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THE OPENING is all about introducing the fascinating, quirky and wonderful people working in and around the visual arts in Vancouver. Each week, we'll feature an artist, collective, curator or administrator to delve deep into who and what makes art happen! |
What began as a participatory learning space with the artist collective NOART at Emily Carr Institute has now evolved into 221A Artist Run Centre, a studio space and gallery in the heart of Chinatown. With a mandate to encourage a dialogue between contemporary art and critical design, 221A has been host to a variety of emerging artists, designers, curators and architects with work ranging from reflections on the hook to merkins, mooncakes to plastic photography.
It all started in 2005 when Executive Director Brian McBay and Board Vice President Michelle Fu created NOART with several ECI classmates and held their first pact ‘In the Moment.’ Pacts are one-night non-juried exhibitions based around a theme. They were searching for “a more horizontal learning environment where we could all learn from each other,” recalls McBay. “It was an attempt to be more ambitious with what we were learning in school.” The pact allowed the students to showcase a project for the first time or multiple times to a wider variety of people, in particular those not in the same discipline.
In 2007 they started searching for a permanent place so the group could be taken out of ECI and into the community at large. After searching for a year, the space at 221 East Georgia Street was found on a random walk through Chinatown in 2008, and NOART started to take a new shape – one that would require a name change. At first, that process was overshadowed by the renovation task on their hands – previously a grocery store, the space had been unoccupied for a year and the landlord had already begun to tear things apart. One of the biggest changes that really made the space special for Fu, McBay and the rest of NOART was the removal of the drywall covering the brick framework of the building. When they finally stepped in and took the lease, they felt lucky to already have some competence with tools and basic construction. But the learning curve was steep as they grappled with wiring, lighting, heating, plumbing - you name it, they did it.
As the physical changes came together, the name change from NOART to 221A occurred. A number of different options were floated around, but the favourites were centered around the location of the space itself. Ultimately 221A won out (the A at the end was an old way to indicate a unit; the condos upstairs used to be 221B), in part because it was so bland, “a frame more than anything,” according to Fu. Between the plain branding and the so-called bland name, they were attempting to provide anyone who ran programming at 221A a blank canvas from which to work. McBay wanted to “give back to the space rather than take it over with an enterprise.”
When I ask why they chose to operate under the artist run centre model, a vaunted institution in Vancouver, McBay explains that it had a lot to do with money, both the lack of it and a disinterest in making it. For him, money “dilutes the agency of showing certain types of work, and the type of work we want to show is not aligned with market value.” An artist run centre allows them more autonomy than a space like a commercial gallery that is essentially controlled and dictated by the art market. Artist run centres and other cultural non-profits have often depended on government grants to stay afloat, but with the slash in arts funding, 221A was born into a situation where they would have to figure out how to fund themselves, independent of the previous grant framework.
221A’s operation is almost entirely funded by the 15 studio spaces in the back of the building. The rent on the various space types pay for operating costs and allow the front gallery space to be used for whatever programming they choose. Additional revenue opportunities are in the works. Last year they began a curatorial residency program that invites both professional and emerging curators to put together exhibitions related to their design and contemporary art mandate. Coming up in September is an exhibit curated by Francisco Fernando Granados featuring the work of 7 performance artists doing non-performance work. In October Cayley Malo will curate an exhibition of work by Vancouver is Awesome’s own Gary Hubbs. And in November, OCW Magazine curates a group show around design as content. That is just a small taste of what’s to come at this artist collective turned artist run centre. Or as McBay describes it to his family, a “tiny contemporary art museum.”
For more information on 221A, please visit their website at 221a.ca or follow them on twitter @221Aweeee.
All images courtesy Michelle Fu and 221A.
