Jin-me Yoon
Unbidden: Jungle-Swamp, 2003
photograph
Collection of the artist
Photo: Kim Clark, 2003
This exhibition of new works by Jin-me Yoon, organized by Kamloops Art Gallery with Guest Curator Susan Edelstein, is thematically consistent with Yoon's previous production, which explores the relationship between identity and place.
The video installations and photographic works in Unbidden were produced in the Kamloops area during a two week artist's residency sponsored by the Gallery in June 2003. But the imagery in Unbidden is intentionally dislocated from any specific time or place, making the landscape ambiguous.
The works in this exhibition interact with one another, playing on the viewer's memory and automatic response to the imagery. This large installation recalls different histories that one can associate with on various personal levels. Using an economy of gestures in the video series, the artist references the historical traumas of war and the effects of the current war on terrorism. Yoon stages these explorations as metaphoric enactments of the psychic and intergenerational effects of war that linger in all of us. The different video loops present fragments of disassociated actions. Over and over, like the continual looping of the short videos, the unbidden memories resurface. Viewing these re-enactments reinforces the unconscious memory of what we might associate with war or war games and the physical extremes endured by prisoners of war. For the viewer, these haunting performances become apparitions of what we collectively recognize, but ultimately find difficult to pin down as literal representations of the events.
Jin-me Yoon is an associate professor of visual arts at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, B.C. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally.
The exhibition catalogue of Unbidden, with essays by Susan Edelstein and Susette Min, is available at The Gallery Store.
Gisela Mohr
Salmon Spheres, 2003-4
clay, glaze
Photo by Donovan Harrison
The phenomenon of the salmon run has long influenced Gisela Mohr's art practice. A former high-school teacher, Mohr took her classes to visit the annual event for many years. She is still fascinated by the salmon run, and it has become a recurring theme in her drawings, stone sculptures, and ceramic works.
Mohr is especially taken with the colours of the spawning fish, intensified by the vibrant autumn surroundings during the salmon run's peak. The suspended ceramic works spin freely. Like the cyclical nature of the salmon run, they have no end and no beginning. The suspension of the spherical shapes conveys the weightlessness of moving through water.
Having worked in a variety of media, Mohr prefers the physicality of making three-dimensional works from stone or clay. She is also attracted to the interactive quality of sculpture. Mohr's investigation of the salmon run celebrates the last and most vibrant phase of the salmon's existence.
Works in Gallery Under Glass are for sale through The Gallery Store.
Pauline Ogilvie
Untitled, 2003
acrylic paint and gel on board
Adaptation is Ashcroft artist Pauline Ogilvie's first exhibition at the Kamloops Art Gallery. Her memory-based untitled works are non-representational, focusing on the elements of line, colour, shape and balance. The abstract nature of the works is not random: Ogilvie designs them in advance, considering the tones and spatial relationships between places, people, and situations from her past. The artist asserts that a strong traditional art background is required to produce the challenging abstract works.
Change is the constant in these works. Each is based on an instant when the artist experienced change and when an openness to adapt to new conditions redefined a negative situation. The works are predicated on Ogilvie's belief that all change can be positive.
The abstract acrylics are part of a wide-ranging practice, as Ogilvie also creates representational works and landscapes and has worked in oil, pencil, pastel, ink, sculpture and photography. Although she has been exhibiting and selling work for years, this is her first exhibition of abstract paintings. "I always considered my abstracts to be mine," she says. "They are very personal." Like the inspirations for these works, Adaptation marks another positive change in Ogilvie's art practice.
Works in The Cube are for sale through The Gallery Store.
Aehron Flannery
Untitled (detail), 2003
mixed media
Aehron Flannery's mobiles incorporate found objects with a culinary theme, making Tasty! a perfect complement to the Kamloops Art Gallery's 16th Annual Art Auction.
Flannery, a fourth-year fine arts student who works in a variety of media, 'reincarnates' dishes, necklaces, and thrift-store cutlery to create unique, balanced works. Ingredients in these works were selected for their reflective finishes, sound qualities, and contribution to a balanced contribution. Commenting on the materials she uses to construct the mobiles, Flannery says, "I've received things in the past that the previous owner considered junk. I am interested in reusing them and making them beautiful again."
