details from Jayce Salloum: history of the present (selected works 1985-2009)
Though Vancouver-based artist Jayce Salloum has been exhibiting his work internationally for over twenty-five years, he is well known in Canada primarily for a single body of work, his provocative and compelling video installation everything and nothing and other works from the ongoing videotape, untitled (1999-ongoing). There are many reasons for Salloum’s relatively low profile in his home country, including the non-commercial and interdisciplinary nature of his work (photography and video practices, collaborative, community-based work, and even curating and writing) and its extremely broad international focus. Yet Salloum is one of Canada’s most widely recognized artists abroad, where his distinctive commitment to the exploration of personal stories and viewpoints within unstable or uncertain geo-political contexts has led him to collaborations with individuals and communities in places as far-ranging as Palestine, the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Cuba, Lebanon, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Kamloops, and more.
The exhibition Jayce Salloum: history of the present (selected works 1985-2009) is the first retrospective of this important Canadian artist’s career, and includes a number of early works based on appropriated images, the video installation previously mentioned, and works produced during the two-and-a-half year Native Youth Art Workshop series, a collaborative art-making project for Aboriginal youths in the Thompson-Nicola Regional District.
Jayce Salloum was born and raised in Kelowna, British Columbia. He has worked in installation, photography, drawing, performance, text and video since 1975, and has also curated exhibitions, conducted workshops and coordinated a vast array of cultural projects. Salloum has exhibited extensively at local and international venues, from small, unnamed storefronts and community centres to institutions such as the Musée du Louvre and Centre Pompidou in Paris, New York Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Canada, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin, CaixaForum in Barcelona, 8th Havana Biennial, 7th Sharjah Biennial, 15th Biennale of Sydney, Museum Villa Stuck in Munich, Robert Flaherty Film Seminars, European Media Art Festival, Biennial of Moving Images, and the Geneva and Rotterdam International Film Festivals.
Jayce Salloum: history of the present (selected works 1985-2009) is curated by Jen Budney, Associate Curator at Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, co-produced by Kamloops Art Gallery, Mendel Art Gallery and Confederation Centre Art Gallery, and supported by the Audain Foundation and the Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage. The exhibition tours across Canada in 2010 and 2011.
A full-colour catalogue on the artist’s work with essays by Keith Wallace, Jen Budney and others is available for purchase in The Gallery Store.
Sponsored in Kamloops by CBC Radio One and Simmons, Black & Emsland Insurance Services
Click here for Fuse Review by Portia Priegert, Materializing Meaning: Jayce Salloum
Make Children First is a publically funded non-profit initiative dedicated to creating a caring community where all children thrive. Make Children First works specifically to enhance the well-being of children up to 6 years of age through a network of individuals, organizations and associations in our community. One of its main objectives is communicating with families about resources, services and programs available for children. It also aims to showcase the children in our community. This project features children’s artwork illustrating their perspectives on what it means to be friendly to the environment. Make Children First thanks the Public Awareness committee and Kamloops Early Learning & Language Initiative (KELLI) for their contributions to this project.
Elaine Sedgman untitled, 2009 photograph
Elaine Sedgman explores sense of place using storytelling and photography in this installation in Gallery Under Glass. In his book, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience, geologist Yi-Fu Tuan states that sense of place is “made up of experiences, mostly fleeting and undramatic, repeated day after day and over the span of years. It is a unique blend of sights, sounds and smells... the feel of a place is registered in one’s muscles and bones” (University of Iowa Press, 1977. 183,184). Sedgman focuses on the area surrounding Guerin Creek off Summit Drive near Thompson Rivers University. She draws from the history of documentary photography, focussing on overlooked sites and using overlaid texts to reveal her experiences within these places.
Works in Gallery Under Glass are available for purchase through The Gallery Store.
Alex Walton JC Burkholder's enraptured audience, ca. 2004 watercolour and ink
Alex Walton creates an imaginative world to explore relationships between humans and their natural surroundings. These sometimes precarious and one-sided relationships have comedic results as humans try to tame, organize and enslave flora and fauna alike. Kangaroo waiters and whale rodeos are examples of Walton’s unique creations. Children will enjoy his illustrations and adults will appreciate the political commentary.
Walton draws inspiration from his formal education in commercial art, fine art and natural resource science. He grew up and has spent most of his life in Kamloops. His paintings are in collections in Canada, the United States and Europe.
