IAN WALLACE

In the Museum (The Peter Halley Series)

1990, photolaminate with acrylic on canvas

On verso signed 60 x 60 in, 152 x 152 cm

Value $80,000

Donated by Ken & Lorraine Stephens

Lot #08

Ian Wallace is a British-born artist currently living and working in Vancouver on the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations. A pioneering figure of photo-conceptualism, Wallace is best known for his works that combine photography and painting, a technique he has explored for the past three decades. In 2004, Wallace received a Governor General’s Award and was named an Officer of the Order of Canada (2012). Wallace was also the most recent recipient of the Audain Prize for Lifetime Achievement in the Visual Arts (2022) for his contribution to visual arts in Canada.

This is a single canvas work from an early series entitled In the Museum (The Peter Halley Series), which shows partial views of an installation of works by the New York painter Peter Halley. As is the case for most of Wallace’s works, it consists of a photographic image laminated onto the center of gessoed canvas bordered on either side by acrylic paint. The photographic image shows an installation of a couple of abstract paintings by Peter Halley on a museum wall. Only a partial view of the paintings is revealed. With the photographic image in the centre, a narrow border of deep grey acrylic paint is on the left and a slightly wider border of white acrylic paint is on the right. Impressed by the work of Peter Halley, Wallace wanted to reference it without appropriating Halley’s work. Wallace focused his view on the wall space between the works, so that only the lateral edges of his adjacent works are visible. This oblique reference to well-known works by other artists characterizes Wallace’s strategy for the Museum Series