Vancouver Sun 30 November 2019

Rodney Graham -Alex Waterhouse-Hayward channels Graham's upside down trees

U-J3RK5 (pronounced "you jerk"—the five is silent) was a Vancouver based band from the late 1970s. Their style was post-punk/new wave,] but was more art rock than synth pop.

History

U-J3RK5 was formed by Vancouver visial artists Ian Wallace, Jeff Wall] and Rodney Graham in addition to Kitty Byrne, Colin Griffiths, Danice McLeod, Frank Ramirez and CBC Radio host David Wisdom. Their self-titled debut album included the single titled "Eisenhower and the Hippies", a song inspired by a work of American conceptual art proponent Dan Graham. Their album was released by the independent label Quintessence Records with a second pressing on Polygram of Canada.

Wikipedia

I have two copies of the above record. I purchased a third and sent it to a friend in Mexico who told me it was unplayable. Why? The LP sized record had to be played at 45RPM!

Rodney Graham channels Stravinsky - Photograph - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

The Globe and Mail article, Saturday, June 7, 1997, by Sarah Milroy, ran my picture with the following and “all revealing” cutline: Vancouver’s Rodney Graham, a very serious goofball.

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One of the repeated observations that people who live in Vancouver have is that this is a “no-fun-city”.

I would like to amend that to “no-sense-of-humour-city.”

Most who know me will not contest that I am a fairly competent photographer. Beyond that I will not opine on being an artist. Considering oneself to be an artist in Vancouver is an almost suicidal personal belief in which few may find reality in becoming an artist and to be seen as one by the art police.

Failing as an artist in Vancouver can result in a melancholic bitterness that can crumble one’s personal self-esteem.

In my many years in my studio in the Farmer’s Building (now gone) on Robson and Granville I was on the same floor as two established Vancouver artists. One was Neil Wedman and the other was Rodney Graham.

From my studio I could often hear Wedman’s catchy and loud laugh. He is a happy man. Graham is another story. He looks at you behind those glasses and he looks like an angry German intellectual who might have been photographed by August Sander in the 1930s.

Rodney Graham channels one of August Sander's angry intellectuals - Photograph - Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

But those glasses and that seriousness are all a front. Graham is a funny man. His art is mostly funny as was the programmable piano he had in a show at the Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery that was playing, one note at a time a work by Wagner and that would take thousands of years to complete.

Art (even though I am not an artist or well-versed in art criticism) can be funny. I wrote about it here

I cannot understand how people in social media from the comfort of their warm homes rant about the environment, politics, religion, global warming, saving the cockroach from extinction, etc think that these rants will change the world without having to open the front door.

Graham’s under-the-Granville Bridge chandelier has been bombarded by such rants and how the developer could have spent 4.8 million dollars on more constructive endeavours instead of the very heavy plastic chandelier.

While this may be completely off base, one could argue that Canada should close CBC Radio and TV and use the money to build shelters and homes for the homeless. Perhaps the VSO should be disbanded as we do not need to go to the Orpheum as our phones will bring us the world in YouTube. And so on.

The developer that contacted Graham did not use public funding to pay for the chandelier.

If art can make us laugh and can also get us out of that front door, perhaps with a smile on our faces we can tackle homelessness and all the other maladies of the 21^st century.

Kudos to you Graham I am seriously laughing.