“The F Word” and “Persistence: An Archive of Feminist Practices in Vancouver”

I’ve been trying to be a more diligent and frequent blogger lately, but it seems to be manifesting itself this week as a series of posts about things I would do/see if I still lived in Vancouver. Currently on my radar are two exhibitions intended to augment and respond to the massive “WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution” exhibition on view at the Vancouver Art Gallery (its last stop on a multi-city North American tour).

The first is the Western Front’s “The F Word,” a group exhibition of video-based works by mostly Canadian artists dealing with gender, performance and the construction of personae.

Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, Lesbian Park Rangers, 2008.
Photo: Don Lee, Banff Centre, Courtesy the artists

Curated by Western Fronters Alissa Firth-Eagland and Candice Hopkins, the show includes the hilariously excellent Shawna Dempsey and Lori Millan‘s park rangers series, as well as the Toronto favourites Lisa Steele and Deirdre Logue, and the late but great Front founder Kate Craig.

Kate Craig as The Flying Leopard Lady, unknown date
From flickr.com

And opening this Saturday a bit further downtown at Artspeak, “Persistence: An Archive of Feminist Practices in Vancouver” will showcase ephemera from feminist artists and art collectives working in Vancouver. Pulled largely from the VIVO (previously Video In/Video Out) archives, the show is organized by a crackerjack team of Vancouver-based curators, including Jessie Caryl, Crista Dahl, Jennifer Fisher, Elizabeth MacKenzie and Marina Roy.

Images of VIVO’s archive for Persistence: An Archive of Feminist Practices in Vancouver , 2008.
Photo: Ginger Scott.

And while the virtual me was in Vancouver, I’d also swing by the VAG sometime in the evening to check out Marianne Nicholson’s new installation on the outside facade facing Robson St, The House of The Ghosts, which looks gorgeous in the documentation:

Marianne Nicolson, The House of The Ghosts, 2008

Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery