Walter Phillips Gallery

From Toronto I moved to Banff, AB to take the position of Curatorial Work-Study at the Walter Phillips Gallery at The Banff Centre. From a large city with countless galleries, events, performances and talks I arrived in a town where I found myself working for the only institution of cultural significance. Imagine working for an institution that is actively contributing critical material to the broader contemporary art dialogue, filled with people in studios furiously making art, large facilities at the ready that include print making, fibre, wood and metal, paper making and ceramics; but, it’s the only arts institution with national and international scope in a tiny town full of local residents who either do not care to understand what goes on at the Centre or consider it an unsightly hazard ruining a mountain landscape (the Centre is located half-way up one of the mountains surrounding the town) – of course there are also residents and outside visitors who attend the concerts and dance performances. Regardless, the Centre is isolated, no argument; this condition is internally acknowledged by the Visual Arts departmental who understands the website as the institution’s highest priority because it knows that hardly anyone is going to make the trek deep into a protected national park nestled in the mountains to go see an art exhibition or conduct studio visits. This is the anomaly of the Banff Centre – full open access combined with full isolation.

A view from the Centre

I wanted to share a couple of experiences I have had while at The Banff Centre for anyone who may not know what the heck this place is, or who are already interested and looking to apply to a visual arts program:

Artist Residencies: Two began at the same time as I started work at the Walter Phillips Gallery, with about 20 participating artists working diligently for seven weeks – both a Masters Class: The Object of Art and the Art as Object run by Ken Lum and a Thematic Residency: Towards Language run by Greg Staats. It was wonderful to see how their studios progressed from empty white rooms to dirty dishevelled spaces….although some stayed vacant and minimal, which is equally relevant. I really got a sense of how different people work and the sort of production that can be achieved here. It’s different than working at a fine arts degree in a university because people here are doing only what they want to be doing and are rather self-sufficient (what we can call ‘professionalized’). Some are younger artists who are in between a BFA and MFA while others like Cheryl L’Hirondelle, Adrian Stimson, and Alex Janvier are well established and respected artists.

Symposium: Painter House Conversations: I had the opportunity to sit in on a series of sessions that addressed issues surrounding the representation of aboriginal art (both historical and contemporary) in concern to the curatorial, educational and artistic work of participants from the UK, United States and Canada that included: Ryan Rice (Curator of Exhibitions and Programs, Institute of American Indian Arts), Jolene Rickard (Associate Professor, Art History and Visual Arts, Cornell University), Candice Hopkins (Aboriginal Curator-in-Residence, National Gallery of Canada), Jesse McKee (independent curator and recent graduate, Royal College of Art), Jean Fisher (tutor, Critical and Curatorial Studies, Royal College of Art) , Mark Nash (Professor and Head of the Department of Curating Contemporary Art, RCA), Paul Chaat Smith (Curator, National Museum of the American Indian), Adrian Stimson (artist and independent curator), and Kitty Scott (Director: Visual Arts, Banff International Curatorial Institute and the Walter Phillips Gallery). I was responsible for audio recording, additional note-taking and coffee-making during the week-long event, but however glamorous my official duties were, the opportunity to meet and chat with these professional curators was a privilege. In particular I got to meet with Jean Fisher who worked as an exhibition reviewer for Artforum in the 1980s to cover artists and exhibitions that were peripheral at the time because they included aboriginal artists, women and other social minorities, worked as an independent curator with these same peripheral artists out of political motivations and is founding editor of Third Text; she shared some of her experiences with me and offered some perspective on the significant changes in curatorial practice from the 1980s to today.

Curatorial Speakers’ Series – Nicolaus Schafhausen and Chris Eamon: This programme is organized by the Walter Phillips Gallery, so one of my occasional responsibilities is to provide introductions for these speakers and help with minor technical requirements during the talks. Since everyone simply ends up drinking and sharing suppers within normal circumstances during visits within the Banff Centre, interactions are made to be much more relaxed. I was initially very nervous when I was included to attend a supper at a gourmet restaurant as part of the Painter House Conversations’ events and was sat next to Schafhaussen, the Director of the Witte de With in Rotterdam (Netherlands), who had just arrived to give a talk as part of the Speakers’ Series. These are the exact sorts of circumstances that occur frequently while at the Centre. When you are placed within the same room/studio/supper table with artists, curators and writers, it is up to you to seize the experiences as opportunities to make connections, strike up conversations and learn something from these experts. The environment of the Banff Centre allows for these situations to happen for you and all you have to do is learn to take advantage.

International residents and workers: Before I arrived at the Banff Centre I didn’t have a true understanding of the sort of placement of the institution within the international art scene, basically expecting it to be filled exclusively with Canadians. The promotion of the institution as an international cultural hub is true as there are people who have travelled here for shorter residencies (4-7weeks) and longer 3-6 month contracts, like me, from around the world – England, Germany, Switzerland, United States, Sweden, Russia, Italy, Norway, Iceland – and those are just ones that I remember off-hand. I’ve certainly learned about different cultures more than I ever did living in Toronto or Vancouver, if only because here I can talk to people directly and become friends with them; they are not located within isolated communities keeping to themselves like in a larger city, but instead they are all working, drinking and suffering from isolation anxiety together.

Studio parties and pillow talk: always bonuses – and evidently where much of the interesting gossip and fun is exchanged.

The Banff Centre is a microcosm of the art scene in every Canadian city I’ve experienced: peripheral, confusing to the general public, internally focused and masturbatory with its sights set on international rather than local promotion. If embraced, the microcosm effect makes it easier to shake off feelings of isolation so one can learn to take advantage of the innumerable exceptional events that I have had the opportunity to experience here. I agree with what previous Banff Centre residents told me before I arrived, that “everyone must spend time here.” Whether it’s for the social connections, for the development of a continually shifting roster of artists to build curatorial ideas from, for meetings with international art and curatorial stars, for a network of artists interested in similar practices and philosophies, for the studios with facilitators that can assist in making ideas into realities, or for, of course, the epic nature and mountainscapes that surround you.

If anyone out there in XBLOG-reading-land is considering a residency or a work-study position at the Banff Centre, wondering about what sort of facilities are available (or not) for what you’d be interested in pursuing while you’re here, or are already on your way and want some information on the town of Banff and it’s bizarre quirks, I welcome any and all questions here on XBLOG!

Downtown Banff am