VANCOUVER, BC.- The work of award-winning Vancouver artist Marian Penner Bancroft is featured in a new exhibition opening at the Vancouver Art Gallery on June 30, 2012. The exhibition includes more than 50 photographs, representing a quarter-century of production by this acclaimed Canadian photographer. Noted works in SPIRITLANDS: t/HERE - Marian Penner Bancroft, Selected Photo Works 1975 - 2000 include For Dennis and Susan: Running Arms to a Civil War, a powerful body of early photographs depicting the impact of leukemia on the artist’s sister and brother-in-law, and works from the 1980s and 90s that examine the representation of family and the way we understand the world around us.

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to consider the scope of Penner Bancroft’s early work.” said Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art. “The exhibition’s juxtaposition of a number of her photographic projects highlights her range and complexity as an artist, and enables a consideration of her important contribution to photography in Canada .”

Marian Penner Bancroft was honoured with the ninth annual Audain Prize earlier this year. Based in Vancouver , Penner Bancroft has been exhibiting her work in North America and Europe for more than thirty years. Numerous collections hold Penner Bancroft’s works, including those of the Vancouver Art Gallery and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa . Her work investigates the intersections of the photographic image with everyday life, social history and individual memory. Penner Bancroft’s work as an artist has coincided with the rise of feminism as an important focus of discussion in the visual arts, and the question of the terms through which women’s experience is articulated has been a significant point of reference in her practice. In addition to her art practice, she also teaches at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.

“I’m hoping that visitors walking through this exhibition will perceive a continuity in my work, although the forms vary,” said the artist. “I would like them to go away with a curiosity about their own history, and some realization that who they are is a result of other people, whom they may or may not even be aware of, who have defined the shape of their lives.”

The exhibition is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Grant Arnold, Audain Curator of British Columbia Art.