Home and Away: Ian Wallace

At the age of 10, Ian Wallace moved with his family from the interior of BC to West Vancouver, where he developed his interest in becoming an artist by sketching local views in the community. It was at this time and in this place where his life-long admiration for the “modern” painting of West Vancouver artist Gordon Smith began, when Wallace saw new work displayed at the New Design Gallery on Marine Drive. While Wallace was a student at Inglewood Middle School, he attended a presentation by B.C. Binning with his class. Wallace, who went on to become one of the internationally-renowned founders of the Vancouver School of photoconceptualism, credits these early experiences in West Vancouver as being seminal to his development as an artist. This exhibition begins with a selection of drawings and watercolours from the artist’s youth, which are presented in tandem with new photographs taken from the same vantage points within the community. This hyper-local work is presented together with Wallace’s 2014 work from his ongoing Hotel Series, created and exhibited in Baden-Baden, Germany. Despite being devised far away from West Vancouver, this series has strong ties to the community of Wallace’s youth. Place plays a crucial role in this exhibition, with an unstated acknowledgement that home is never far away, regardless of one’s physical location in the world.