitions which have no other obvious connective theme aside from an attempt to survey current art production by a group of very different artists whose only commonality is residence in Vancouver (well, and a lot of similar university-level training) are perfectly normal in Vancouver, whereas in Toronto they are consistently problematic (I’m thinking particularly of that double-whammy of Toronto-themed shows at The Power Plant and MOCCA two summers ago, thoroughly mocked by artfag at the time). Maybe it’s because the younger generations of Toronto artists don’t have the monolithic presence of the “Vancouver School” to contest with? I’m not convinced that’s the reason, but am intrigued about the differences in local artworld communities/affiliations/groupings nonetheless.