Basement

Provenance:
Acquired from Patrick Painter Editions, 1998

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Rennie Collection, Vancouver

Exhibitions:
Oakville Galleries, Roy Arden, Selected Works 1985 - 2000, February 2 - April 7, 2002, traveling to VOX Centre de l'image contemporaine, Montreal, August 29 - October 27, 2002
Notes:
Roy Arden's photographs of Vancouver have documented the changing city in large-scale format since the early 1990s, and he is one of the city's most respected artists, contributing to Vancouver's reputation as an important centre for photography.

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Works from Arden's 1996 Basement Series are perhaps his most personal, exploring as they do Arden's own cast-off belongings - and those of his neighbouring tenants - that fill the basement of his apartment block. The images appear as if just discovered in a modern archaeological dig - objects yet to be entombed, but still just as forgotten as ancient artifacts, as the speed of casting off is much faster in modern times. The 20 images in Basement are half in black and white, half in colour, each depicting the cluttered objects in a clinical, documentary manner. Objects repeat from print to print, suggesting a panoramic approach on Arden's part. Identifiable objects like frying pans and long-play records, once likely prized for their newness, have lost their fleeting consumer appeal, a consideration to which Arden has always been sensitive to in his work.