A Portfolio of Piles

Artists Iain and Ingrid Baxter formed the NE Thing Co in 1966. The Company, which was incorporated under Canadian law, challenged the supposed divide between art and everyday life—and particularly everyday economic life—while also parodying the conventions of the corporate world. 

A Portfolio of Piles consists of 59 photographs of piles found around Vancouver. The photographs document what the NE Thing Co called “ACTs,” or “Aesthetically Claimed Things.” Claiming things, rather than making things, called attention to the artificial divide between art and life, while also trespassing across established boundaries. 

The banality of the photographs further contributes to this challenge. Compare these images to examples of corporate photography in this exhibition, such as the Otis Dump Cars pamphlet, a Report on Evaporation Data, and an album of Sundry Photographs of the Lethbridge Brewing and Malting Co, as well as other examples of conceptual art, like Ed Ruscha’s Every Building on the Sunset Strip.