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.

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.