The Place of Objects

An eclectically curated collection reveals a kaleidoscopic portrait of the many and diverse talents working in and around BC’s art scene over the past forty years.

As a musician, performer, activist, collector, John David Lawrence has long held an important, if underrecognized, position in Vancouver’s creative community. After settling in the city in the mid-1980s he participated in and advocated for performance spaces and artist-run centres, building deep roots in the community, and since 2000 he has been the proprietor of DoDa Antiques. Over several decades, Lawrence amassed an idiosyncratic personal collection that includes ceramics, Indigenous art, jewelry, folk art, photography, and plant life. Through the stories of some of these pieces and of Lawrence himself, as well as extensive new photography of his holdings, The Place of Objects illuminates the rich cultural production that is often overlooked by Vancouver’s established artistic community.

Released to coincide with a Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition of 300 ceramic works from Lawrence’s collection, The Place of Objects opens with an engrossing conversation between scholar Dr. Michael J. Prokopow and Lawrence that uses specific objects and the diverse areas of his collections to reveal Lawrence’s enigmatic biography and ponder the broader cultural obsession with things. The second half of the book features texts by artists, scholars, friends, and curators who highlight objects of art with historical, cultural, or personal significance. The publication also includes a visual index—a two-dimensional genogram of the objects in his collection—to map the tentacular threads that have informed Lawrence’s collecting practices over the decades.

Contributors:

Glenn Alteen, Daina Augaitis, Nicholas Bell, Allan Collier, Diana Freundl, Donna Hagerman, Richard Hill, Mandy Ginson, Jenn Jackson, Diane Jillings, Hilary Letwin, Carol Mayer, Siobhan McCracken Nixon, Edmond Melnychuk, Michael J. Prokopow, Esther Rausenberg, Stephanie Rebick, among others.

Artists:

Mollie Carter, John Charnetski, Stanley Clarke, Hans Coper, Olea Davis, Walter Dexter, Beau Dick, Denny Dixon, Pat Dixon, Sandra Dolph, Axel Ebring, Gathie Falk, Ken Foster, Ken Gerberick, Herta Gerz, Kathleen Hamilton, Frances Hatfield, Richard Hawbolt, Michael Henry, Gillian Hodge, Robin Hopper, Ben Houstie, Henry Hunt, Gordon Hutchens, Avery Huyghe, Tam Irving, Elsie John, Charmian Johnson, Thomas Kakinuma, Bob Kingsmill, Zoltan Kiss, Roy Kiyooka, Zeljko Kujundzic, Sam Kwan, Corey Larocque, Heinz Laffin, David Lambert, Laura Wee Láy Láq, Bernard Leach, Janet Leach, Glenn Lewis, Luke Lindoe, Des Loan, Brian Lynch, Mad Dog, Edmond Melnychuk, Grace Melvyn, Joseph Mihalic, Santo Mignosa, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Ellen Neel, Gailan Ngan, Wayne Ngan, Oraf, Leonard Osborne, Mary Osborne, Davide Pan, Randy Pandora, Bill Reid, John Reeve, Bill Rennie, Hilda Ross, Debra Sloan, Russell Smith, Ian Steele, Roger Stribley, Gordon Thorlaksson, Ron Tribe, Hiro Urakami, Jan Wade, Jean Marie Weakland, among others.