to show, to give, to make it be there: Expanded Literary Practices in Vancouver: 1954 – 1969.

If you are in Vancouver, this exhibition spanning Vancouver art and literature will be worth seeing. It runs January 9 – March 13 and its opening reception will be held at Geoffrey Farmer’s amazing project space Every Letter In The Alphabet (pdf – or see Facebook). Painting above is Michael Morris’ The Problem of Nothing, 1966.

The show is curated by writer Michael Turner at the SFU Gallery:

Taking its title from the opening editorial poem of bill bissett’s debut issue of blewointment magazine, this exhibition seeks to recognize an interdisciplinary literary activity that emerged in Vancouver in the 1950s, beginning with the collagist fiction of Malcolm Lowry, and proceeding through the 1960s in magazines, exhibitions, performances, and through the mails. The work in the exhibition, including bookworks, photography, music, paintings, sculptural assemblage, drawings and epistles, is contrasted with the “straight” literary modernism of the TISH newsletter and the “Georgia Straight Writing Supplement.” It is further contextualized by video screenings of Léonard Forest’s film In Search of Innocence (1963), which bissett addresses in his opening editorial, as well as Maurice Embra’s 1964 film portrait of bissett, Strange Grey Day This (1966). This exhibition is curated by SFU’s 2009-2010 Ellen and Warren Tallman Writer-in-Residence, Michael Turner.

The exhibition includes bill bissett, Tom Burrows, Judith Copithorne, Stan Douglas, Maxine Gadd, Gerry Gilbert, Ray Johnson, Roy Kiyooka, Gary Lee-Nova, Glenn Lewis, Malcolm Lowry, Michael Morris, Al Neil, Ian Wallace.

Above, front window of the Every Letter In The Alphabet space at 1875 Powell Street, Vancouver, where the show’s opening reception will be held.

This writing studio somehow comes as no suprise. James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and Dahl’s disturbing adult stories were written in this cramped, somewhat decrepit room. From The New York Times Magazine, 2006. Roald Dahl died in 1990; the house and studio are now a museum. Take a 3D tour of the shed here.

It was a surprise to see this little piece of Canadiana on Dahl’s door – apparently it was a longstanding family joke.