"This Old Town', Ryan Lundy's first solo art exhibition opens October 23rd at The Gam Gallery located at 110 E Hastings St. with opening reception running from 7-11pm. The show will remain up until November 22nd and is featured as part of both "The Heart of The City Festival" and "The Eastside Culture Crawl".
Ryan Lundy is a veteran screen printer of ten years, having worked in several shops in western Canada dealing both in large scale textile print production and small scale textile and art print production. His artistic practice involves screen printing photographs on paper and wood panel using a halftone technique similar to that found in newspaper printing historically. This technique is well matched with Lundy's interest in archival photographs that glimpse into the past, reminding us of the immensity of space and time between then and now and the ways in which the city exists as a palimpsest with the erasure and accumulation of built forms and the multiple ways in which we inhabit them. Focusing on an extremely localized area around his studio building in the Downtown Eastside, Lundy's current series, This Old Town, features images of Vancouver from the early 20th century, including the development of the now defunct interurban tram lines or historic moments such as the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Connaught in 1912, marked by a grand topiary arch that recalls the Japanese presence in the area at that time. Many of the scenes included in the series may seem a world apart from the Vancouver of today but by placing oneself in the spaces that the prints depict, our ties to the past may become more tangible.