Works in The Cube are available for purchase through The Gallery Store.
Winning Logo Jake Lockwood
Kamloops Immigrant Services presents the entries for its Youth Bridging logo contest, including Jake Lockwood’s winning logo. The contest was devised to promote the Youth Community Bridging Program, which recognizes the importance of ‘coming together’ to enhance each others’ lives. Youths are the future of society, and what they learn while young will have an impact on civilization. The Youth Community Bridging Program is a friendship program that helps provide immigrant youths an opportunity to build connections with peers in their new community and develop their English language skills. The program matches volunteers in grades 8-12 with newcomers in the same grades. Kamloops Immigrant Services’ slogan says it all: “Together We’re Better.”
Eric Metcalfe Movin’ out, 2009 gouache on paper
The Art Auction Exhibition is a two week preview of original works of art and other items on offer at this year’s art auction. Donated works by local, regional and national artists, including Francis Harris, Eric Metcalfe, Jayce Salloum, and Tricia Sellmer, are featured along with fabulous products and experiences donated by business in British Columbia and beyond. New this year: pre-bids are accepted during the preview exhibition with the highest pre-bid amounts starting the bidding on auction night, Saturday, October 3.
Sponsored by The Art Store, At Your Service Catering, B-100, Kamloops Daily News and Menzies Printers
Christine Stalker filter, 2009 mixed media
This summer marks the fifth annual exhibition of work by graduating students from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice highlights some emerging talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts 2009 graduating class. Students at TRU graduate with a wide variety of specialties, including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography and installation. Like previous Curator’s Choice exhibitions, this is not so much a ‘best of’ show, rather one united by thematic and aesthetic threads running through the work of these emerging artists.
Works in The Cube and Gallery Under Glass are available for purchase through The Gallery Store.
Emily Carr Forest, 1931-1933 oil on canvas Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Emily Carr Trust Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun Clear Cut to the Last Tree, 1993 screenprint on paper Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver Art Gallery Acquisition Fund Photo: Trevor Mills, Vancouver Art Gallery
In early 20th century images of trees and forests by Group of Seven painters and Emily Carr, a claim on the rugged territory of the ‘new land’ is expressed by bold stylistic breaks from British painting traditions, breaks that articulated then current ideas about the new Canadian nation. Since then Canadian and international artists have considered and critiqued forces, such as nationalistic and corporate ideologies, that shape interpretations and representations of nature, including the notion of the landscape. The Tree exhibition presents artworks in which images of the tree, representing the natural world, the sublime and the spiritual, are meant to inspire awe and reverence for the power of nature. It also includes works that explore human impulses to tame or exploit the forest, or to use the forest as a stage setting or a place of refuge. The artworks in the exhibition employ a wide variety of approaches and media, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and video. The Tree probes the manner in which the forest and the tree are represented to us through art history and in popular and mass media. Emily Carr, Lawren Harris, Arthur Lismer, Sybil Andrews, Jack Shadbolt, Ian Wallace, Rodney Graham, Liz Magor, Lorraine Gilbert, Pedro Reyes, Patricia Deadman and Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun are some of the artists whose works have been selected for the exhibition from the Vancouver Art Gallery permanent collection by curators Daina Augaitis and Emmy Lee.
A full-colour brochure accompanies the exhibition.
Melanie Perreault Spot, 2009 mixed media installation
At a time when environmental issues are front and centre, Melanie Perreault investigates the validity of so called green solutions. She transforms the Gallery Under Glass into a crimson greenhouse, showering the space in ‘infrared’ light. Ceramics, plastics, house plants and the occasional human presence occupy the space. Using red algae and chloroplast-enriched body paint in combination with live plants and ‘infrared’ light, Perreault tests the efficiency of energy production through artificial human photosynthesis. She speculates that this could replace digestion of food as the primary source of energy for the human body, thereby reducing the need for food production and lessening our carbon footprint on the earth. Be sure to check the Gallery Under Glass regularly to see the artist and experiment in progress.
Agnete Newman Inspired by the church at Monte Creek, 1981 acrylic
Born and raised in Denmark, Agnete Newman arrived in Halifax in 1951. On a train trip to Vancouver, Newman had her first introduction to varied Canadian topographies. She now calls Kamloops home, but spends part of the year in Sechelt with her daughter’s family and her grandson. She studied art and design in Copenhagen and Victoria, B.C. and received her diploma in fine arts from the University College of the Cariboo. She is an active member of the Gibson’s paddle group and loves the outdoors. This exhibition features landscapes of B.C. Interior and ocean views of the British Columbia coast. She paints her works en plein air as did many of the impressionists. Newman has exhibited on the Sunshine Coast and in Kamloops, and has a work in the KAG permanent collection.
