Peter White's "It Pays to Play" collection

Collection consists of material collected and generated in the process of curating It Pays to Play, an exhibition of postcards at Presentation House Gallery in North Vancouver.

The collection is divided into three series:

1. "It Pays to Play" exhibit postcards series (12.1)
2. Research material series (12.2) 
3. Gallery files series (12.3)

The It Pays to Play exhibition presented a history of British Columbia as represented in popular, photographic colour postcards from the early 1950s through the emergence in the 1980s of the present post-industrial, global economy. One of the primary concerns of the project was the interplay of history and representation—how the way a subject is known and understood is integrally related to the manner of its representation. To this end, the exhibition was conceived to provide reflection on how optimistic values of the era and aspects of public identity were constructed and entrenched in popular culture and how its ideological biases were calculated by the stereotypical, promotional, and repetitive imagery of the common postcard.

The exhibit originated at Presentation House Gallery, and was curated by Peter White, with funding provided in part by the Canada Council. The exhibit toured to other venues across Canada, including the following:

• Presentation House Gallery, North Vancouver, BC, February 24 – March 31, 1996
• Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, SK, June 29 – September 14, 1996
• Oboro, Montréal, QC, February 22 – March 23, 1997
• Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC, April 17 – June 1, 1997
• Plug In Gallery, Winnipeg, MB, November 13 – December 13, 1997