Hank Bull: Connexion (review)

The concept of archives has surfaced in various programs of galleries and artist-run centres in Vancouver as these institutions investigate art histories in different ways. These initiatives have ranged from web-based projects like the Belkin Art Gallery’s Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixtiesand Beginning with the Seventies: Activism, Art & Archivesto on-site exhibitions such as the Satellite Gallery’s presentation about Vancouver’s Mainstreeters art gang and Western Front’s Past Is Prologueand Independent Archives Week, which the Front co-hosted with grunt gallery and VIVO. ¹Together these galleries have invited audiences into their institutional archives, hosted exhibits and events that highlighted historical works produced by resident artists, and advocated funding for the conservation and preservation of those works.

Curators Joni Low and Pan Wendt, along with the artist, performer, curator, pianist, documentor, advocate, and ultimate connector of people and ideas Hank Bull, are doing something more expansive in Hank Bull: Connexion, recently exhibited at the Burnaby Art Gallery in Burnaby, B.C. ²Neither a retrospective nor a solo show in the usual sense, Connexionoffers the viewer access to both the life and work of Hank Bull, as if from the starting point of his personal fonds, found in a gallery rather than an archives. One of the principles behind the organization of this exhibition was to demonstrate a contrast between museum and studio, public and private. The artist and curators chose objects and works from Bull’s home and studio that reference aesthetic themes, political philosophies, and key collaborations that have been important throughout Bull’s lifetime. Their choices are especially fascinating when considered alongside writings on personal archives and the expression of the self, including those published recently in the pages of this journal. ³

Bull has a long history within Vancouver’s art milieu: he was an early member of the Western Front and the founder of Centre A, and he is a current board member of the Vancouver Art Gallery and a beloved long-time community advocate and host of art auctions and other events held around the city. This exhibition is a rare opportunity to see original and nearly obsolete telecommunications media and technologies, with videotapes, posters, sculpture, documents, objects, props, and personal objects made or collected by Bull over a period of more than 30 years, from the late 1960s to today. Through the displays and juxtapositions of this material, the curators of Connexionexplore ideas around the creation of self, community, and art-making as a lived life.

Documents are a major component of this exhibition, and they are presented in banker’s boxes on shelves in the main room of the exhibition space. Each box is inventoried with reference numbers and file descriptions; one can perceive an original order through the categories of information represented on the box labels. Research is encouraged, and is rewarded with the promise of discovering additional connections, as referenced by the exhibition’s title. The boxes are placed beside a large, round wooden table with four chairs, inviting the viewer to sit down, open them, and go through the folders. They are surrounded by framed works and pieces from the many projects referenced in the files. Document forms include personal correspondence, ephemera, school compositions, scripts, photographs, and posters. They present evidence of the making and development of a life of ideas, conversation, and networked art-making through collaborative projects, trips around the world, and performances. Bull, like the group who founded the Western Front, deliberately kept everything. Today, this material provides multiple contexts for and entries into the history of the objects and artworks displayed around it. Low sees these papers as presenting evidence of the different lateral ways of thinking, non-linear and non-hierarchical, that are represented in Bull’s work. ⁴

The Burnaby Art Gallery is housed in a former residence known as the Ceperley House. Connexionamplifies this homey, intimate atmosphere by making viewers feel as if they have been invited...