Artists use antique objects from Vancouver prop house in exhibit

As a storied Vancouver prop house prepares to potentially move its giant collection, a group of visual artists have been invited to use items from the collection to create imaginative displays. 

Their pieces are part of a new exhibit that pays homage to Mount Pleasant Furniture, a prop house for the city’s film scene. 

The show is on display at North Vancouver’s Griffin Arts Project space and a handful of locations in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

The exhibit space in North Vancouver includes a series of small furniture and decoration collections selected from the prop house’s collection, which artists have arranged purposefully in the space.

Among the displays is a room full of antique lamps of various heights, a selection of mirrors facing every which way, a wall of antique portraits, and the staging of a palatial-looking living room.

The prop house

The prop house, officially called Mount Pleasant Furniture, opened in 1988 and initially served as a warehouse for antique stores on Main Street, said owner and operator Leslie Madsen. 

In the early ’90s, the collection morphed into a prop house where items were only available for rent to those in the film and television industry.

“The productions would like us to keep their items [after filming] so it stays in the realm,” Madsen said. “So they always have it to rent [in the future].”

The collection grew and now includes about one million items, Madsen said, many of them antiques sourced from local garage sales, thrift stores and estate sales.

Earlier this year, Madsen says a warehouse she leases to house many of the antiques and props was sold to a developer.

She says she doesn’t know what the developer plans to do with the property, but nearby plots of land have been turned into 14-storey apartment buildings as per city zoning.

The proprietor says she will either look to move the vast collection to a new warehouse outside the neighbourhood, or sell it to someone who will continue to rent it out to movie and TV productions.

“Film and TV — they rely on me,” she said. “I’ve been around for 40 years and so if I decide to retire, I definitely will sell the whole collection to someone else that’s going to carry on the legacy.”

Artists reimagine a collection

Paul Wong, a Vancouver-based multimedia artist, co-curated the new exhibit with Lisa Baldissera.

“A lot of my friends are set decorators and are still set decorators. So I got introduced to this place by them,” Wong said.

Wong is also an artist in the exhibit, having used drone and steadicam cameras to create a short film that takes viewers through Mount Pleasan Furniture’s two “magical” warehouses. They span 35,000 square feet, crammed with furnishings, paintings, textiles, sculptures, figurines and more.

Wong’s piece, Hell Money, looks at his starring role in an episode of The X-Files shot in Vancouver in the early ’90s.

He says the piece and the props on display show how Vancouver slowly evolved to “become a centre for media, film and television production.”  

And the prop house has played a role in that evolution.

“I’m always touched by the story that, you know, this has been a live workplace that has supported two generations of a family,” Wong said. “It’s this kind of business thing where people live above their shops, something that’s … definitely disappearing from this neighbourhood.”

The Prop House: A Collection of Over One Million Objects is on display until Aug. 18.