Vancouver artist Rodney Graham remembered for his generosity, brilliance | CBC News

Friends and fellow artists are remembering Vancouver artist Rodney Graham, 73, as a generous man and brilliant artist, following his death on the weekend.

Four of the galleries that represented Graham announced his death on Monday, saying he died after a year-long struggle with cancer.

“We’ve lost our dear Rodney, a genius artist, dear friend, master of disguise, snappy dresser, supplier of dry humour, an amazing songwriter, always modest, an understated intellectual, gifted amateur, professional connoisseur, Sunday painter who seldom worked Sundays, ultimately a true professional in every sense of what it means to be an artist,” said Nicholas Logsdail, founder of the Lisson Gallery in London, in the announcement posted online.

In Vancouver, Graham may be best known for one of his more recent works, Spinning Chandelier, a public art installation underneath the Granville Street Bridge.

The piece was commissioned for the City of Vancouver by the developer Westbank as part of an agreement when Vancouver House, a skyscraper near the north end of the bridge, was being approved. It was unveiled with some controversy, both for its soaring cost, $4.8 million, and for the symbolism of a luxurious chandelier hanging in a city that struggles with affordability.

Reid Shier, the director of the Polygon Gallery in North Vancouver, worked with Graham on Spinning Chandelier as the public art consultant for Westbank.

“If you look closely at that work, you look at a new way of thinking about architecture in the city, the built infrastructure in the city, about a space that unused and unthought about and taken for granted — and Rodney re-imagined it in a really extraordinary and transformative way.”

“It’s really about the relationship of that chandelier to the bridge and what and how we can imagine the city.” 

Shier also called Graham a friend, saying his death on Saturday was “tremendously sad” and that even at 73 years old, Graham was extremely youthful and young at heart and still working in the prime of his career.

“I think the general consensus was that there was so much more to expect from him, and he was really in a great creative moment that it seems like a career cut short and a life cut short.”

Shier and others describe Graham as a polymath — a brilliant artist capable of shifting his way from one conceptual discipline to another.

Graham was part of the Vancouver School of conceptual photography, which developed in the 1980s, alongside artists like Jeff Wall and Ian Wallace (both of who played with Graham in the post-punk/new wave late-1970s band, U-J3RK5), Ken Lum and Stan Douglas.

Douglas declined a CBC interview request following Graham’s death but said he was saddened by the news.

“I called Rodney a friend,” he said.

Beyond his photography, in which Graham often played a starring role, he was also known for his painting, sculpture, music, film, and perhaps his most internationally famous work, Vexation Island, which was exhibited at the 1997 Venice Biennale.

Vexation Island is a looping video installation featuring a castaway pirate, played by Graham, in which he is seen sleeping or unconscious before rising to fetch a coconut from a tree, which falls and strikes him in the head, sending the man to the ground and beginning the loop anew.

Graham was awarded the Audain Prize for lifetime achievement in visual arts in 2011 and appointed to the Order of Canada in 2016.

Author Ben Street posted to Twitter on Monday, “Rodney Graham’s Vexation Island, a work of art with its own permanent wing in my head.”

William Gibson, the author of Neuromancer and pioneer of the cyberpunk genre, also posted a note about Graham’s death on Twitter, commenting on his wonderful sense of humour.

For Elizabeth Starr, a longtime friend who also worked for Graham as a personal assistant in Vancouver, his death didn’t come as a surprise. She had recently visited him in the hospital, bringing Graham things like chapstick.

Starr remembers Graham as a generous person and called him a genius. She said he even let her live in his basement for a time when she was going through a rough patch.

Starr now owns Liberty Bakery in Vancouver, which she bought in early 2021 from Graham and two other partners.

Shier also commented on Graham’s generosity, saying, “You could really feel his deep love and enthusiasm for the world around him, and he gave so much. It was such a pleasure to be near and among him and to be in a conversation with him.”