Tasty! whets the appetite for an evening of fabulous food and amazing artwork at the KAG art auction.
Frances Harris
September Afternoon in Jasper
oil on panel
Barbara Astman
Dancing with Che #13
print 3/12
The Kamloops Art Gallery's Original Art Auction is back. Bidders and browsers alike are invited to preview works by generous artists and friends of the Gallery. Artists from the nationally-known to the locally-loved have submitted paintings, drawings, sculptural works and photography to add to your collection. This year's exhibition includes coveted works by George Raab, Tricia Sellmer, Ann Kipling, and Robert Bateman. First-time contributor David Skelhon's aerial photographic work is slated for exhibition at the Gallery in 2005. The range of media and subject matter represented in these works ensures that all visitors, whether viewing the exhibition prior to the October 2nd Art Auction Gala or attending the auction itself, will find works that appeal to their unique sensibilities.
In addition to these fantastic works, regional businesses let their commitment to the arts shine by donating valuable services and experiences to be auctioned.
Framing services for the 16th Annual Original Art Auction are provided by Access Picture Framing.
Rodger BerglundSalmon, 2004driftwood
Local and regional woodworkers demonstrate diverse methods of woodworking in With the Grain, an exhibition of works by Chase artisan Rodger Berglund, Glen Oxenham of the North Thompson Valley, and members of the Kamloops Woodworkers Guild.
Working with a single piece of driftwood, Rodger Berglund creates intricate animal forms that seem to emerge from the wood itself. His works are organic and finely finished. Glen Oxenham’s interest in woodturning grew from his appreciation of the extraordinary shapes and colours of the wood he collected in the course of his work in the logging industry. He creates forms that celebrate the natural features unique to each piece of wood, including burl bowls, works with natural edges, and vases and lamps that follow the linear patterns of the grain. In addition to works by these artists from outlying areas, local woodworkers from the Kamloops Woodworkers Guild exhibit various forms of traditional woodworking, both functional and decorative.
Works in Gallery Under Glass are for sale at The Gallery Store.
Twynam FamilyCanoe at Junker Laker
Sigi WhiteChildren of Lo Mantang, Mislang Province, Nepal
This exhibition features the work of 79 local photographers who submitted 325 photographs celebrating the great outdoors. Entries by photographers aged 17 and under and 18 and over are separated, and in each age group there are three photo categories: Spectacular Landscapes, Heart Warming, and Hair Raising. Generous sponsors donated prizes for first, second and third place entries in each category for each age group.
The Kamloops Art Gallery thanks all contributors for making this contest a success and for their ongoing support of the Gallery.
This is the first exhibition in the new Open Gallery. The Open Gallery was created in response to the community's overwhelming support of the Critters Photo Contest, Kamloops Art Gallery's first community photography contest and exhibition held earlier this year. As its name suggests, the Open Gallery is an exhibition space for community art and art projects in all media by artists of varied levels of experience. Please contact the Gallery if you have a project or idea for the Open Gallery.
Thank you to Bicycle Café, Costco, Enman's Mr Camera, Fedorak Photo, Kelly O'Bryan's Neighborhood Restaurant, Oronge Board Shop, Rocky Mountaineer Rail Tours, Runners' Sole, Save-On More Foods, The Gallery Store, and Valhalla Pure Outfitters for their generous prize donations, and to Victor Hamm, Bob Clark, and Murray Mitchell for their time and expertise as judges of this contest.
Toni Onley Icebergs, Morning in Disco Bay, Greenland, Aboard the Professor Multanovskiy, 27 July 1995watercolour on paper Promised gift to Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Onley’s True North, organized by the Kamloops Art Gallery for a cross-Canada tour, was initiated by the Gallery prior to Onley’s tragic death on February 29th this year. This remarkable exhibition is the first major summer show KAG has organized with works from its permanent collection. It includes work that inspires us to reflect on the beauty and haunting vibrancy of Toni Onley’s watercolours and the relationship Canadian artists have to the land.
