Saturday, July 21, 2:00 pm

This event is limited to ten guests, please RSVP to register at info@griffinartprojects.ca.

Join artist Lam Wong for an intercultural tea gathering and conversation exploring the works in zero, ground. Lam is a contemporary painter, designer and scholar of Eastern philosophies whose family background has revolved around the art of tea for over 15 generations. Continuing these traditions of Chinese style tea ceremony (gongfu cha) and tea meditation, guests are invited to participate in aesthetic dialogues through spiritual and cultural communion. The journey goes from light to dark tea, over two hours, with periods of looking, drinking and discussing.

Saturday, July 21, 12:00 pm

Join Curatorial Assistants Bahar Mohazabnia and Mitra Kazemi for a tour of the exhibition in Farsi.

Saturday July 14, 2:00 pm

Guadalupe Martinez will respond to the exhibition through a performative action that animates the landscape surrounding the gallery space, its materiality, and the silent connections that are established, disrupted, and evoked through the artistic narrative of the show.

Guadalupe Martinez is an artist, researcher and educator living in Vancouver, BC. Her practice explores the poetic and political relationship between the body, memory and place. Through a research-based process, Martinez creates installations and performances that look at the invisibility of particular narratives and their historical relation to time and place. Martinez is a Sessional Instructor in Performance Art and Actions at UBC.Her ongoing research in Performance Art and Pedagogy infuses her teaching practice with notions of embodiment, phenomenology, healing, and decolonization of bodies and institutions.

View Guadalupe Martinez’s extended biography here.

Saturday July 7, 2:00 pm

Join artist Denzil Hurley for an artist talk and discussion on his series of Glyph paintings on display in zero, ground. In this series, monochrome canvasses are repeatedly layered with paint that is then partially scraped off to create tears and ruptures through their textured surfaces. Resembling protest placards, the paintings are mounted on found poles and broom handles, realizing assertive declarations of oblivion. These works were included in Hurley’s 2017 solo exhibition Disclosures at the Seattle Art Museum. Hurley will discuss the ways in which legacies of minimalism and abstraction influence his work, as well as ideas about protest, ingenuity and self censorship.

Denzil Hurley is an abstract painter based in Seattle. His interests in modular forms and structures involving squares and rectangles lead him to consider the interconnectivity and conjunctions of paintings and signs, material and meaning, presence and absence, and the languages of painting and speech. He earned his BFA at the Portland Museum Art School, Oregon, and his MFA at Yale University. Until 2017, he was professor of Painting and Drawing in the School of Art + Art History + Design at the University of Washington, Seattle where he taught for over two decades.

Additional reading:

Denzil Hurley’s Monochromes-on-a-Stick: Corn-dog Reinhardts?

The Art of Reduction: Denzil Hurley

Denzil Hurley at the Seattle Art Museum

View Denzil Hurley’s extended biography here.

Saturday June 30, 2:00 pm

Join Amber Frid-Jimenez and T’ai Smith as they discuss Frid-Jimenez’s work in the exhibition, Burning Ballet Méchanique. The piece’s title refers to the 1924 experimental film Ballet Méchanique by artist Fernand Léger and filmmaker Dudley Murphy. This early dadaist work produced a psychological meditation on mechanised technology in the wake of the First World War, an early realization of the uncanny dimensions of an increasingly industrialised Europe. After deconstructing this film into sequential frames, Frid-Jimenez uses these images to “train” an artificial neural network, or AI, which then produces a new composite film automatically. Citing the history of the film score, Smith and Frid-Jimenez will discuss the technology of AI and the invisible and recursive figure of the automaton after dada and surrealism.

Amber Frid-Jimenez is an artist based in Vancouver whose recent work explores the aesthetics and cultural mechanics of the network. Her work is situated at the intersection of contemporary art, design and technology, looking at the circulation of digital images through physical installations, visual systems, code, books and virtual platforms. Her work has been shown at the Casco Office for Art Design and Theory; the Maison Europeenne de la Photographie; the Jan van Eyck, and the Vancouver Art Gallery, among other venues. Frid-Jimenez holds an MSc in Media Arts and Sciences from the M.I.T. Media Laboratory and has a BA in visual art and philosophy from Wesleyan University. She is currently Canada Research Chair in art and design technology at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, where she directs the Studio for Extensive Aesthetics.

