The Place of Objects: The John David Lawrence Collection

An eclectically curated collection reveals a kaleidoscopic portrait of the many and diverse talents working in and around BC’s art scene over the past forty years.

As a musician, performer, activist, collector, John David Lawrence has long held an important, if underrecognized, position in Vancouver’s creative community. After settling in the city in the mid-1980s he participated in and advocated for performance spaces and artist-run centres, building deep roots in the community, and since 2000 he has been the proprietor of DODA ANTIQUES. Over several decades, Lawrence amassed an idiosyncratic personal collection that includes ceramics, Indigenous art, jewelry, folk art, photography, and plant life. Through the stories of some of these pieces and of Lawrence himself, as well as extensive new photography of his holdings, The Place of Objects illuminates the rich cultural production that is often overlooked by Vancouver’s established artistic community.

Released to coincide with a Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition of 300 ceramic works from Lawrence’s collection, The Place of Objects opens with an engrossing conversation between scholar Michael Prokopow and Lawrence that uses specific objects and the diverse areas of his collections to reveal Lawrence’s enigmatic biography and ponder the broader cultural obsession with things. The second half of the book features texts by artists, scholars, friends, and curators who highlight objects of art with historical, cultural, or personal significance. The publication also includes a visual index—a two-dimensional genogram of the objects in his collection—to map the tentacular threads that have informed Lawrence’s collecting practices over the decades.

Contributors:

Glenn Alteen, Grant Arnold, Daina Augaitis, Jonathon Bancroft-Snell, Nicholas R. Bell, Dave Carlin, Allan Collier, Diana Freundl, Tyler Fritz, Mandy Ginson, Donna Hagerman, Carole Itter, Jenn Jackson, Corey Larocque, Hilary Letwin, Carol Mayer, Siobhan McCracken Nixon, Edmond Melnychuk, Michael J. Prokopow, Esther Rausenberg, Stephanie Rebick, Debra Sloan, Mr. Smith, Carolyn Stockbridge, Jordan Strom, Andrea Valentine-Lewis, Jan Wade, Laura Wee Láy Láq.

Artists:

Hans Coper, Olea Davis, Walter Dexter, Beau Dick, Denny Dixon, Pat Dixon, Ed Drahanchuk, Axel Ebring, Gathie Falk, Ken Foster, Ken Gerberick, Kathleen Hamilton, Ben Houstie, Avery Huyghe, Tam Irving, Elsie John, Charmian Johnson, Thomas Kakinuma, Zoltan Kiss, Roy Kiyooka, Danny Kostyshin, Zeljko Kujundzic, Corey Larocque, Bernard Leach, Janet Leach, Glenn Lewis, Luke Lindoe, Brian Lynch, Mad Dog, Pat McGuire, Edmond Melnychuk, Philip Melvin, Grace Melvin, Santo Mignosa, Carel Moiseiwitsch, Ellen Neel, Wayne Ngan, Oraf, Davide Pan, Randy Pandora, John Reeve, Bill Reid, Bill Rennie, Hilda Ross, Debra Sloan, Russell Smith, Gordon Thorlaksson, Ron Tribe, Jan Wade, Jean Marie Weakland, Laura Wee Láy Láq.