The Cheaper Show brings a big art show for a small price

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      One word to describe this Saturday’s (June 26) ninth annual Cheaper Show is big—too big for just Vancouver. The single-night event supports emerging artists and also makes art accessible for younger buyers through a flat fee for all artwork—this year $200.

      Over the past nine years, it has grown to more than double its original size. The show now boasts 400 pieces of art by 200 artists and will be held in the expansive space of Gastown’s W2 Storyeum. And in 2011, to celebrate its 10th anniversary, creative director Graeme Berglund and executive director Steve Rio will expand it to Toronto.

      “Ideally, we want to find the same crew in Toronto that want to do the same sort of thing and just pass it to them,” Rio says. He and Berglund are talking to the Straight at a coffee shop near Storyeum. “We’ll start the foundation for them and let them create their own thing. It would be really cool for us to take something that was born and raised in Vancouver and see it happen in Toronto.”

      This year, here in Vancouver, the duo found it difficult to find a venue large enough to accommodate all the art and what they estimate will be close to 10,000 viewers.

      “It’s one of our biggest challenges every year because our crowd is growing exponentially,” says Berglund, whose first show featured 60 pieces of art at the Sugar Refinery in 2001. “It’s incredibly difficult to find a 30,000-square-foot room in this city. It’s actually nonexistent, other than this.”

      The Cheaper crew—composed of Berglund, Rio, and nine other artists from the East Vancouver community—and a dozen volunteers have been renovating the space since May.

      Under the direction of environment designer Adam Fryatt and live-production manager Danny Vermette, the new floors are now prepared for the influx of people, and the freshly painted walls are set to be covered in paintings, photography, and drawings.

      Rio explains that the renovations allowed them to expand the space to double the size that it was for last year’s show. About 100 volunteers will also be helping out Saturday night.

      Seemingly unaffected by an economic recession and recent provincial arts-funding cuts, the show has reached an unprecedented size this year.

      “I think it ignores the economy in that sense,” says Berglund.

      “Generally, it’s younger people coming out to buy art,” adds Rio. “The economy didn’t really hit them that hard. We’ve gotten a lot of sponsorships, but we’ve really sort of figured out our own thing. We’re not looking for any money from the government at all.”

      The Cheaper Show attempts to unify the visual-arts community, drawing from a smorgasbord of styles and experience.

      “Vancouver is such a small, under-developed cultural city,” Rio says. “There are amazing things happening, but as far as institutionally and structurally, there’s not a lot of support. So it really needs these kinds of things that bring people together.”

      “Few events happen that take a big survey of the community,” collage artist Jessica Bell, whose work will appear in the show, tells the Straight over the phone. “There should be more shows like it.”

      It was that need that motivated Berglund to create the Cheaper Show nine years ago. Struggling for representation in local galleries and frustrated by their rejections, Berglund and two other emerging artists—Steve “Breadman” Cole and Syx Langeman—decided to start their own show.

      It consciously contrasted other gallery shows in a number of ways: it was for one night only, it served beer, and it was never held in a traditional gallery setting. Art was presented as accessible and affordable to a young audience.

      “We aren’t devaluing art, but trying to create community and support,” says Berglund. “It provides a nice entrance point for young people to realize that art isn’t as inaccessible as they thought.”

      Now, the Cheaper Show’s name has spread to art communities around the world, prompting 950 artists to submit applications from 200 different cities. With so much talent and a mandate to have 75 percent local artists, choosing the artists was an arduous process.

      “We just drew straws,” said Berglund, with a smile. “No, that is a bold-faced lie. The two things that we stand by are diversity and quality of work. This year I think we’ve gone above and beyond.”

      Over the years, the price of the pieces has risen from $75 to $200, but both Berglund and Rio are set on maintaining the “cheap” part of the title, where it will stay relative to the economy.

      “I think that a comparable price point is that it costs about as much as a pair of designer jeans,” said Berglund. “For a lot of people in their 20s, it’s like half a week’s pay kind of thing, so it becomes quite manageable for them to afford possibly their first piece of art.”

      Although the artists make a sacrifice selling their work for less than its potential value, they agree that it’s a tradeoff for being part of the experience.

      “It’s a give-and-take relationship,” says Nathalee Paolinelli, who will be exhibiting her paintings. “It’s nice to be promoted like this. When you realize what it’s about, to be part of such a unique experience, you don’t regret selling your work for less.”

