An international group of arts professionals will gather to discuss recent controversy over a series of artworks displayed publicly as part of the 2021 Capture Photography Festival.

Diana Freundl, interim chief curator/associate director at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Mara Gladstone, director of public programs and interpretation at Desert X, James Lingwood, co-director with Artangel, and Capture Photography Festival executive director Emmy Lee Wall will convene online on April 24 to discuss the removal of photographic works by Vancouver-based artist Steven Shearer (BFA 1992) from billboards along the city’s Arbutus Greenway.

First installed on March 30, 2021, the seven works were covered up two days later, on April 1, by Pattison Outdoor — the advertising company that owns the billboards. The move came in response to fierce public outcry, according to a statement issued by Capture following the works’ removal.

(Capture was careful to thank Pattison Outdoor, with whom the festival has worked since 2013, for its ongoing and “incredible” support).

The works, which depict sleeping figures, are drawn from the artist’s expansive archive of found images, and reference historical paintings, according to the festival. Panels explaining the works were included below every billboard, Capture notes, with the same information available both digitally and as hardcopies at participating venues. Capture worked with Steven for more than a year on the project, the statement continues. And, in a sense, provoking public conversation is part of the goal of showing works such as Steven’s.

“In featuring images of people sleeping — typically a private and vulnerable act — in a public space, the works … offer a provocative and public commentary on the ways in which banal moments are often shared for public consumption,” Emmy writes in the statement. “The intense public reaction is, in fact, a confirmation that these works functioned as was curatorially intended by sparking a dialogue about the thin line between public and private in contemporary society.”

The festival received feedback both supporting and criticizing the works’ display, Emmy says. And while their removal was disappointing, it also provides opportunity to consider “the role of public art in our city, how we can balance individual’s concerns with artistic freedom, the ways in which we might engage in meaningful, constructive dialogue around images that make us uncomfortable, and the methods by which we can make contemporary art more accessible to those who might not regularly engage with it.”

These concerns will not be easily answered, Emmy continues. But “witnessing the response to these billboards makes it apparent that they are ever more urgent,” she writes.

“The intense response sparked by these billboards is a testament to the enduring power of the photographic image and a reason why engaging in conversations about its place in contemporary society is so essential.”

It is with this challenge in mind that the panel will convene.

Read Capture’s full statement on the removal of Steven’s works from the Arbutus Greenway billboards now, on Capture’s website. And don’t miss Emmy in conversation with Diana Freundl, Mara Gladstone and James Lingwood at noon on April 24, via Zoom. Attendance is free; register online in advance to tune in.