• Age: 15
• Grade: 10

Since the mid-1980s, the once marginal city of Vancouver has developed within a globalized economy and become an internationally recognized centre for contemporary visual art. Vancouver's status is due not only to a thriving worldwide cultural community that has turned to examine the so-called periphery, but to the city's growth, its artists, expanding institutions, and a strong history of introspection and critical assessment. As a result, Vancouver art is visible and often understood as distinct and definable.

This anthology intends to complicate the notion of definability. It offers nine essays to address the organized systems that have affected contemporary art in Vancouver over the last two decades. The essays in Vancouver Art & Economies collectively remark, both compatibly and contradictorily, on the economies at work in Vancouver art--its historical, critical, and political engagement; its sites of cultural production; and its theoretical and practical intersection with technology or policy. Considering a selection of conditions, focuses, and resources within the community, Vancouver Art & Economies marks shifting ideologies and perspectives on art, politics, society, and capital in Vancouver.

Contributors: Clint Burnham, Randy Lee Cutler, Tim Lee, Sadira Rodrigues, Marina Roy Sharla Sava, Reid Shier, Shepherd Steiner, and Michael Turner.

Melanie O'Brian is currently Director of Simon Fraser University Galleries in Vancouver and Burnaby. She was formerly Curator at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery in Toronto, Director/Curator at Artspeak in Vancouver, and Assistant Curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery. She has organized exhibitions locally and internationally, edited numerous publications, and written for numerous journals, catalogues, and magazines.

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Particularly timely, the book tears into the notion of the city's cultural definability, and examines the historical, critical and political elements that have come together to form vancouver's artistic identity. -Galleries West

One of the reasons Vancouver is so prominent is because of books like Vancouver Art & Economies. Vancouver's hunger to know its own history and to talk about its art means that the scene is always enlivened by discussion, research, and argument. -Scott Watson, Vancouver Sun

This anthology explores the development of contemporary art in Vancouver, covering its roots in the landscape tradition and the rise of the Vancouver School as well as the impact of cinematic and post-medium practices.... A key discussion is found in Sharla Sava's essay, which explores the problematics of the term "photoconceptualism." -Canadian Art

This anthology acts as a succinct state-of-the-union address, with the right amounts of analysis, history, and proof of the local art world's acute awareness of its place. -Vancouver Review

Vancouver Art & Economies

Ten academics, artists, curators and writers discuss the art practices of Vancouver's contemporary artists in the context of globalization. The contributors consider Vancouver art and its institutions, commenting on the economies at work and Vancouver's position within local, national and international art economies. They analyze Vancouver’s emergence as one of the cultural centres of North America. They also recognize the shared vision among the city’s artists, curators and gallery managers. This anthology appraises the historical, critical and political elements that have come together to shape Vancouver’s artistic identity. An appendix presents “A Vancouver Commercial Gallery Chronology.”

While segmented into chapters, this book is written at a demanding reading level.