NOVA Gallery: 1976–81
April 2025
NOVA Gallery has been at the centre and the periphery of many histories of photography in Vancouver. Acknowledging the stories that have already been told, OHCE-ECHO presents “a little history” of the gallery, centred on a poster archive documenting the fifty-odd exhibitions that were held at 1972 West 4th Avenue between December 1976 and June 1981.
Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room (1978) installed at NOVA Gallery in 1978. Photo: photographer unidentified.
Ostensibly a commercial gallery with storefront exhibition space, a library of photo books, and flat files full of photographs, NOVA mixed commerce and community with occasional sales and serious research. Co-founders Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft, along with curator Helga Pakasaar, encouraged and sustained conversations on photography that carried in and out from the city’s studios, galleries, and less formal spaces.
NOVA Gallery exhibition posters (1976–79) installed at OHCE-ECHO. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography
Close up and in sequence, the posters describe difference and repetition, alternating contemporary and historical practices, solos and pairings, and thematic or less wieldy groups, and together reflect the variable circulations of timely and urgent ideas and the availability of new—even if vintage—prints.
NOVA Gallery ephemera in one of NOVA’s original plexiglass frames and exhibition posters (1980–81) installed at OHCE-ECHO. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography
Thanks to all who visited OHCE-ECHO in April to name and recall the artists, artworks, and exhibitions that contributed to a dynamic local community in its time, and that continue to offer point, counterpoint, or potential for contemporary practices, lens-based and otherwise.
NOVA Gallery 1976–81 preview snapshots in the OHCE-ECHO reading room. Photo: ECHO-ECHO
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A floorplan and more information can now be downloaded as a PDF, with a text for the occasion to follow.
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Claudia Beck and Andrew Gruft opened NOVA Gallery in 1976, as a photography-focused art gallery and bookstore contributing to an already vibrant and experimental city of artists, curators, and gallerists, institutions, artist-run centres, studios, and less-formal or other hybrid spaces. As collectors of photography, their interests spanned the medium’s earliest years to just yesterday, and their collection has been the focus of major exhibitions and publications at the Vancouver Art Gallery (Real Pictures, 2005) and Presentation House Gallery with The Capilano Review (Eye to Eye, 2015); much of the Beck Gruft Collection is now at the heart of the Vancouver Art Gallery’s holdings of photography.
Designed by Jack Buquet, and printed by Don Atkins of Benwell-Atkins Ltd., the posters in this exhibition are drawn from the archives of Claudia Beck and the late Andrew Gruft, which includes further ephemera, correspondence, and artist files. Thanks to Capture Photography Festival for including NOVA Gallery: 1976–81 in their 2025 Selected Exhibitions program. Special thanks to Jack Buquet, Helga Pakasaar, and Claudia Beck for their remembrances, and many thanks to Jeff Wall for agreeing to show the unique small version of The Destroyed Room (1978/2005).
Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room (1978/2005, unique small version) installed at OHCE-ECHO. Photo: Rachel Topham Photography