Spectator

J Webster

See it On Campus: Level 1

Located in the Lower South gallery space, near the single elevator

Visitor Info

Spectator, a series of three paintings adapted from sketches made at the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra’s “Symphony in the Park” concerts, focuses on interactions within families at outdoor gatherings in the summertime. The immortalization of these scenes as paintings acts as tribute to the preciousness of both the more intimate moments between loved ones and simultaneously the broader connection across vast groups of people brought together by music. In the capturing of these moments, the concert goers become both spectator and spectated, and the gathering itself a spectacle.

The Mutant (2025), oil on canvas, 60 x 24 in.

Through these observations, I consider themes of social connection and disconnect, familial relationships, and the gaze. Use of unconventional aspect ratios enhances the relationship of the viewer to the scene, putting the viewer in the position of both member of the crowd and voyeur to the dynamics of others. With their backs turned to the viewer, the subjects become objects of the gaze, yet retain power in their anonymity. The warm portraits bring up feelings of nostalgia, but a sense of estrangement is produced in the gap between viewer and subject, while picture perfect scenery raises questions of authenticity versus idealization.

What about me? (2025), oil on canvas, 44 x 76 in.

Look! (2025), oil on canvas, 40 x 36 in.

This series exists as part of a larger practice in using art as a way to record and appreciate moments in life that feel special in some way but could pass by without notice. Rather than searching for the extraordinary, I find inspiration in funny, surprising, serendipitous moments, coincidences, and happenings; little things that distinguish each day from the rest, that make you think “this is what life is all about.” My works reflect an effort to collect such moments as reminders that reasons for living are found in the everyday, not only in the more remarkable occasions.

Superstore Snow Fort (2025), oil on canvas, 46 x 32 in.

2024

Skytrain Park (2024), oil on canvas, 42 x 36 in.

With photos found in my family archive as reference, I reconstruct and queer scenes from my parent’s youth to represent my own community. Using non-local colour as a pathway to explore queerness, these paintings reflect the experience of remaking one’s identity as a young adult, along with the joy and comfort in finding and forming safe spaces. In an effort to break free of both self- and institutionally-imposed binaries and conventions of representation, I work in a zone of semi-realism and surrealism evocative of feelings of alienation and discordance with one’s own body and social environment. Pulling from the exaggerative qualities of caricature and using palettes that sometimes border on garish, my paintings invoke elements of drag and express the queer audacity to live unapologetically as one’s true and entire self.