Culture: VIFF, the Miracle Worker & Scott McFarland

Image by: BCBusiness

Scott McFarland
The highly composed photographs of Scott McFarland are part of what’s become known as Vancouver’s “thing” in the contemporary art world: documentary photography. The scene launched with NE Thing Co. Ltd. back in the late ’60s and gained popularity with Jeff Wall, Roy Arden and Ian Wallace in the 1980s and ’90s. McFarland’s work focuses on the urban/suburban environments of his native Vancouver – everything from manicured lawns to zoos to boathouses (his Boathouse with Moonlight, 2003, is pictured right) – and comments on the relationship between nature and civilization. This VAG exhibit features 80 works from McFarland’s oeuvre, taken from the past seven years. Oct. 3 to Jan. 3, Vancouver Art Gallery, vanartgallery.bc.ca

In Theatre

The Miracle Worker
When playwright William Gibson died last November at the age of 94, he left several well-received works to his name – but none more acclaimed than The Miracle Worker. His 1959 adaptation of the story about a blind and deaf child, Helen Keller, and her teacher, Anne Sullivan, won the 1960 Tony Award for best play and later became an Academy Award-winning movie (both productions starred Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke). This Vancouver production, directed by Meg Roe, has Margot Berner and Emma Grabinsky alternating as Keller and Anna Cummer as Sullivan. Oct. 10 to 31, Vancouver Playhouse, vancouverplayhouse.com

Vancouver International Film Festival
Contemporary art is also the subject of U.K. filmmaker and art critic Ben Lewis’s new film The Great Contemporary Art Bubble, part of the VIFF series Follow the Money. Lewis spent 2008 documenting the über-wealthy’s infatuation with post-Second World War artists – stars such as Damien Hirst, Francis Bacon and Jeff Koons (whose Hanging Heart is pictured left) – and how, flush with cash, they’d overbid on new acquisitions of an artist to increase the value of existing holdings. Between 2003 and 2008, contemporary art sold by auction house Sotheby’s went from $218 million to $1.3 billion a year. Now, post-global-financial-collapse, the con-art market is in free fall. Lewis is unsympathetic: “Much of the art was repetitive, mass produced and commercial. Collectors bought it for investment and stored vast amounts of it in warehouses. All you ever read about were new record prices and the special privileges society gave to art and artists for being exploited by some of the world’s richest people.” Oct. 1 to Oct. 16, various venues, viff.org

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