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 4Western 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
Canada Council Grant to Established Artists 2001, 1996
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.
