 shelter 6281 First World Problems
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 Sometimes the irony is overwhelming. This is under a bridge nearby. A couple of times now it's been cleared of its occupants and trash and then film crews came in and remade it as... a homeless camp. Complete with graffiti applied to the walls and then painted over when shooting wraps. So it will be nice and tidy when people come home. Well, somebody made buckets of money, anyway. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  shelter 2323 Golden Hour
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 This was a glorious late-spring day with the cottonwood fluff flying around. Vancouver has a long history of people building houseboats and living on them, untaxed and paying only moorage fees. Recently that spirit has moved inland; we have a significant population of people living out of campers, vans, and repurposed school buses. Nobody pays much attention to land adjoining the railways, so that's a popular spot to park. There's plenty of speculation about what caused Vancouver's impossible housing prices. It's become clear that through the port comes a river of fentanyl and other chems, and the laundered money from their sale is parked in high-end real estate, driving up the prices for the most expensive properties. This trickles on down to ordinary people facing million-dollar prices for the most ordinary of houses. Houseboats and buses look damn good in comparison. There's been a slight reduction in the rate of increase of housing prices and already the developers are lamenting the end of the Golden Age of Vancouver Real Estate. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  shelter 1934 For Optimal User Experience
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 What do you do with all the shit from a tent city? There's now a hierarchy among people doing urban camping. The lucky few get into one of the completely illegal and unsanctioned tent cities, which the city clearly says are Very Bad but nevertheless provide portable toilets, some police services, and some public health services. Everyone else is shit out of luck; there are nowhere near enough shelter spaces, and what exists is overcrowded, unhealthy, and dangerous. People who can't get into a tent city hate the people who do, and so go to some lengths to make them look bad; consequently the property crime around tent cities increases considerably until the people in the tent cities decide they need to do something about it, and start their own kind of policing. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  comfort 5617 Step One
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 Found on the church steps one morning: a syringe, a cup used to distribute an opiate agonist (methadone, Methadose, Metadol, etc), and a cigarette butt. There's a lot of twelve-stepping around here. It's very helpful to some, but it is prescribed as a panacea, especially by conservative and neo-liberal governments (after all, it has the sheen of religion about it). Recent court decisions have curbed the tendency of service providers to require twelve-stepping before they will consider providing services, but there's still that desire to require contrition and public self-flagellation as a prerequisite to science-based treatment. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  comfort 0510 Flavour Country
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 Vancouver is a leader in harm reduction strategies around use of substances, but it's an uphill battle. Every time there's a conservative or neo-liberal government at any level, there's a tug of war featuring the theory that if you legislate against something it will stop happening. Most egregious when it comes to fentanyl and such, but you see it in less dramatic ways too: because of the port and the industrial zoning a lot of truckers pass through here and sometimes park overnight, and since there are no facilities for them, they dump their waste on the curb. The city refuses to consider building facilities cause they passed a law, so obviously that is going to prevent it happening. Mind the Crap. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  comfort 0485 Stoned Henge
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 As a friend of mine used to say, "Well, if you're on welfare, you can either be miserable every day of the month, or be messed up and happy for a couple of days and then miserable for the rest of the month ... do the math." Learn more about the artist and this show here.  sex 9287 :Heart Eyes:
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 Violence against sex workers, especially trans sex workers, is common. Calling the police is pointless, of course; by the time they arrive (if they come at all) any harm would have been done. Occasionally you happen across a little pile of personal items and wonder if their owner made it through the night OK. This is the exact stretch of the track where the pig farmer serial killer abducted women. I won't mention his name but it's easy to find if you're curious. In hindsight it's hard not to imagine that the police mostly ignored it happening because oh well, another dead Indian hooker, so what? Learn more about the artist and this show here.  sex 1364 The Day Before the Fire
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 My immediate neighborhood is sex worker turf (cis and trans women). About a half block from here in direct line of sight was an old warehouse building that had been closed and stripped for demolition. Some of the women and also some junkies (or more politely, opiate users; around here it's likely it was fentanyl sold as heroin) were using the building. These clothes are most likely something one of the women threw away. On April 13 at 2 AM a massive fire destroyed the building completely in about an hour. Two people escaped, two didn't. We watched the whole thing nervously from a block away; if the wind had shifted we would have been in serious danger. This photo was shot a day before the fire, near the hole in the fence where people were coming and going from the building. Learn more about the artist and this show here.  place 8444 Touch My Butt
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 It's a polyglot culture, and most of us love that. But like many places in North America, we have a history of racial discrimination against immigrants. Chinese laborers were allowed in to build railroads and extract resources, but there were draconian legal barriers to prevent them settling here. During WWII, Japanese families—many of whom had lived here for generations and were citizens— were put in concentration camps, their properties seized and sold off. You still hear echoes of that when people talk about high housing prices, money laundering, and the easy availability of drugs. The Chinese reads "石厰" and "大地", Shíchǎng and Dàdì. Google suggests "Stone Factory" and "Earth.” Learn more about the artist and this show here.  place 4066 The Meth Dance
digital chromogenic print, approx 10.5" x 13.5” $95 This is a night view of an entry into the port lands. It's one of the places where trucks pick up to carry goods inland and, often enough, into the US. The port lands are owned and managed by the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, a Crown Corporation. Crown Corporations are legal entities created to manage businesses, theoretically for the benefit of all Canadians, but of course they are corporations and so their bottom line is the bottom line. They have no compunction about creating situations that are legal but socially harmful, like this intersection running trucks through a heavily traveled residential corridor. Often enough I'll see someone doing that weird shuffling dance across the intersection while trucks whiz past — there's really nowhere for them to stop and wait — and I dread the day I see it go all wrong. Learn more about the artist and this show here. |
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