HenriRobideau.ca
HenriRobideau.com
Exhibition ~ Pacific To Atlantic: Canada's Gigantic
May 8 to June 8, 1986
Presentation House Gallery
333 Chesterfield Avenue
North Vancouver, British Columbia
Read Eve Johnson's Vancouver Sun review.
Pacific To Atlantic: Canada's Gigantic was an exhibition that showcased several of my narrative styles of the early to mid 1980's. The two main galleries at Presentation House were filled with panoramas – one with framed work from the Pancanadienne Gianthropological Survey series and the other with resin coated roll-up prints push pinned to the wall, pictures of large crowds, pubic events and political rallies. Other narratives included the British Columbia road trip HA! HA! WOW! MAN ROCKS and the ironic tragedy The Crossroads of Life.
Read an "art speak" essay about my work that mostly misses the mark by Bart Testa in Photo Communique magazine.
May 20, 1986, CBC national radio interview on Vicki Gabereau show.
Read June 4, 1986, CHQM radio review spot copy by Jill Pollack.
Giant Chaitanya Mahaprabu. East meets West in Burnaby, B.C., a city of contrasts, where this 9 meter high statue of the Hindu God Chaitanya Mahaprabu, built by Fayetteville, Arkansas sculpture Subrata Lahiri, stands just outside the Krishna consciousness Society Temple on S.E. Marine Drive, September 1, 1985.
The Giant Oil Can is a monument to Rocanville Saskatchewan's Ernest Symons, inventor of the self squirting oil can. July 7, 1984.
Giant Crow and Baby Crow in the Crow's Nest Pass coal mining town of Blairmore, Alberta, July 4, 1984.
Giant Batch of Babies, the Dione quintuplets were born on this bed May 28, 1934. Elzire Dione was twenty-five years old when she gave birth to Yvonne, Annette, Emilie, Cecile and Marie on a farm halfway between Callander and Corbeil, Ontario. Quints Home Museum, Route 11, North Bay, Ontario, August 10, 1984.
Giant Turtle and the Turtle Hall of Fame, Boissevain, Manitoba, July 7, 1984.
Giant Batch of Dummies at Andy MacDonald's Dummy Farm, Port Elgin, New Brunswick, August 8, 1984. Andy calls this part of the farm "The Falkland Islands".
Les Chapelets Géants rappellent la miracle du pont de glace de Mars 1879, au Cap de la Madeleine, Québec. 20 juillet, 1984.
Bugsy the Giant Ant, a character from Lucy Maud Montgomery's undiscovered blockbuster ATTACK OF THE KILLER ANTS, teaches gianthropologist Henri Robideau that Gianthropology can sometimes be BIG TROUBLE! Bonshaw, P.E.I., August 8, 1984.
Giant Shaft, middle of nowhere (closest town Grand Falls) Newfoundland. When the Federal Government tried to find the appropriate gift for Newfoundlanders to commemorate the completion of the Trans Canada Highway, they decided to give them the shaft. August 2, 1984.
Giant Glooscap, Parsboro, Nova Scotia, July 25, 1984. Glooscap was the legendary man-god of the Micmacs who stood at Cape Blomindon and flung out five islands like jewels along the Parsboro shore.
Giant Crowd of 60,000 people march for peace across the Burrard Street Bridge and also underneath it, April 27, 1985, Vancouver, B.C. (a nuclear-free zone).
A Big Crowd gathers outside the Vancouver School Board office on the evening of May 6, 1985, after learning that the socred Provincial Education Minister is firing the democratically elected school board and replacing it with one of his sycophants because the board refused to make anymore cuts to education.
Haida singers outside the British Columbia Supreme Court celebrate the handing down of suspended sentences in an anti-logging case which saw their people charged with trespassing on their own land. The Haida have never agreed to relinquish their territory and are engaged in a continuing land claims dispute with federal and provincial governments. On the left their leader Miles Richardson gets swarmed by the media while on the right artist Robert Davidson, with drum in hand, directs the singing. Vancouver, British Columbia, December 6, 1985.
Giant Chop Suey Bowl, corner of Pender and Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Chinese New Year, February 9, 1986.
Giant frying pan demo at a leading downtown department store, Vancouver, British Columbia, Ground Hog Day 1985. The store manager is telling a joke to one of the cooks, he says, "Ya know what really burns my ass?" The cook says, "No, what?" The manager says, "Oh a flame about this high! Ha, ha!" This fry pan is so big that an omelet cooked in it needs 300 extra large eggs, eight electric hot plates, four cooks to stir it all up holus-bolus and throw in the plates of what-nots, and a bull-cook boss chef who keeps it all moving along according to the recipe.
July 23, 1983, Giant Crowd of 50,00 people march to show their disgust for the Socred government's mass firing of 5000 teachers and government workers, elimination of the human rights code, cuts to legal aid, dismantling of rape relief centers, huge slashes to health care and education, all in the name of "restraint" but really so they can pay for the new bubble dome (a giant marshmallow in bondage) and a big glitzy Expo in 1986.
August 10, 1983, Giant Crowd of 30,000 unionized workers book off their jobs for the Operation Solidarity rally at Empire Stadium to protest the Socred government's firing of 5,000 public sector employees and cuts to social services. Over a two hour period each union took a turn marching around the track and when the police, firemen and bus drivers entered the stadium everybody leaped to their feet and clapped and whistled like crazy. Afterwards there were speeches.
October 12, 1983, Giant Crowd of 70,000 people (the largest mass demonstration in B.C.'s history) march a second time against the Socred's so-called "restraint". In front of the Hotel Vancouver the fluffy sweater hip capitalist flat top entrepreneur Socred convention delegates come face to face with the plaid shirt working class minority disabled single parents on welfare unemployed.
Giant Blockade by organized labor and the building trades of anti-union contractor Kerkoff's False Creek construction site, March 12, 1984, Vancouver, B.C.
Jade Book-Ends, Rock Shop, Rock Creek; Capt. Joe’s rocks, Rock Creek; HA!! HA!! WOW! MAN, Keremeos: Sacred Indian Rock defaced by Yahoos, Keremeos; Discount Rocks Carnelian and Peridot, near Hedley; Rock disaster, the Hope Slide, near Hope, B.C., July 27, 1985.
The Crossroads Of Life panel 1
The Crossroads Of Life panel 2
The Crossroads Of Life panel 3
The Crossroads Of Life panel 4
The Crossroads Of Life panel 5
6 - 25
<
>
©2021 Henri Robideau