The Backlot
Exhibit ion continues to April 1.
Corey Adams\, Roy Arden\, Geoffrey Farmer\,
Angus Ferguson\, Jacob Gleeson\,
Mark Lewis\, Anne Ramsden\, Matthew
Robertson
The title of the exhibition\, The Backlot\, makes reference to the false façades typically found on the lots at major Hollywood studio s. Consisting of two or three walls and sometimes a roof\, the façades on t he backlot are essentially shells of what is imagined to exist inside—they provide the viewer with minimum visual information and little more. Though it does not actually have a true backlot of its own\, Vancouver can be unde rstood as having many of the same qualities of the traditional backlot. Cre ating illusion through the concealing and revealing of selected elements of a location is central to the filmmaking process\, and in the many films th at Vancouver has appeared as a backdrop\, it is rarely represented as itsel f\, but rather\, is used almost exclusively as a stand-in for any other cit y.
The artwork in this exhibition considers the ways in which the Van couver film industry disrupts and interrupts space within the city and aims to examine how the film industry's dependence on the fictional constructio n of places and locations is embedded in Vancouver's understanding (or misu nderstanding) of itself. Through video\, film\, photography\, and installat ion\, eight artists who have at some point lived in Vancouver explore how t he city is marketed and sold as a series of locations and services\, how it is presented as fictitious or generic\, and how this contributes to the ab sence of a sense of place in what is one of the most filmed cities in the w orld.
This project is curated by Sophie Brodovitch\, a candidate to t
he Masters Degree in Critical and Curatorial Studies at The University of B
ritish Columbia.
We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Alvin Ba
lkind Fund for Student Curatorial Initiatives\, the Department of Art Histo
ry\, Visual Art\, and Theory\, the Faculty of Arts\, and the Museum of Anth
ropology at The University of British Columbia.
http://www.belkin-galle
ry.ubc.ca