Curatorial Statement
June 4 - 20 , 2009
Opening reception: Thursday June 4, 6-8 pm
It was always a great day when you got a phone call to say the Seymour collection had bought a piece. The Seymour Collection was shrouded in secrecy over the years. We never knew (and still don’t) who it was and how it picked the work. In the early years, selling work was always a last minute reprieve from the bailiff. The cliché that artists don’t care much about money is just that: a cliché. It’s true and absolutely not true in the same breath.
A couple of months ago, 25 years later, Diane phoned to ask if I would like to curate a show from the Seymour Collection with a caveat that something of mine had to be included.
I went to see the collection the following day and I was completely amazed. I think I would have loved the work as much even if I hadn’t known the artists who made it, but seeing this work after so long I was flooded with emotion and transported back in time.
I put together a small show including works of Graham Gillmore, Michael Morris, Attila Richard Lukacs, Derek Root, Neil Wedman, with a piece of my own from my student days.
A good bit of the Seymour collection is comprised of purchases of works created in the 80s and 90s. Back then, Gillmore, Lukacs, Root and myself were newly graduated from Emily Carr College. Wedman was already a dynamic force in Vancouver scene as was the internationally known painter Michael Morris, who was also instrumental in founding the Western Front.
Painting and figuration had reemerged in the early 80s as a dominant force in the art world and Vancouver had its own version.
As I stood in front of the work in the collection, I found that it hadn’t aged or lost its potency in the past 20-25 years. Putting together the show, I picked works that were linked in their sensibility and style and spoke of the time in which they were made.
The expressive paintings are full of grand gesture and sexual potency, as are the delicate black and white drawings. In all of the works there is an obvious sensuality and a profound deftness. When I look at Graham’s drawings, and consider how young he was, I find these works startlingly mature.
Roofing cement, or tar as we called it, is evident in most of the paintings. Tar had a special place in the lexicon of materials used by Gillmore, Root, Lukacs and me, lauded for its qualities. Tar was thick, luscious, luxurious, malleable, cheap and very forgiving.
The included works of Neil Wedman are sensuous delicate drawings. Eerily transportive, they have an old master drawing quality unique to his style. The works of Michael Morris are extraordinarily sensuous. His watercolour portraits of Attila and me were painted on an afternoon visit in Berlin in 1987.
The show provides a glimpse Vancouver at that time - still a relatively remote small town but poised to become the major art center it is today.
Angela Grossmann
June 3, 2009 |
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GROSSMANN PICKS FROM THE SEYMOUR COLLECTION |
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 Angela Grossmann with The Girls
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