Michael Tetreau Illuminated Passage, 2009 black and white photograph
Produced by grade twelve photography students from St. Ann’s Academy, I’ve Got My World On a String explores the artists’ visions of the world, what they love and what they value in life. Exploring new sensibilities, the student photographers capture and communicate their points of view. What unites these images is the photographers’ approach to recording what they see through the lenses of their cameras. Exhibiting photographers are Brennan Dickie, Ryan Mitchell, Megan Rennie, Alena Freberg, Michael Tetreau, Danielle Thibault, Nicole Wall, and Monique Reiswig.
Sheila Macdonald from the series Living low fire clay, glaze
Kamloops-based artist Sheila Macdonald displays a series of beautiful ceramic plates inspired by her diagnosis of breast cancer five years ago. Macdonald began the series to honour women who have had the same experience. Her ceramic practice and the Living series was a form of therapy that helped her maintain a positive attitude through the ups and downs of healing. She deals with the self consciousness of losing a breast. She hopes to inspire survivors to accept their bodies and scars with dignity and to celebrate life.
Janet Whitehead from The Demise of Noshud Hafta (work in progress), 2009 ceramic
Janet Whitehead writes and tells the tale of The Demise of Noshud Hafta. It is the story of a leprechaun who ventures into a forest to create surreal drawings of the surroundings. Deep in the forest lives the evil Noshud Hafta, who confronts the leprechaun and tries to alter her view of her world. The two do battle in this exciting tale. Whitehead illustrates the adventure through a series of ceramic pages. Each scene is illustrated by clay figures and landscapes and described in text.
Tania Willard This Rock Was Carved By Indians, from The Petroglyph Series, 2009 stencils, spray paint, graphite photo by Henri Robideau
As First Nations' land claims slowly grind their way through British Columbia's provincial courts, Tania Willard's art offers a more intimate and passionate probing of territorial issues. Willard's practice has been concerned with cultural displacement, transfer and translation. She uses screen-printing and stencilling processes and oral or written storytelling to probe these concerns. Willard’s grandparents were key interpreters of Secwepemc stories, and Willard’s work often emphasizes the narrative potential of picture-making. Her visual artworks characteristically revive historical elements or contexts within mechanically reproduced images. The exhibition Tania Willard: Claiming Space extends the artist's previous activist and muralist work, establishing a nuanced focus that assertively claims space. The exhibition includes works of sculpture, painting and basket weaving, several large-scale graphite drawings and a panoramic ochre mural depicting forms based on territorial stone markers in the Thompson-Nicola region. At the physical and spiritual core of this exhibition the Vancouver-based artist reinterprets the Shelly Stone story, tracing the relocation of a six-ton petroglyph rock originally located near Lone Cabin Creek north of Lillooet. The roughly 500-year old artifact acquired a name in 1926 when William Shelly, then the Vancouver Parks Board Commissioner, organized its transport to Stanley Park in Vancouver where it was installed at Brockton Point as a tourist attraction. In a set of drawings and sculptures Tania Willard considers this cultural artifact's historical role as an exemplary object of 'authentic Indian Art' within the mid-20th century tourism industry. Museology and contemporary cultural discourses have directed considerable interest and attention toward the wood-carving arts of First Peoples west of the Rockies; Tania Willard, on the other hand, is interested in lesser-known rock art traditions and the ways in which these art forms have been activated as signs of authenticity.
Full-colour catalogue available in The Gallery Store.
Diyan Achjadi Reaching the City, 2007 inkjet print on paper
Brendan Tang Manga Ormolu version 2.0-j, 2008 ceramic
The artworks in Sugar Bombs invite us into an imaginative terrain where innocence and beauty meet violence. Diyan Achjadi’s inkjet prints and Brendan Tang’s conceptual ceramic objects similarly juxtapose childlike playfulness with worldly tensions: they feature candy-coloured exploding rockets and imploding robots. These elements in the works direct our attention to the presence of militarism in popular culture and, simultaneously, question its role in the construction of collective and personal identity. Borrowing and combining aspects of diverse cultures, the works in this exhibition critique the normalization of racial and gender stereotypes and militaristic patriotism while signalling a possible reconfiguration of identity.
