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Vancouver Art Book Fair 2025: from zines to monographs, a celebration of books as art
Vancouver Art Book Fair
When: July 4-6 Where: Roundhouse Community Arts & Recreation Centre, 181 Roundhouse Mews, Vancouver Info:
In a new book, Cathy Busby documents her attempts to connect with her spouse, Garry Neill Kennedy, during their final years together.
A Vancouver-based artist, curator and writer with a PhD in communications, Busby has often created art using collections of materials, such as public apologies, corporate slogans, and portraits. Kennedy, who passed away in 2021, was a renowned conceptual artist credited with making the Nova Scotia School of Art and Design an internationally respected institution.
They had been doing big wall paintings together for years. To help Kennedy through his dementia, Busby embarked on a project that would recall their artistic collaborations.
'It was about keeping something going, and creating familiarity,' Busby said. 'And about maintaining dignity through the process of his decline.'
She began by painting the walls of his room in a care home the same white as their home. Then, when he moved to a new facility, she began a text-painting on the wall of his bathroom that read 'I Wonder,' a phrase that he often repeated.
After Kennedy passed away, she began working on what would become I Wonder: Art + Care + Dementia.
I Wonder: Art + Care + Dementia is among the books that will be on display at this year's Vancouver Art Book Fair (VABF). The books range from photocopied 'zines to DIY zines to elaborately bound museum catalogues. Along with a chance to peruse and purchase these volumes, visitors can engage directly with the artists, editors, and publishers behind the books.
'I think what's exciting about the fair is that, though the work is grounded in visual art, that extends many places,' said Jonathan Middleton, co-manager of VABF.
'The interests of a large museum and someone photocopying a zine aren't always the same. But there's a lot of crossover there, too.'
The fair features over 100 local and international exhibitors. Among these are 29 new participants, including Odd One Out, Hong Kong's first illustration, graphic arts, and printmaking gallery; Now Place, a San Francisco-based art space and independent publisher that empowers emerging artists from the Asian diaspora; and Nothing New Projects, an independent risograph print and publishing studio based in Ottawa.
Vancouver-based artists launching new publications include Hazel Meyer, whose A Queer History of Joyce Wieland is a culmination of the author's years-long research into the legacy of the pioneering Canadian artist.
'Content-wise, on one end of the scale you'll find exhibition catalogues or monographs or anthologies of more theoretical writing about art, maybe mixed with illustration,' Middleton said.
'And on the other side of the equation there are artists who are expressing their ideas and personal experiences and politics. The zine movement, for example, has a very long history and connection to activism. And there is a long history of artists using the book as a medium, as they might use canvas or clay or video.'
Middleton credits the New York Art Book Fair, which was first held in 2006, with launching 'this global movement.' The Vancouver Art Book Fair, the first of its kind in Canada, launched in 2012 — two years before the closing of Oscar's Art Books, an emporium of visual delights missed by many longtime Vancouverites, including Middleton.
'I was hired there as a student, and my job was to put their entire stock into inventory. There were thousands and thousands of books. That was a very unglorious way to learn about art books.'
Busby says that for her, an art book is one in which every aspect of the design and contents add to the final product.
'For example, I thought very seriously about the cover of I Wonder: Art + Care + Dementia. It's a bit of a puzzle. It's a photo of green tape on the wall. You have to get into the book to understand what it is. However, I'm very big on giving clues. I don't want people to look at the work and go, 'What the heck is this?''
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