N.E. Thing Co. was a Canadian art collective created by married artists Iain and Ingrid Baxter to operate in a commercial-like format for producing work from 1967 to 1978. It was based in

Vancouver Vancouver ( ) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the List of cities in British Columbia, most populous city in the province, the 2021 Canadian census recorded 662,248 people in the ...

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

. Seminal figures in the emergence of

conceptual art Conceptual art, also referred to as conceptualism, is art in which the concept(s) or idea(s) involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic, technical, and material concerns. Some works of conceptual art, sometimes called insta ...

movement in Canada during the late sixties, N.E. Thing Co. used corporate strategies to generate and frame its artistic practice.

History

Founded in 1966 by Iain and Ingrid Baxter, N.E. Thing Co. was established as a conceptual vehicle that viewed the art world as "parallel oconsumer culture." N.E. Thing Co. was incorporated under the Companies Act in 1969. The Baxters named themselves co-presidents of the company, and used a gold corporate seal as the group’s signature. Focusing on an interdisciplinary practice and using photography, site-specific performances and installation, N.E. Thing Co. is seen as a "key catalyst and influence for Vancouver photoconceptualism" and is considered a precursor to the

Vancouver School The Vancouver School of Conceptual art, conceptual or post-conceptual photography (often referred to as photoconceptualismSarah Milroy "Is Arden our next greatest photographer?" ''Globe and Mail'' (October 27, 2007): R1.) is a loose term applied t ...

. N.E. Thing Co. were influenced by the ideas of Canadian communications theorist

Marshall MacLuhan Herbert Marshall McLuhan (July 21, 1911 – December 31, 1980) was a Canadian philosopher whose work is among the cornerstones of the study of media studies, media theory. He studied at the University of Manitoba and the University of Cambridg ...

. The pair created some of the earliest photoconceptual works to display a tendency to use photography to document "idea-works and their sites, as language games and thematic inventories and as reflective investigations of the social and architectural landscape." Their innovative approach to creating landscape works involved tactics such as placing mirrors in the river near their home and combining photos taken at different angles and distances, which resulted in works such as ''Reflected Landscape'', 1968. N.E. Thing Co. disbanded in 1978 when Iain and Ingrid ended their relationship.

References

Bibliography

* Bassnett, Sarah; Parsons, Sarah''
Photography in Canada, 1839–1989: An Illustrated History
'' Toronto: Art Canada Institute, 2023. * Baxter, Iain and Ingrid Baxter. ''You Are Now in the Middle of a N.E. Thing Co. Landscape: Works by Iain and Ingrid Baxter, 1965-1971.'' Vancouver: The Gallery, 1993. * Mewburn, Charity. ''Sixteen Hundred Miles North of Denver.'' Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 1999. * National Film Board of Canada. ''B.C. Almanac(h) C-B.'' Vancouver: Presentation House Gallery, Reprint edition, 2015.

External links

Bio Info and Collection of Images. * ttp://www.centrevox.ca/en/artiste/iain-baxter-n-e-thing-co/ VOX gallery Bio page with Text and Images.
Shaw, Nancy. ''Sitting the Banal: The Expanded Landscape of N.E. Thing Co.'' essay at ''vancouver in the sixties'' website.
Academic article contextualising NETCO's practice.

Exhibition essay fro
Morris and Helen Belkin Gallery
solo show. {{DEFAULTSORT:Baxter, Iain Canadian photographers Canadian painters Canadian sculptors Canadian conceptual artists Canadian installation artists