The Kamloops Art Gallery had been working with Toni Onley and guest curator Roger Boulet for a number of years on Onley’s major donation to the permanent collection and this exhibition. Through his long-time friendship with Roger Boulet and his passion for the British Columbia Interior landscape, Onley decided to make a significant donation to the Kamloops Art Gallery. Previous to that, the Gallery had three works by Onley in the collection. Then, in 1999, Vancouver collector David Lemon, also a long-time friend of Onley’s, donated several of the artist’s prints. Between 2000 and 2004, Onley donated 120 watercolours and prints produced during several of his trips to the Canadian North from 1974 to 1996.
During these trips, Onley kept a journal of his daily observations "the unexpected colour, the mysterious quality of the light, the meteoric changes in the weather, and the way land, sea and sky converge." He also made reference to historical events and environmental concerns and provided a lively commentary of life aboard ship.
The Artic had an important influence on the life and work of Toni Onley. In Onley’s Arctic he wrote, "To be creative I need these lonely places. I work best in isolation, particularly in this great solitude of the ancient landscape. In such a place, where we step back in time to the ice ages, it is hard not to recognize the spiritual resources in ourselves. I return from the Arctic restored, as if returning from the creative solitude of sleep, and am then able to work for months, sometimes years, in my Vancouver studio, painting from selective memory."
Toni Onley was born on the Isle of Man and studied in England and Mexico. His works are in gallery collections around the world, including the Tate Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, and the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.
The Gallery Store has several books about Toni Onley, as well as the exhibition catalogue.
Nora BerkhoutHigh Country Pond, 2004pastel on paper
Patricia KelloggRoad to Cooney Bay, 2004watercolour on paper
Landscape has a pervasive influence on Canadian artists. This national preoccupation with land as subject matter is expressed in every region across Canada. In Local Iconography, five accomplished local artists present landscapes, ranging from pristine, natural narratives to landforms with imposed built elements. Working in a variety of styles and media, these artists incorporate wildlife, buildings, roadways, and vehicles within the picture frame, creating a unique and personal view of the land.
Nora Berkhout’s moody pastels provide an abstract element in the exhibition, in contrast to the fine-lined realism of Patricia Kellogg’s watercolours. Olga Burr’s mixed media works mix urban elements and natural landscapes, while Anne McAllister Johnson’s intense pastels place structural elements and dilapidated vehicles in natural settings, a signature of her practice. Margaret Kobelt’s mixed media works are precisely drawn with a light hand, depicting familiar scenes of spectacular wildflowers and native vegetation in our region.
These established artists base their works in natural settings, but present diverse interpretations of the land. Through their artwork, they celebrate the landscape of Kamloops and beyond, and contribute to our connection to and enjoyment of the area in which we live.
All works in The Cube are for sale at The Gallery Store.
Linda JamesSunlight and Shadow, 2004Envelope Motif, 2004Indian Canoe, 2004The Churn Dash Quilt, 2004glass
The work of Kamloops glass artist Linda James is featured in her first solo exhibition, MELT, in Gallery Under Glass. As the owner of Flame On Glass, James creates beads and glass works. In an ambitious installation produced specifically for MELT, James created a glass "quilt" consisting of historical quilt patterns designed by women during the 19th Century and first half of the 20th Century. These vibrant squares and geometric designs form a transparent grid, which expand the possibilities of the medium. Each pattern is named, and James identifies, where possible, the pattern’s creator, acknowledging the artistic skill of the maker, who was probably unrecognized at the time.
Rebecca Belmore’s powerful installations confront the viewer with images of loss, struggle, and silence. This exhibition features five new works created during a residency at the Belkin Satellite during the summer of 2002.
Belmore’s work stages a relationship between bodily performance and installation. Vigil is based on a street performance by Belmore in commemoration of the women who have gone missing in the downtown east side of Vancouver. The performance gives a contemporary context to the installation The Named and the Unnamed, which is a reflection on the larger implications of the local event. Blood on the Snow evokes a deafening stillness, a scene of comfort disrupted by traces of violence. In a third installation, a canoe is in the process of overturning–a vessel emptied of its body, suspended over the black depths of water, or death. Moving from the narrative to the poetic, from action to quiet reflection, Belmore’s new work speaks of the larger questions plaguing human existential awareness.
