The Cinematheque

Private collections have played a crucial role in shaping the visual arts landscape of Vancouver and Canada, influencing institutional practices through legacy gifts and the individual support of artists and their work. 

Collectors are not monolithic—they are delightfully and thankfully idiosyncratic and unique in the work that they collect, and in their histories, attractions, concerns, and tastes. Starting with individual vision and passion, they respond to artists’ capacity to inspire and inform, as well as to the excitement of discovery.

This year, Griffin Art Projects in North Vancouver marks its 10th anniversary through two important exhibitions celebrating the collections and generous collectors who have been part of Griffin’s journey over its first decade as it fulfills its mandate to ​“examine the dynamics of private collections through exhibitions and public programs.”

In the spring, TENXTEN presented selected acquisitions from ten collections, featuring over seventy artists and providing a comprehensive exploration of collecting practices across Vancouver. This fall, for the second exhibition in the anniversary series, Griffin is delighted to present Christos Dikeakos: The Collectors, a suite of photographs of collectors with their collections. Revealing over a decade of research and visits with artists, patrons, curators, writers, and art lovers alike, these stunning portraits bring the collectors—whose efforts support artists, museums, gallerists, arts ecologies, and ultimately the public—from behind the scenes into the fore.

“The Collectors” film series, presented in collaboration with The Cinematheque, further celebrates, critiques, and reveals the art of collecting through three acclaimed and thought-provoking films: Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark, Jill Magid’s The Proposal, and Harold Crooks and Judd Tully’s The Melt Goes On Forever: The Art & Times of David Hammons. Dikeakos’s maximalist aesthetic, the question of what it means to hold an archive, and the debates surrounding artistic and cultural practices that query or resist acquisition, all inform this filmic journey.

Lisa Baldissera
Director, Griffin Art Projects