T’ai Smith is Associate Professor of Art History at The University of British Columbia, where she has worked on unceded Musqueam territory since 2012. Focused on issues of gender, anonymity, textile media, and political economy, she has published in various journals and museum catalogues, including Art Journal, Grey Room, Texte zur Kunst, ZMK (Zeitschrift für Medien- und Kulturforschung), the Museum of Modern Art in NY, and the ICA Boston. Author of Bauhaus Weaving Theory: From Feminine Craft to Mode of Design (University of Minnesota Press, 2014), she is currently finishing a second book manuscript titled Fashion After Capital, to be published by Bloomsbury.

View Amber Frid-Jimenez’s extended biography here.

View T’ai Smith’s extended biography here.

In celebration of International Earth Day, Griffin Art Projects presents a series of afternoon events reflecting on the neighboring Mackay Creek wetland, directly behind the gallery, and our collective responsibility for its protection. We encourage you to come and contemplate this important geographic site through a range of artistic events. Please join us for one, or a series, of these exciting activities!

12:00 pm, Mark Timmings and Stephen Morris, Wetland Senario, Performed by musica intima

12:30 pm, T’uy’t’tanat Cease Wyss, Indigenous Plant Walk

3:00 pm, Julia Alards-Tomalin, Echo Ecological - Wetlands Restoration Presentation

4:00 pm, Mark Timmings and Stephen Morris, Wetland Senario, Performed by musica intima

This special Earth Day program is the first in what we envision as an ongoing commitment to cultural production that raises awareness of this delicate ecosystem. Griffin Art Projects is dedicated to joining these pioneering restoration efforts to protect this essential part of our environment.

Video screening and discussion

Please join us on Friday, March 23, at 7:30pm, for a studio based presentation of our current Artist in Residence, Mario Asef. Asef will be screening recent work Cenit, in dialogue with sculptural gestures and various publications. Refreshments and discussion will follow to further explore the themes employed in this project in relation to his overall practice. The video Cenit tells a love story that is a metaphor for the celestial moment when the sun casts no shadow. Spinoza’s Ethics and an archaeological examination of Aztec ruins serve as the point of departure for a theory of reality and emotions. In Asef’s view, reconstructing and representing real space in the mind draws on the same mental processes used for constructing the idea of love and happiness. Accordingly, wandering the earth induces an emotional experience that prompts the main character of Cenit to search for the geographical point of happiness.

Image: Cenit, video, 11min, color, stereo digital – Mario Asef © 2016-17

Saturday, March 17, 2:00 - 4:00 pm

Ages 6 – 12 years

Share an artful afternoon together with painter and educator Julie Pappajohn through the extraordinary art works of the exhibition Modernism in Iran. Join a lively discussion and engaging activities, including a fun, interactive mixed media art project. Julie has facilitated art education for over 15 years on the North Shore.

Note that this event is limited to 10 participants, accompanied by an adult. Please register by emailing us at info@griffinartprojects.ca

Saturday, March 31, 12:00 – 2:00 pm

Join artist Lam Wong for an intercultural tea gathering and conversation exploring the modernist art of Iran. Lam is a contemporary painter, designer and scholar of Eastern philosophies whose family background has revolved around the art of tea for over 15 generations. Continuing these traditions of Chinese style tea ceremony (gongfu cha) and tea meditation, guests are invited to participate in aesthetic dialogues through spiritual and cultural communion.

Saturday, March 3, 2:00 – 4:00 pm
Saturday, March 17, 2:00 – 4:00 pm

Please join us for guided tours with curator Pantea Haghighi in both English and Farsi, to learn more about the works in Modernism in Iran. From 1958 – 1978, Iranian cultural practices underwent a dramatic transformation, signaling widespread and diverse approaches to conveying contemporary Iranian experiences. New visual languages were created, which resulted in a bifurcation of art production into a national artistic identity on the one hand, and one heavily influenced by “Westernization” on the other. Visitors are invited to learn about the experimentation and innovation in artistic practices that emerged during this time.

