Photo courtesy of The Gam’s Facebook page.
Behind an unassuming exterior, The Gam Gallery has been a fixture of East Vancouver culture for nearly four years.
Founded in 2009, The Gam Gallery reflects the diversity of its founders – a group of friends with backgrounds in both arts academia and as artists. Aside from being a commercial gallery, The Gam also has studio space which artists can rent and a boutique which features local designers. The gallery hosts social events, such as games nights, music, theatre events and film screenings.
On Oct. 16, cofounder and curator Tarah Hogue talked about her role at The Gam and the Gallery’s place in the Vancouver arts scene.
Hannah Rebecca Ackeral: Firstly, what’s your background – how did you end up curating for The Gam?
Tarah Hogue: I have a background in art history – it’s what I started my bachelor’s in at Queen’s University. When I graduated in 2008 I moved to Vancouver because my two best friends were going to Emily Carr. We started the Gam Gallery together in 2009, around the same time that I applied for the Masters of Curatorial Studies program at the University of British Columbia.
HRA: How do you decide what happens in the Gallery?
TH: It’s really a mix, and it depends on the exhibition. We do our other programming in terms of the things that my partner, Julia Kreutz, and I are interested in seeing happen in the gallery, so we do markets a couple times of year. That’s where games night comes from. A lot of our friends who have supported us throughout the years are big into cards and games. We get suggestions from people in the community about things they’d like to see, too. I just had someone call me about having model drawing again, which is something we haven’t had in a really long time but we’re thinking of starting up again.
HRA: So is there such thing as a typical day?
TH: No, we don’t really do our programming in that way. The most regular thing is having our exhibition openings on Fridays, once a month in the gallery. Our schedules are always changing, and our programming matches that fluid need we have. We have other jobs, and we like to view the gallery as more of a project space than anything else.
HRA: How does working at The Gam compare to curating other galleries?
TH: It’s our own project, so it’s very different. It’s also a much smaller scale than working for the Belkin or even Malaspina Printmakers because they both are institutions that receive funding. It’s really just the two of us, but the gallery has evolved really organically through conversation and trial and error.
It’s great, because we can have full control over what we’d like to see in the gallery and to let artists we’re working with experiment and try new things, because what we’re really interested in is supporting emerging artists in Vancouver. That often involves giving them some of their first exhibitions in the city. We want to keep cultivating our relationships with artists as they grow and develop their own practises.
HRA: Your website refers to The Gam as a reflection of the East Van community. Do you still feel it is?
TH: I would say so. Even purely in terms of where we’re located – we’re in a larger studio building that houses 50 artists so even in terms of the artistic community that’s located there, we’re very much a part of it. We’re kind of isolated from other similar businesses in the area just because we’re on Hastings Street but we try to have a welcoming environment for anyone that wants to come into the gallery. You can’t operate a business in that neighbourhood and try to be exclusive.
HRA: Do you face any other challenges?
TH: It’s changing so fast, which is really interesting to see. Around the corner from us there’s a number of boutique shops that have started to open up and we’re not quite there yet, but in a couple of years there’ll be a new condo down the street which will be the first of its kind right in the heart of the neighbourhood. It’ll be interesting to see how that affects things.
In terms of how [location] effect us, creating foot traffic into the gallery has been one of our more challenging aspects of running the gallery. Though, now that we’ve been here for almost four years, we do have a regular stream of people that are coming through during the week.
HRA: You mentioned other venues you’ve worked with having outside funding. Is that something you would welcome or would you prefer to stay independent?
TH: That’s been a long conversation – mostly to go the nonprofit route. At this point in time, it’s not something we feel would be right for us. I mean, to have a nonprofit artisan centre be fully funded by the Canada Council is becoming more and more difficult because there’s less money to go around.
The structure of running an organization like that – having to have a board, having to have that bureaucratic structure in place – is not how we have worked in our gallery so far. We’re such a small-scale operation and the fluidity of being able to work with the two of us and try out different projects that are bringing in revenue in different ways…we’re interested in exploring that.
The Gam Gallery is hosting an artist talk with David Semeniuk Oct. 19 from 1:30-3 p.m. on his exhibit Perimeter. You can find out more about this and other events on their website.
