A sumptuous look at one of Canada's greatest living artists, to coincide with a major travelling retrospective of his photo-based work Over the past two decades, Roy Arden has become one of Canada's most respected artists. Along with Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham and Stan Douglas, his work has contributed to Vancouver's reputation as an important centre for contemporary photographic art. This major book looks at Arden's unique approach to photograph and his investigations into the modern city life. Arden's work can be divided into three periods. From 1981 to 1985 he produced Fragments, personal, lyrical colour portraits and urban details. The years 1985 to 1990 were dedicated to what Arden calls "meta-photography," art about photography and its history. For instance Abjection was a sort of "history painting" containing images of Japanese-Canadians interned in 1942. In Arden's third period, from 1990 to the present, he has combined his fascination in local history with both traces of the past and the abrupt appearance of the new. These pictures focus on "'the landscape of the economy" of the Vancouver area, in tableaux influenced as much by the history of painting as that of photography. A searing image such as Landfill, Richmond B.C. provokes reflections on both ecological issues and the history of the picturesque landscape. In 2000, Arden began to produce digital video works, which he calls "breathing tableaux." He is also interested in the new world of imagery on the internet. The World as Will and Representation - Archive (2004) is essentially a slide show of his personal archive of 10,000 images gleaned from the Internet. It is viewable at www.royarden.com. This major retrospective brings together two significant scholarly texts about Arden's work with a selection of short texts by six artists, curators and writers who admire the artist's work. It will include extensive colour and black and white reproductions. 122 images