Saturday, December 9, 8pm

For the last thirty years, Vancouver artist Oraf Orafsson has worked in film, video, performance, and installation. Performing across Canada and the US, Orafsson’s projects have addressed postwar politics, oppositional cultural movements, and AIDS activism. He will present a new performance, Burnt Offering, in conjunction with our current exhibition, Civilization (inverted).

Click for images.

Caption: Oraf Orafsson, First Work of Complete Fiction as Burnt Offering, 1971

Tania Gleave and Dina González Mascaró Local Designer Jewelry Event Friday November 24, 6-9pm Saturday November 25, 11-5pm

We are proud to host two distinguished local designers for a two day presentation of their new work at the gallery. Please join us on Friday evening for Bubbles and Beats with DJ Quest, or all day Saturday, and get your hands on some amazing local design.

Dina González Mascaró lives and works in Vancouver. Trained as a sculptor in her native Argentina, DGM works in an -open space - overlap space - non place- between the art and design world. It is within that gap where González Mascaró displays her (always three-dimensional) view of things… expressed in works where structure, rubble, architecture are present.

wood. stone. horn. skin. metal. bone. paint. These are the current materials found in Tania Gleave’s art and design. She travels to corners of the planet to source all kinds of natural materials and returns to her Vancouver studio to combine them into textural compositions that reflect her lifelong interest in art, printmaking, architecture, design and things hand made. Tania received a degree ( Asian Studies and Japanese) from the University of Victoria, and a diploma in Textile Art and Design (Capilano College). She has studied drawing, print making and metal sculpture at Emily Carr University. In 2014 she was a recipient of the BC Creative Achievement Award.

Join us in launching two new publications which document the exhibitions Woosh and Surrogates, curated by Helga Pakasaar. These first exhibitions hosted by the gallery, and drawn entirely from private collections, display the remarkable, museum quality works collected locally.

As a final part of her residency at Griffin Art Projects, T’uy’t’tanat-Cease Wyss led participants on a walk along the Spirit Trail and shared stories and cultural information about the Skwxwu7mesh peoples as well as incorporated her knowledge about local indigenous plants and their uses. The walk was accompanied with local indigenous iced tea that Cease Wyss prepared to carry on the journey.

Click for images.

Please join us at Griffin Art Projects for a conversation on the work of our spring artist in residence, Michael Bauer. We will present this public conversation between Michael Bauer and GAP Director Lee Plested on Saturday, April 22, 3pm.

The discussion will centre around Bauer’s influences, approach to painting and the evolution of his pictorial language over the last 20 years. He will also play samples of the music he makes, which we will be broadcasting on our website. Please visit and subscribe to keep up on the downloads.

The uncertain and the uncanny often act as organizing devices in the paintings of Michael Bauer. Like the writing of George Bataille, his image systems utilize the ghoulish and discarded to float as defiant signifiers which are set loose to negotiate fields of defecated smears and corporal masses of painterly surface. Essentially a hermetic mode of research, Bauer is dedicated to the act of painting as enquiry, even if this work is done in a subjective pictorial language. This reckless reasoning is often framed by categorizing elements (sometimes in the form of a demarcating border, sometimes as an architectural detail) that define the picture plane as a field of linguistic research, but one dedicated to an improvisational and intuitive image-based mapping of contemporary human experience.

The gallery is currently presenting the exhibition Lewis Baltz, Portfolios, from the collection of David Knaus, Palm Springs and Selections from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft.

Griffin Art Projects is happy to present a panel on the life and work of Lewis Baltz. Collectors Claudia Beck, Vancouver, and David Knaus, Palm Springs, will be joined by Vancouver artist Christos Dikeakos for a lively afternoon discussion.

Drawn entirely from the private collection of David Knaus, Palm Springs, the exhibition is an opportunity to experience Baltz’s early work in its intended form, organized in grids of images from portfolios of serial shots. This is the first solo exhibition of Lewis Baltz’s concept driven photography in Vancouver. At this time, we are also presenting a concise Selection from the Collection of Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft to further explore the stark photographic mode that, along with Lewis Baltz, gained attention through the 1975 exhibition New Topographics.

