"Vancouver School" is a massive sculptural installation created by the Vancouver artists' collective, Futura Bold, composed of five well-known Canadian artists - Douglas Coupland, Graham Gillmore, Angela Grossmann, Attila Richard Lukacs and Derek Root. "Vancouver School" reprises the collective's highly successful 2003 "Basement Show."

The Futura Bold collective was formed in 1986, with Coupland joining in 2002. All are friends from the same year of the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design in the early 1980s.

With their new show, the collective will be converting a former North Vancouver elementary school gymnasium into an elaborate meditation on the links between schools, the human body, mass culture and the rituals and spaces that mold a person's sense of self. Says Douglas Coupland, "We all went to these schools. We know their smells. We know how the locker doors sound when you shut them. We know what the painted lines on the floors are all about. The Vancouver School piece is meant to be walked in and around. It should help you reshuffle your own memories of school." Derek Root asserts, "It will be an examination of the intersection between desire and mortality."

Used in the installation will be a large index of artifacts taken from soon-to-be demolished urban schools. Individually and collectively, the five artists will modify, regroup and artistically rework these objects - gym equipment, film projectors, textbooks, chalkboards and so forth - in a way that foregrounds the deeper rules and codes underlying our notions of public and private.

The project is one of many curated by Bill Macdonald, Director of Artists For Kids - an art education Trust founded in 1989 through a unique partnership between Canadian artists, Gordon Smith, Jack Shadbolt, Bill Reid and the North Vancouver School District. In scope and ambition, the project reflects Artists for Kids new sense of engagement with the community and its plans for future development as a new working art museum in the city.

The exhibition will serve an number of audiences including more than 2,000 students grades 1-12 who will tour the show with their teachers. A documentary film will be created exploring the development of the work and follow-up teaching resources will be developed to engage students in installation activities of their own. As well, 60 senior secondary students will attend a three day workshop with Angela Grossmann (with guest visits from the other artists) and working with a team of secondary art teachers, will explore the installation and its inherent concepts in depth.

The Vancouver School exhibition will be open for the public to experience in the Artists for Kids Gallery, 810 West 21st Street, North Vancouver, Canada from April 18 through May 13, 2006.

Vancouver School is generously sponsored by the Artists for Kids Trust, the Vancouver Foundation, The Audain Foundation and the RBC Foundation.