Marian Penner Bancroft


Marian Penner Bancroft is a Canadian artist and photographer based in Vancouver. She is an associate professor at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design, where she has been teaching since 1981. She has previously also taught at Simon Fraser University and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. She is a member of the board of Artspeak Gallery and is represented in Vancouver by the Republic Gallery.
WWW republicgallery.com/artis...

Life

Marian Penner Bancroft was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia, and currently lives and works in Vancouver. She studied at the University of British Columbia, the Vancouver School of Art and Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto.
National and international exhibitions include those at the Vancouver Art Gallery and at the Centre Culturel Canadien in Paris. In addition to photography, her work has included text, sound, drawing, sculpture and more recently, video.
In 2019, Bancroft was featured in the film, Is There a Picture. The documentary discusses photographers and their practice in Vancouver.

Work

Her work considers the intersections of the photographic image with history, music and mapping strategies in relation to representations of landscape and nature. In addition to photography, her work has included text, sound, drawing, sculpture and more recently, video.
In 2014, Marian Penner Bancroft installed a site-specific public art installation at the Vancouver Yaletown-Roundhouse Skytrain Station. The project was supported by the Contemporary Art Gallery. The photographic work was installed on the windows of the station, creating abstract images of branches and shapes creating a kaleidoscope effect. The trees were a referential homage to the earliest plantings of elms and sequoias in Vancouver.

Publications

Two Places at Once: Transfigured Wood Part 4 Western Front Society publications, Vancouver BC

Selected exhibitions

the poets have always preceded: art and poetry in Vancouver, 1960 – present, Griffin Art Projects
Radial Systems, Republic Gallery
Pictures From Here, Vancouver Art Gallery
Sites of Assembly, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Unsettled Sites: Marian Penner Bancroft, Wanda Nanibush, Tania Willard, SFU Gallery, Vancouver
Silvia Part II: Booming Grounds,
By Land and Sea,, The Reach Gallery Museum, Abbotsford
Auto-Motive,, Oakville, Ontario
Spiritlands: t/here: Marian Penner Bancroft, Selected Photo Works 1975-2000 Vancouver Art Gallery
By Land and Sea, Southern Alberta Art Gallery
By Land and Sea Presentation House Gallery

Public art

Boulevard at Yaletown-Roundhouse Canada Line Subway Station, Vancouver
Root System, Pipeline Road, Stanley Park, Davie and Pacific Boulevard, commissioned by TransitBC and the Canada Line
Lost Streams, Kitsilano, City of Vancouver Park Board, permanent site-specific installation

Selected collections

Selected awards

Selected bibliography

  • Laurence, Robin. "Excavating the city’s roots." Georgia Straight. January 2008.
  • Bancroft, Marian Penner, Ed. "UBC in the Sixties: A conversation with Audrey Capel Doray, Gathie Falk, Donald Gustein, Karen Jamieson, Glenn Lewis, Jamie Reid, and Abraham Rogatnick." Ruins in Process: Vancouver Art in the Sixties. 2009.