This exhibition has been made possible with the generous support of collectors David Knaus, Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, Theresa Luisotti and everybody at Gallerie Luisotti, Los Angeles, Griffin Art Foundation, and our dedicated board and staff. 

Please join us for this special, one day only event!

Inspired by the materialist subject of Lewis Baltz’s photographic investigations and responding to the gallery’s mandate to present private collections, local artists Zoe Kreye and Guadalupe Martinez will host a Saturday gathering.

Working to understand the quiet attraction we hold for objects, our impulse desires, and how these processes accumulate in the body, the artists will lead participants through a series of framing devices to be utilized in a communal dérive. Starting in the gallery, they will go out, following their senses and intuition to explore the fields, creeks, parking lots, causeways, and their various intersections around Griffin Art Projects. Setting about to follow their desires, object collections will be accumulated and brought back to the gallery for further contemplation and discovering.

Zoe Kreye creates inter-disciplinary art projects that explore transformation, collective experience and negotiations of public. Recent projects include Our Missing Body (Western Front), FutureLoss (grunt gallery), Unlearning Walking Club (Unit Pitt), Unlearning Weekenders (Goethe Satellite Vancouver and <rotor>, Graz) and Überlebenskuns.klub (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin). She completed a MFA in Public Art at the Bauhaus University Weimar, and co-founded the Berlin based artist collective Process Institute. She is currently based in Vancouver and teaches Social Practice at Emily Carr University.

Guadalupe Martinez is an artist, researcher and educator. She is interested in the intersection between theory and embodiment, performance and pedogogy, the body and sculpture. From this perspective, her work is the consequence of a constant attempt to intervene with the present moment and through that connection, reflect larger poetic and political conditions. Guadalupe Martinez received her MFA from UBC, Vancouver, where she recently participated in the Performing Utopias conference with collaborators Guillermo Gomez and Saul Garcia Lopez.

Please meet at the gallery, this group workshop will start at 11am. See you then!

Marian Penner Bancroft has been a practicing artist for over thirty years. In addition to her photography, Penner Bancroft’s practice has included text, sound, drawing, sculpture, and video work. Penner Bancroft’s collecting practice is expansive and varied, ranging from found rocks to 19th century collectibles. Penner Bancroft will discuss the personalities and memories of the objects loaned to the exhibit, addressing ideas of collecting, memory, narrative, and history.

Michael Morris has been an integral figure in the development of Vancouver’s artistic character. During his studies in London, the influence of Fluxus left a lasting impact on the artist. In this conversation with Griffin Art Project’s Director Lee Plested, Morris charts a winding path between his artistic practice over the years, the plurality of Vancouver’s art scene, as well as the impact of ceramic art and the history of ceramics on the West Coast.

Born in Chilliwack, BC, Marian Penner Bancroft studied at the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University of Art + Design), and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute (now Ryerson University). Penner Bancroft previous taught at Emily Carr University as an Associate Professor. In 2012, she was awarded the prestigious Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, with exhibitions at institutions including the Vancouver Art Gallery.

Michael Morris is a painter, photographer, video and performance artist and curator. His work is often media based and collaborative, involved with developing networks and in the production and presentation of new art activity. Morris studied at the University of Victoria, the Vancouver School of Art (now the Emily Carr University of Art + Design), and the Slade School, University of London. In 2011, Morris was awarded the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, and in 2012, Morris received the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. Morris has exhibited at institutions such as the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery.

It’s the ‘place to be’ for anyone with a passion for the arts, this annual awards gala recognizes and honours distinguished North Shore artists, provides funding support to local artists, and fund raises to sustain the Fund for the Arts on the North Shore (FANS) and its continuing support for the creative community.

The 2016 Tribute to the Arts will shine a spotlight on the outstanding cultural and creative achievements of two deserving artists; acclaimed dancer Jennifer Mascall, and writer / animator Lynn Johnston of For Better or Worse comic strip fame. The evening includes entertainment, art exhibits, food and fun.

