Aaron Carpenter, Steve Hubert, Kathy Slade: Hold On

At the Or/Belkin Satellite until July 12

A tugboat spins in a tight circle in Burrard Inlet. A fully dressed diver hits the surface of a pool of blue water. Three diptychs read UM, ER, and UH in beautiful block letters. These distinct and beguiling images, created by Kathy Slade, Steven Hubert, and Aaron Carpenter, occur in the small show Hold On, which examines conditions of stasis or pause. Here, it’s as if the working world has been put on hold for a few contemplative moments.

Hold On marks another transition for the gallery on the ground floor of the Del Mar Inn at 555 Hamilton Street. Shifting stewardship this summer from the Belkin Satellite to the artist-run Or Gallery, the space has “a history of resistance”, as Or director-curator Jonathan Middleton observed in a recent interview with the Straight. He was referring to the Del Mar’s steadfast holdout, in the 1990s, against B.C. Hydro’s massive development of the block on which it sits. In a sense, Hold On reiterates that refusal to be swept along by mainstream forces.

In Slade’s short 16mm-film loop Tugboat, for instance, a long shot of Burrard Inlet is punctuated by a small tugboat chugging into sight and then spinning like a top in the still waters. It creates an expanding wake of concentric circles, then abruptly exits the scene.

The viewer is left to consider whether this is an act of playful abandon or determined refusal. The industrial harbour is wrapped in a flawlessly clear day, a skipping-out day, and the muffled roar of the working city is met by the cries of sea birds as they swoop and glide past the camera. It’s an utterly absorbing piece.

Hubert’s large colour photograph The Dive arrests the artist’s movement as he executes a practised, uh, dive into a swimming pool. Dressed in street clothes and stiff as a post, he is caught at the moment when the top of his head meets the surface of the water. Instead of looking like a graceful athlete plunging into his element, he resembles an awkward sculpture, balanced at an acute angle on top of it. He’s like a human sundial, casting not a shadow but a reflection of his unnatural self, resisting both time and cultural conventions.

Carpenter has four text works here, including Rerememberer, a large banner that plays with etymology, signage, the possibility of endlessly adding prefixes and suffixes to familiar words, and the political necessity of recalling and recontemplating history. UM, ER, and UH, executed on paper in watercolour, pencil crayon, and chalk pastel, address what Middleton described as “speech disfluency”. These meaningless, self-inflicted interruptions seem to be about the speaker’s nervous purchase of time while searching for the right word or phrase.

Middleton observed, however, that um, er, and uh can actually aid the comprehension of listeners. Carpenter further complicates notions of disfluency by filling his capital letters with different configurations of luscious colours and art-historical allusions. In UM, for example, bright patches of watercolour are reminiscent of early Paul Klee and August Macke. Carpenter also reminds us of the ways in which we are manipulated by different typographies. Again, Hold On may be about holding out.