      This Saturday, big names such as Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Paul Paper will appear alongside emerging artists. When asked what to expect, Berglund and Rio look at each other and lean in.

      “Super high energy,” says Rio. “Everyone’s invited. You grab a beer; you see some incredible art that you can afford for maybe the first time in your life. It’s a one night event. It’s first come, first served.”

      Berglund puts both hands on the table. “It’ll be pure, heart-breaking mayhem.”

      To give you a clearer idea of what’s in store, the Straight talked to a cross-section of the featured artists you can expect to see:


      Jessica Bell's Channel (2010).

      Jessica Bell

      Vancouver makes for a great collage, according to Jessica Bell. The Vancouver-based artist uses a mixture of materials, including acrylic, paper, and linens, for her pieces. To her, the city is a series of elements overlapping and intersecting with each other. “My work is a record of the landscape from one who’s immersed in it,” says Bell. “It’s about my city, my inhabited environment, and how I identify with it.”

      With a degree in art history from the University of Calgary, Bell tries to see geographical places through different eyes. She will be exhibiting three pieces at the Cheaper Show: Space With Sunlight, Channel, and Harbour.

      In Space With Sunlight, Bell puts swaths of fabric, paper, and thread on linen paper. A bright circle of cloth overlaps a black piece against a white backdrop. Both Channel and Harbour are part of a larger group of paintings depicting large bodies of water. Black pieces of fabric dominate, blurring the lines between land and water.

      Sarah Gee

      The artist describes her art as “hard-edged geometry”. “It’s a blast of colour,” she says. “When I first saw work from the ’60s or ’70s, I felt like I was hit by a brick. I realized I had to do it—now’s the time.” That was a year and a half ago and Gee hasn’t looked back. She says her lack of formal training has led to “a lot of happy accidents”.

      Her multimedia pieces feature bright colours and geometric designs. Inspired by minimalism and Russian constructivism, the works that she will exhibit depict regular patterns and symmetry. Two are in the show, one is a series of brightly coloured concentric circles, the second a more complex kaleidoscope of shapes dominated by oranges and yellows.

      Lee Hutzulak

      The Vancouver-based artist says his work is live performance art. He improvises his figurative drawings, an artistic process that stems from his other love: music. “I don’t sketch beforehand,” Hutzulak says. “If something screws up, I’ll just white it out. It’s more organic in the way things evolve.”

      Hutzulak says that he draws the relationships between people through facial expressions, physique, and placement. He balances points of high density with big open spaces. At the Cheaper Show, the Alberta College of Art grad will present a poster he drew for the Vancouver performance of Phil Minton’s Feral Choir. The drawing depicts the choir as cartoony characters in fluorescent inks. The tallest character reaches to about half way up the page, while the rest of the paper is left in white, open space.

      Nathalee Paolinelli

      Paolinelli’s paintings exist in the realm of pop abstraction. A graduate of Emily Carr University of Art and Design, she focuses on layering colours in a minimalist style. Paolinelli is one of four artists commissioned to create a piece for the event and the venue.

      “It’s going to be a hanging sculpture,” Paolinelli says. “It’s sort of like a solar system hanging from the ceiling.”

      She will also show three paintings at the Cheaper Show that are part of her “Ovals and Lines” studies. Created over nine months, these paintings are dominated by a thick line. In each, the line is curled into a different form and colour against a backdrop of various shapes and colours; in one, an orange squiggle overlaps a black polka-dot grid.

      Kevin Romaniuk

      The Emily Carr University of Art and Design graduate’s photographs present a dire view of suburban culture and the male role within it. Romaniuk, who works from his studio in East Vancouver, will be showing three photographs at the Cheaper Show. Under the Bridge depicts a man with his back towards the audience, knee-deep in water. He appears trapped as he stands under a bridge, facing a cluster of support beams. In the second photograph, Pitchfork, a single pitchfork stands upright on a mound of ice against a black night sky. Trucks at Sunrise shows two large trucks, immobile against a heavily wooded space. A young man stands beside them, looking out at the viewer.

      “It’s where I came from,” said Romaniuk, referring to his own upbringing—the inspiration for his photography. “So you always start with yourself and what you know.”

      His work has been shown in New York and Paris. The Cheaper Show will be his first exhibition in Vancouver in a couple of years.

      Comments

      1 Comments

      Emily Carr

      Jun 24, 2010 at 9:44am

      42 of the 200 artists featured are graduates and students of Emily Carr University of Art + Design!