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Stan Douglas
Spences Bridge, 2006

Colour Light jet print, mounted on 1/4" honeycomb aluminium
Image dimensions 79 x 195.5 cm  
Overall dimensions 122 x 236 cm
Unique trial proof
Image courtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York

ESTIMATE $27,000 - $35,000

Since the early 1980s Vancouver-based artist Stan Douglas (1960 - ) has produced some of contemporary art’s most groundbreaking media art based works.  A graduate of Emily Carr, his distinguished art practice includes photography, film, video, and installations. He has exhibited in major museums worldwide and in numerous international exhibitions, including three times at the Venice Biennale and Documenta in Kassel, Germany. In 2000 Douglas was one of the first nominees for the prestigious Hugo Boss Prize, and in 2006 he was awarded the inaugural Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award. His works are in major museum collections worldwide and have been the subject of many publications, most recently a monograph published by Dumont. This year a major survey on Douglas’ work will open at the Württembergischer Kunstverein and Staatsgalerie Stuttgart,Stuttgart, Germany. In 2006 Douglas was co-curator of the major exhibition Beyond Cinema: The Art of Projection, Films, Videos and Installations from 1963-2005 at Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin.

Douglas’s projects often involve extensive research into the historical and cultural conditions of places such as Berlin, Havana and Detroit, and he has continually been drawn to an interest in the colonialist histories of British Columbia. Douglas’ most recent production is a high-definition video installation, Klatsassin, with an accompanying series of photographs. This “dub” western is set in 1864 in BC’s Cariboo, and focuses on the hostilities between the Tsilhqot’in tribe and encroaching settlers seeking gold. The area of Spence’s Bridge is a contested site of one of these disputes. Today Spence’s Bridge is known for steelhead fishing and as the site of one of the oldest operating hotels in British Columbia. In 1863, Thomas Spence, the famous road builder, finished the Cariboo Highway by replacing the ferry with a wooden toll bridge across the Thompson River. After the gold rush, the town became a farming and railroad community, which it remains to this day. In a stunning, cinematic-format landscape image, Douglas documents and condenses the narratives that converged at this site, and re-charges the genre of landscape photography.