An illustrated catalogue, published by the Belkin in 2003, includes essays by James Luna and Charlotte Townsend-Gault and is available in The Gallery Store.
Contested Landscape is an exhibition of works by eleven artists of First Nations ancestry: Carl Beam, Bob Boyer, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, George Littlechild, Mary Longman, Teresa Marshall, David Neel, Daphne Odjig, Jane Ash Poitras, Lauren Wuttunee and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun. All works are from the permanent collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery.
This exhibition brings together artists whose work has carefully mapped the political and philosophical territory of representation and oppression and addresses issues of authority imposed by the state. Within their own remarkable careers, the artists have struggled to have their voices heard and their work seen and discussed within the discourse of contemporary art, rather than from the sole perspective of anthropology. This exhibition explores the contested landscape of intercultural spaces between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal world.
Placed within a broad historical and cultural framework, many of the works are powerful representations or disruptions of the familiar, exploring the place of First Peoples cultures within a multi-cultural contemporary society, which, to date, has had little respect for their desire for autonomy.
The exhibition can be appreciated from many perspectives, such as the aesthetics of Daphne Odjig's colourful Pow-Wow Dancer, the satire of Teresa Marshall's Cultural Briefs, and the political statements of Mary Longman's Reservations and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun's Clayoquot Sound Environmental Terrorist.
The paintings of Tappen artist and musician Jen Dyck are featured in The Cube in her first solo exhibition at the Kamloops Art Gallery. In Simple Riffs, the artist brings together her love of music and the camaraderie it engenders with the precision and richness of colour that can be achieved with oil pastels. Jen Dyck has exhibited work in galleries in the Okanagan and is showing regularly at exhibitions and sales in Kamloops. All works in The Cube are for sale.
Maureen Toenjes presents Unfolding, an exhibition of intricately-beaded buckskin clothing and traditional button blankets. Toenjes, a descendant of the Sechelt Nation, has researched traditional practices and she designs clothing and blankets with the highest regard for authenticity in both her techniques and materials. Toenjes says, "My work with hides, whether it be Plains or Southern First Nations designs, has been for the most part effortless, as my heart has always been my guide. It is like my hands are guided by a love that I have come to trust."
The mad potters of the Thompson Valley Potters' Guild
Mad Potters' Tea Party is an exhibition of ceramic art by members of the Thompson Valley Potters’ Guild. Pieces by 19 mad potters stretch the boundaries of function and dysfunction and represent diverse interpretations of the tea party. Peer through the looking glass to see a tea party with a difference!
In conjunction with the exhibition, works by the Thompson Valley Potters’ Guild are featured in The Gallery Store throughout the month of March. Works in Gallery Under Glass and The Gallery Store are for sale.
Jack Gregson
Indian Village, Kamloops, 1944
oil on canvas
Collection of the artist.
Photo courtesy of the artist
Moving Nature Around has been a long time in the making. Local painter Jack Gregson is known for his contributions to the city in science and nature and was recently honoured with a hiking trail in his name, but has never shown his evocative local landscapes in a solo exhibition. Now 93 years of age, Gregson has produced oil paintings depicting his natural surroundings from 1933 up to two years ago when he stopped painting.
Gregson’s childhood interests followed him into adulthood, and his early interest in butterflies and insects led to a career as a medical entomologist studying, he says, "everything that bit." His father was a photographer, and Gregson learned at a young age to look at the land for inspiration for his artwork. He founded the Outdoor Club in Kamloops in 1936, and his interest in the changing landscape is reflected in his paintings.
The self-taught artist took trips to local sites, such as Scheidam Flats, with A.Y. Jackson, who has always influenced his work. The title of the exhibition comes from Gregson’s own observation about his landscapes. Referring to the balance he achieves in his works, he says, "I don’t think you can improve on nature, but I do like to move it around."
