By: Jonah Lazar, Staff Writer
Working Proof is an art collection displayed in the North Gallery of SFU’s Gibson Art Museum to celebrate four artists who played an integral role in promoting printmaking in Canada. Curated by SFU MA graduate Joshua Segun-Lean, the exhibit brings together pieces from SFU’s art archive, spotlighting printmakers, Leslie J. Fawkes, Susan Gransby, Libby Hague, and Anna Wong. The works displayed were created roughly between the years 1975–2000, a period when artist-run institutions like Granville Island’s Malaspina Printmakers were pushing printmaking back on the pedestal of artistic practice in Canada.
Walking into the exhibit, the first thing I noticed were the prints created by Wong: carefully constructed pieces containing a mixture of Chinese embroidered patterns, Chinese script, and fragments of traditional paintings. Wong trained in Chinese brush painting in Hong Kong before coming to Vancouver to pursue printmaking as an academic and professional endeavour, and that dual inheritance is everywhere in her work. The piece that most captured my attention in the whole exhibit came from her section; the surreal collage of the Great Wall of China spread across two frames, and was a slight departure from the aforementioned themes. With stunningly delicate shadowing accentuated the rolling, gentle green hills and the winding wall, this piece felt like a still frame from an Akira Kurosawa film.
Further along the exhibit came some pieces by Hague, which primarily involved stencilled cutouts of murky black and white figures moving around in day-to-day activities. The figures in her works often display a flattened, poster-like quality, almost as if they were the shadows. None more telling of this than “The Women Walking By” (1978), where three silhouetted women clad in black, carrying purses seem to be convened at a bus stop, collectively going through the motions of everyday life.
Moving clockwise through the room, I arrived at Fawkes’ explorations of the nude body. Monotone black figures with thin white engravings that demarcate different body parts, these pieces balance a kind superficial strikingness with an underlying tenderness, inviting the observer to engage with the humanity of the two-dimensional figures.
Finally I arrived at Gransby’s works, which are displayed next to newspaper clippings, brochures, and memorabilia of the Malaspina Printmakers where Gransby once plied her trade. Gransby’s works on display are distinguished from others by their striking focus on architectural styles, most of them often leaning towards colourful, abstract depictions of buildings, houses, and rooms, with chaos and nostalgia abound in her artworks.
This exhibit served as a quaint, yet powerful, tribute to these four trailblazing artists, as well as a great source of artistic inspiration and accessible public education on Canadian print making.
Overall, Working Proof provided a very accessible point of introduction to the print making world, an art form that deserves its flowers. This exhibit served as a quaint, yet powerful, tribute to these four trailblazing artists, as well as a great source of artistic inspiration and accessible public education on Canadian print making.
Working Proof will be on display at The Gibson Art Museum until September 13, 2026.
