by Beverly Cramp
Photograpy by Mark Mushet

Ken Lum's Early Years at SFU

More than 30 years ago a young student could be seen pacing back and forth on a gravel path between the old Simon Fraser University student pub and a portable building that temporarily housed various faculties. His journey continued unabated without rest or eating stops for eight hours: it was an experimental art performance.

A video camera captured the student's movements and relayed them live to a television monitor that could be seen in the campus pub. At one point someone said loudly, "I'm sick of this shit," and switched the monitor off. Someone yelled back, "Hey, leave that on," and the television flickered back to life.

Outside, people took notice of the pacing student. Some caught up to the walker, querying him in the argot of the day. "What're you doing, man?"  The student didn't answer and kept trudging.

The student was Ken Lum (BGS'81), who had just begun to dabble with conceptual art ideas – ideas that led him to begin more than three decades of artwork. His perplexing activities on that autumn day were a metaphor for campus learning activities that come as much from informal social interactions, such as those in the student pub, as from formal academic pursuits.

"I was like a pendulum swinging between the pub and the faculty building," says Lum. "I was a marker in which I could embody the activities and symbolism of campus life."

His beginnings at SFU were crucial to Lum's development as an artist. Having initially begun his studies in science, he stumbled on an evening art class led by Jeff Wall, one of the early proponents of what was later called the Vancouver School, a group of influential artists known for their photo-conceptual work that frequently references socio-geographical issues of the Pacific Northwest. Lum became part of this group and was launched onto the world art scene. Now a major retrospective of his art is under way at the Vancouver Art Gallery, which will continue until September 25, 2011.

"Jeff's class exposed me to this new world of conceptual art," says Lum. "At first, I was shocked by this art and found it phony." But Lum's perceptions soon changed. He began to find his art classes, and the people in them, deeply engaging. "Young men and women talked to each other so freely in the most casual way. It was not at all like the lab-frocked people in science. There was something less premeditated about people in art classes. I also recognized something true about the art. I saw its potential to reveal things that alluded to scientific query that I came to love."

Soon Lum was writing for the Peak newspaper as an art critic. "It was another way of learning about art and how to speak about art. I found there is a language to art, which people often mischaracterize," he says.

Lum did complete his science degree but didn't continue a career in that field. Instead, his art classes captured his imagination. "There is something about conceptual art that was really open to a person like me, a person of colour. It espouses a democratic ideal with an emphasis on ideas. To me at the time, conceptual art was sort of like punk music. Anyone could become a punk musician. Conceptual art is open to any interested participant. The art world began to attract all sorts of constituencies, different races, and sexual orientations. SFU facilitated that. I was my own trope, a working-class Asian."

Interdisciplinary work was encouraged. "I had to mingle with other people in the Faculty of Arts. It was a fertile ground that fostered many arts groups and artists that are still around. For example, EDAM Dance emerged from SFU as did several filmmakers, such as David Hauka," Lum says.

Lum took a modern dance class that stretched his ability to be bold in ways he wouldn't have dared to before. He recalls, "The first day I was wearing baggy sweatpants. The dance teacher took one look at me and said, 'Next time I want you to wear a leotard. I want to see all of you.' I was terrified, but I did it."

In addition to performance art such as the walking project between the pub and the temporary faculty building, Lum began to do portraiture and modest sculptures made from furniture. Like Jeff Wall and other members of the Vancouver School, Lum tended to work with materials taken from popular culture. For his portraiture, he used the kind of common, inexpensive photography often found in family home portraits.

These first portraits also employed a technique for including the individual's or family's name that is often associated with big corporations – logos. The combination of typical family portraiture combined with faux logos became known as Lum's "portrait logos."

His sculptural pieces used furniture that was indicative of that often advertised in sales flyers delivered to households, such as Lum's childhood homes in Strathcona and Kingsway. He was inspired by these neighbourhoods, and some of Lum's work reflects shop signage that can still be seen in these areas today and in other ubiquitous commercial strips and malls found in most areas of North America. Many would call the motifs and forms that Lum uses as "poor taste." But in the art exhibition catalogue for Lum's show at the Vancouver Art Gallery, curator Grant Arnold writes that this is not anti-art but rather anti-establishment art. Furthermore, he says that it is what Lum is known and lauded for:
He is one of Canada's most celebrated artists, and his work has been exhibited throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, and presented in important international forums such as Documenta and the Carnegie International, as well as in Biennales in Shanghai, Gwangju, Liverpool, Istanbul, São Paolo, and Venice.

In the last 10 years or so, Lum has been creating large public art installations around the world. One of these is the large sculpture called Monument for East Vancouver, erected in Vancouver in 2010, close to the boundary of East Vancouver and the West Side.

Standing more than 17 metres high, the structure is made from light-emitting diodes that spell out East Van in the form of a cross. It's a symbol that has been around for decades, spray-painted in alleys or walls, and recently silkscreened on T-shirts. Lum has taken this East Vancouver relic of cultural identity and made it into a giant, glowing shrine. It's a giant commemoration to the old stomping grounds of an East Van kid who made it big and now lives on the West Side. And all because of an art class at Simon Fraser University. aq

Ken Lum, Walk Piece, 1978. Still from outdoor performance.

Ken Lum, Red Circle, 1986, fabric, wood. Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery,  Acquisition Fund. Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery.

Ken Lum, Amir, 2000, Plexiglas, powder-coated aluminum, enamel, glue, plastic letters. Collection of Belinda Stronach.

Ken Lum, Hello. How Are You?, 1994, chromogenic print, aluminum, enamel, Sintra. Collection of the Annie Fong Art Foundation.

Ken Lum, House of Realization, 2007. Installation with one-way mirror and text. Collection of the artist.

Ken Lum, Monument for East Vancouver, 2010. 17-metre-high white-LED-lit sculpture. City of  Vancouver Olympic public art project. Photo: Rafal Gerszak/Boreal Collective.

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