Group Search (Art in the Library).

Curated by Lorna Brown Vancouver Public Library Central Branch

Through spring 2008 the central branch of the Vancouver Public Library will be home to one of the most interesting group shows in the city. Curated by Lorna Brown, Group Search is the product of a collaboration between the City of Vancouver Public Art Program, the VPL Central Branch and the Other Sights for Artists' Projects Association. The two-phase exhibition includes artwork by Jillian Pritchard and Dan Starling, Marina Roy and Kathy Slade this fall, and Antonia Hirsch, Laiwan and Mark Soo in early 2007. The works and the show as a whole make for a successful integration of contemporary art into the public realm of the library.

Contemporary art's intersection with public art tends to create two kinds of projects: somewhat staid presentations of the artist's vision in permanent sculptural form in which the concept of the work is often overshadowed by concerns about materials, placement and public reaction, or artist-initiated public intervention works that are often performative, most likely temporary and generally not institutionally sanctioned. Group Search strikes a fruitful balance somewhere in between. The works in the exhibition are neither immutable nor ephemeral; they are temporarily sanctioned companions to the various publics, systems and regulations that define their host.

Roy's work Trappings (2006) consists of a series of interventions in the library's stacks: she inserts sweetly rendered drawings into the spines of classic volumes and makes reference to her own extensive research practices through. She documents each book she selects, including the call number, publishing information and a condition report.) Encompassing de Sade, Melville, and the writings of Martha Rosler, among many others, Roy's gestures provide the reader with small clues that track the artist's progress through the millions of books in the catalogue. The work plays with systems of authority and information, revealing Roy's own personal organizing method, one filled with personal associations and a bid, however subtle, for one-on-one communion with the anonymous reader. Executed with the approval of library staff, Roy's intervention comes with an institutional blessing, but it also plants a surreptitious seed: what other interventions in the catalogue might we--and they--be missing?

Pritchard and Starling also play with hidden narratives. Intrigued by the curatorial processes involved in the rotating, often seasonal displays in the library that highlight books of special interest (for Halloween, Asian Heritage Month, Hanukkah and so on), the two artists create their ...