Ben Reeves
Standard Model, 2002
mixed media on canvas
Photo: Barry Jones
Lines Painted in Early Spring features the work of four Canadian painters from widely varying geographical and social backgrounds. Its title riffs on Wordsworth’s Romantic poem, Lines Written in Early Spring, in which the author illustrates the classic opposition between nature and culture: paradise is lost due to human fallibilities. The artists in the exhibition take a less pessimistic view of our relationship to the material world to offer paintings in which nature and culture, and the space of the canvas and the actions of the painter, fuse and collide to produce engaging and often lyrical works.
The four artists featured in this exhibition are connected by the act of describing a line. The commanding black and white frottage paintings of Halifax artist Gerald Ferguson rely heavily upon the poetics of everyday materials and the inspiration of the hardware emporium for their existence. These elegant images are made by rubbing and rolling over canvas, beneath which varying hardware store items, such as hoses, ropes and rods, have been placed. Carmen Ruschiensky, an artist originally from Saskatchewan and now living in Montreal, creates large-scale works characterized by a meandering brush-drawn line. Shape and colour are treated as discrete concerns in the works of Montreal artist Francine Savard, whose works are affixed with French texts referring both to painting and landscape. Vancouver artist Ben Reeves, who has recently relocated to Ontario, contributes paintings and an installation based on a complex conglomeration of electrical extension cords. In both two- and three-dimensional works, the cables loop and dance through and around one another, a metaphor for the perplexing nature of contemporary technological systems.
A full-colour catalogue published by Southern Alberta Art Gallery is available in The Gallery Store.
Andy Warhol (1928-1987)
Endangered Species: Grevy's Zebra, 1993
screenprnt on paper, 19/150
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of E.F. Anthony Merchant
Photo: Photography by Sharon
Do you want to laugh with your friends and family, better understand contemporary art, or see more works from the Kamloops Art Gallery permanent collection? Then the fun-filled exhibition, Critters in the Collection, designed as a special curriculum-based show for School District #73, is just what you are looking for.
Organized by elementary school educators Jennifer Swan Rogers, Gail Nelson and Philippa Glossop, and several members of the KAG programme team, this exhibition investigates the story behind the image. Learn to identify distinctive styles of art and the respective social, historical and cultural context of the works, and compare materials, processes and tools used to make a work of art. Evaluate how artists observe and interpret animals and the different ways in which artists use animals in their art work to tell a story.
The exhibition features works from the permanent collection by notable twentieth-century artists, such as Betty Goodwin, Ken Lochhead, Leon Golub, Andy Warhol and Marc Chagall, as well as works by artists living and working in the region, such as Ann Kipling, Steve Mennie, Sonia Cornwall, and Leonhard Epp. In addition, works by Canadian artists Joseph Fafard, Carl Skelton, Fastwürms, Ted Harrison, Anne Meredith Barry, David Thauberger, Jacob Peterloosie, Tom Hopkins and Robert Young, are included in this fun-filled exhibition.
Richard Prince Proposition Island, Green Lake, B.C., 2003 digital print photo Collection of the artist Photo courtesy of the artist
Organized by the Kamloops Art Gallery, A Taxonomy of Islands features sculptures, photographs and drawings by British Columbia artist Richard Prince. Taxonomy is the term used in science for classification, and in this new body of work Prince identifies and classifies islands or objects relating to islands by arranging their elements to examine the rich history, both real and imaginary.
An art professor at the University of British Columbia, Richard Prince has long been intrigued by the tools and technology with which an artist approaches the world, and for this exhibition he includes a camera obscura and a drawing frame to investigate how we observe our environment. The exhibition explores the idea of an island through photographic panoramas, as well as large and small sculptures and drawings. The works are both educational and beautiful.
The notion of island as elusive utopia is central to this exhibition, as the elements of islands are deconstructed by the artist to be reassembled in the minds of viewers. The island remains undefined, and the true destination of the exhibition is the viewer’s imaginative journey.
A full colour exhibition catalogue featuring an essay by senior curator Ian Thom is available in the Gallery Store. Richard Prince presents a slide lecture on his practice Sunday, December 7, at 1:30 pm.
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