Featuring an essay by curator Patrik Andersson, NO BIG PICTURE illuminates the work of Vancouver artist Enn Erisalu through a series of personal and aesthetic lenses. Drawing works from the collection of Erisalu and his partner and gallerist, Ilana Aloni, the exhibition presents the work of a dynamic and experimental painter in a conversation with the art, communities, and histories he lived with.

Please join curator Patrik Andersson for a tour of our current exhibition NO BIG PICTURE: The Personal Art of Enn Erisalu and Ilana Aloni.

NO BIG PICTURE: The Personal Art of Enn Erisalu and Ilana Aloni presents a survey of the artist Enn Erisalu (1943-2005). This exhibition does not give us a “big picture” of Erisalu’s practice, but offers a series of filters to view the extra-ordinary work. Presented alongside his art, this exhibition includes artwork from the joint collection of Erisalu and his partner, gallerist Ilana Aloni, who operated Atelier Gallery. The selected works do not only provide insight into the esoteric nature of Erisalu’s practice, but exemplify how interconnected art making, curating and collecting can be.

Patrik Andersson is a writer, critic and curator of historical and contemporary art. He teaches in the Department of Critical and Curatorial Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Charlene Vickers and Chad MacQuarrie
Portals and Improvisations

In a series of in-the-moment-moments Charlene Vickers and Chad MacQuarrie will activate the gallery space using improvised sound, vocals, and performed action followed by a music set of guitar and electronics. Things to see and hear could include a Jeff Wall portal, a megaphone tutorial, invisible painting making and meditations between guitar and Kaosillator Pad. Vickers and MacQuarrie have been involved in making improvised sound together since 2014, this will mark their first exploration combining performance art and music.

This event will also mark the last day of the exhibition Surrogates.

Watch the performance.

Griffin Art Projects and Royal Bank Collection are coming together to present an intimate discussion with RBC Assistant Curator Corrie Jackson and the collectors from our current exhibition, Surrogates.

Brigitte Freybe, Jane Irwin and Leonardo Lara all had an active life in art and design before they came to collect contemporary art. This conversation takes their common interest as a starting point to discuss their first ventures into collecting, the greatest chases, the ones that got away and the experience of living with a collection of, and passion for, contemporary art.

Corrie Jackson joined RBC as the Assistant Art Curator in 2014, overseeing the management of the RBC Corporate Art Collection. Previ­ously she worked at the Justina M. Barnicke at the University of Toronto, at Sotheby’s Canada, and as an independent curator. She finished her Masters in Visual Studies, Curatorial Practice at the University of Toronto in 2014 with a focus on contemporary art and modern and con­temporary Canadian artists.

Please join Helga Pakasaar this coming Tuesday, for a tour of this inaugural exhibition.

WOOSH: From Two North Shore Collections

The exhibition brings together a breadth of contemporary artworks ranging from minimalist and conceptually-inflected approaches to social practices. Last day of the exhibition is this coming Saturday January 16, 12-5pm

This is a CASV members-only event.

The Contemporary Art Society of Vancouver will meet at Griffin Art Projects for a tour of our inaugural exhibition.

The FANS Society has been hosting an annual arts awards event, to celebrate the vibrant and accomplished North Shore artistic community, since 1995. Over the years the evening has taken on many varied formats and provided the society with the opportunity to:

– Recognize and honour nationally renowned artists who are North Shore residents. – Award arts grants to innovative local artists. – Showcase the diversity of artistic talent based on the North Shore. – Fundraise for the FANS Capital Fund.

General Admission $30.00

Photo: Don S. Williams grant recipient Maria Josenhans and FANS award winner Cori Creed

Dear friends,

Please join us for the opening of Griffin Art Projects

Griffin Art Projects is a new art space in North Vancouver that showcases contemporary art exhibitions, primarily from private collections. The inaugural exhibition has been drawn from the collections of Brigitte and Henning Freybe and Kathleen and Laing Brown, longstanding collectors and arts philanthropists from the North Shore who have been collecting art for over forty years.

Griffin Art Projects is founded by the Freybe family.