About the Archive

grunt gallery and its archive is located on the unceded and ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ/selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations, who have lived in kinship with this land, water and air for thousands of years. We recognize their leadership and our own complicity in settler colonialism, its present occupation and its violent legacy. We acknowledge our responsibility to work actively in support of Indigenous sovereignty, and towards a respectful relationship with this place. Founded in 1984, grunt gallery is an artist-run centre that platforms practices and perspectives questioning established values in contemporary art production. grunt’s archive primarily collects documentation and other materials related to our programming activities: exhibitions, events, performance art, publications, and special projects. The archive coalesced in the late 1990’s, developing onsite until the 2012 launch of grunt’s first major digital collections initiative, Activating the Archive.

Since then the archive has expanded its capacity to become a critical component of grunt’s service provision to artists and our audience. Artistic exploration of and interventions in archives particularly those that interrupt and question dominant narratives and ways of knowing, are regular features of our programming. In this way we seek continual reflection between present and past as a means of preserving and sharing organizational and community memory. grunt gallery’s archive is open to researchers, practitioners, and fans of contemporary art. To schedule an in-person visit, or for research, education, or publication support online please contact archives (at) grunt (dot) ca.

Note this digital collection is a work in progress and may not represent the full extent of our holdings. If you can not find what you are looking for or are interested in high resolution versions of images in our collection please contact archives (at) grunt (dot) ca.

For more help using the site, check out our series of instructional videos with English captions, audio description and ASL.  grunt maintains this digital collection for private and educational research and study. While most of the material in our collection was funded by and/or produced on behalf of grunt gallery, we operate under a shared copyright model with respect to our documentarians, writers, artists, and other contributors. We are also invested in obtaining artist consent for any public facing use of their materials whenever possible. For permissions and use of any material outside the boundaries of Fair Dealing, please contact Archives Manager Dan Pon dan (at) grunt (dot) ca. Beyond the framework of copyright, we work in good faith toward a consent-based model of digital sharing whenever possible. To request removal of your image or work from this site on the basis it violates your copyright, privacy, or security, or to clarify or correct metadata including credits please contact Archives Manager Dan Pon dan (at) grunt (dot) ca.

Our archive contains material, including audio visual objects, that may be distressing to some users and some of this material does not have content notes or warnings. The presence of content notes are not an indication of the item’s availability for use in research, nor do the presence of content notes serve to restrict an item’s availability. We strive to honour the work of artists as both a product of when they were produced and a resource to be preserved for generations. We acknowledge what was acceptable at one point in time may not be in another, but where possible we have attempted to provide relevant information for the present. To give feedback about sensitive material please contact archives (at) grunt (dot) ca. grunt gallery’s archive is the product of an entire community’s efforts and we are grateful for the labour of too many folks to name. Please see a partial list on the Programming Archive Collection record. 

This website was developed by Whirl-i-Gig and is built on CollectiveAccess. Special thanks to Shaunna Moore, Seth Kaufman, Maria Passarotti, Anna Tidlund, Susan Gibb, Kendra Place, Casey Wei, Russell Gordon, Syr Reifsteck, Emily Guerrero, Manuel Axel Strain, Vanessa Kwan, Dan Pon, Katrina Orlowski, Kay Slater, and Jessica Fletcher for their contributions to this project.

This site is funded by the Canada Council for the Arts Digital Strategies Fund.