TENXTEN
10 COLLECTIONS | 10 YEARS
Featuring works from the collections of Bruce Munro Wright; Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft; Jane Irwin and Ross Hill; Laing and Kathleen Brown; Drs. Wallace and Madeline Chung; Gerd Metzdorff (via Grant Mann and David Birdsall); Inna and Michael O’Brian; Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa; Cathy Busby and Garry Neill Kennedy; and Michael Prout and Leonardo Lara.
May 31–September 7, 2025
Opening reception: May 30, 2025, 6–8PM
This Spring, Griffin Art Projects marks its 10th anniversary by celebrating the collections and generous collectors who have been part of Griffin's journey over our first decade.
In TENXTEN, the presentation of selected acquisitions from 10 collections, featuring over 70 artists, provides a comprehensive exploration of diverse artistic practices. The shared themes transcend temporal, geographical and stylistic boundaries. These unifying elements—cultural identity, social commentary, conceptual art, materiality, human experience, photography and image-making, and abstraction and colour—provide a framework for understanding the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate artistic endeavours. Across collections, the artists reveal the power of visual art to document, question and reimagine our world.
Private collections have played a crucial role in shaping the visual arts landscape of Vancouver and Canada, contributing to the cultural fabric by influencing institutional practices through legacy gifts as well as through the individual support of artists and their work.
These collections serve as important repositories of artistic heritage and contemporary innovation, but collectors are not monolithic—they are delightfully and thankfully idiosyncratic and unique in the work that they collect and in their histories, attractions, concerns and tastes. Starting with individual vision and passion, they respond to artists’ capacity to move and inform, as well as to the excitement of discovery. They are often friends and supporters of artists and curators, gallerists, programmers and writers—or themselves occupy these roles—and were crucial in the early development of Vancouver’s contemporary art scene when it emerged in the relative isolation of the city in the middle of the last century.
This is evident in the collections featured in TENXTEN, an exhibition that celebrates private collections’ unique role in arts ecologies in the region and nationally as we mark the anniversary of Griffin’s decade-long endeavour, expressed through its mandate, to collaborate with curators, artists and researchers to examine the dynamics of private collections through exhibitions and programs.
TENXTEN also demonstrates how private collections in Vancouver have had a profound impact on our artistic landscape. The collectors, through their philanthropy and attention, have supported artists, played a key role in the preservation of cultural heritage, contributed to research and curatorial practices, and enhanced public access to art. As the art world evolves, and funding models become more challenged, private collections will continue to be vital components of Canada’s cultural ecosystem, contributing to artistic diversity and providing unique perspectives on Canadian art within global culture. TENXTEN celebrates the collectors’ extraordinary philanthropy and generosity
The second component is the TENXTEN 10th Anniversary Conversations on Collecting Series, presented in collaboration with Contemporary Art Society Vancouver and in partnership with the Vancouver Art Gallery. See HERE for details.
From September 20 to December 14, 2025, we present Part II of our 10th Anniversary Season, Christos Dikeakos: The Collectors, a solo exhibition featuring photo-portraits of the extraordinary collectors in our region. See HERE for details.
Image: Sarah Cain, group nineteen, 2015, mixed media on dollar bills, 10 1/2” x 6 3/4” each, framed. Collection of Michael Prout and Leonardo Lara
Dempsey Bob, Eagle and Bear People Mask, 2013, Yellow cedar, acrylic paint, Collection of Michael Audain and Yoshiko Karasawa, Image credit: Rachel Topham Photography
Greg Girard, Hollywood Road 1997, 2021, Archival pigment print, Collection of Bruce Munro Wright, Courtesy of Monte Clark Gallery
Marcelle Ferron, Arbre du Ténéré (Tree of Ténéré), 1962, Oil on canvas, Collection of Michael Audain, Images courtesy of Cowley Abott Fine Art Toronto