Achjadi’s work is imbued with her reflections on the ritualized militaristic activities required of children in Indonesian schools and the nationalistic slogans taught there. It investigates how such things in combination propagate a collective imaginary realm that includes stereotypical ideas about identity. Achjadi’s imagery here consistently features a uniformed pony-tailed girl who could be a Girl Guide or a child soldier. Significantly, in some images this figure is repeated—as if cloned or otherwise replicated—to form massed groups of identical girls who march, wave flags, stand at attention, salute. Inhabiting a world evidently infiltrated by war, Achjadi’s work represents a youth culture imbued with militarism.
Tang shares Achjadi’s interests in international conditions and global culture. Like Achjadi’s, his work borrows from contemporary globalized culture and reflects its hybridity. Tang’s delicately decorated ceramic vessels combine twisted robotic and cyborg forms evocative of Japanese manga (comic books) with elements drawn from Ming Dynasty China and 18th century gilded French ceramics. These mixtures of traditional forms and decorative details with elements from consumer culture generate a powerfully productive dissonance. Among other related topics, the unexpected juxtapositions in Tang’s hybrid constructions evoke consideration of the aftermath of colonial power.
Both artists currently hail from British Columbia. Achjadi is based in Vancouver and Tang resides in Kamloops.
Minn Sjolseth Kitwancool Indian Village, 1966 oil on board Kamloops Art Gallery Collection Gift of Laila and Alan Campbell photo © Kamloops Art Gallery, Victor Hamm
The exhibition Minn Sjolseth and Anthony Carter: Somewhere Between explores the artistic partnership of painter Minn Sjolseth and photographer Anthony Carter. Travelling long distances across the province of British Columbia in the 1960s and 1970s, the two artists sought to capture a transitional moment within many aboriginal communities. Somewhere Between focuses attention on three parallel subject matters depicted in these two artists’ work: moments of candor and the everyday that exist parallel to official ceremonies between aboriginal and settler culture, portraits of native elders in the act of creating arts and crafts, and ‘village-scapes’ where ancient art forms are shown coexisting with the structures of modern life. Sjolseth and Carter’s work highlights a key moment for a diverse set of cultures in British Columbia, making evident aboriginal peoples’ survival and rebirth to a larger Canadian public whose image of First Peoples had been formed from popular media. Addressing the space between modernity and antiquity, the exhibition simultaneously questions the critical boundaries between the document and the work of art.
Sjolseth and Carter resided in the Kamloops area. This exhibition is comprised of works on loan from a private collector and others drawn from the Kamloops Art Gallery Permanent Collection.
Full-colour brochure available in The Gallery Store.
Drawing from street art, social activism and popular culture, Serigraffiti highlights stencil graffiti artists from the TNRD region. Related to graffiti art traditions such as tagging and use of pop culture imagery, stencil graffiti has gained appeal globally and in recent years has found its way into public and commercial art galleries. TNRD artists are given the chance to showcase their own talents and vision in this group exhibition mounted in the BMO Open Gallery.
The exhibition includes works by Chris Bose, Joel Reid, Nigel Szigeti and Martin Tuba.
Amanda Buder Specimen 001, 2007 ceramic
Amanda Buder takes on the role of a playful geneticist exploring the idea of the chimera. In botany, chimeras are a type of composite plant originating from more than one organism. Her investigation of plants led her to sketches that combined her favourite parts of different plants. Buder transformed these drawings into clay works that depict hybrid plants. Individual works explore the different stages of plant life. Portions of the plant appear healthy and vibrant, while other sections may be awaiting bloom or are in a state of decay. The exhibition comes together as a garden-like setting.
Works in the Gallery Under Glass are available for purchase through The Gallery Store.
Tricia Sellmer boppin' with Mr. Mynah #6, 2006 acrylic on canvas
The exhibition follows a boppin’ bird, Mr. Mynah, as he takes in some baseball, surprises the pizza man, dances at his favourite jazz bar and jumps in to join the band. The tale is fun and whimsical, but watch out, Mr. Mynah may steal your watch and make his getaway in his red convertible. Alex Forbes’ poem chronicles the adventures of Mr. Mynah alongside Tricia Sellmer’s paintings. The music of Henry Small and the voice of Tina Moore enrich the experience in The Cube. A catalogue of the exhibition is available in The Gallery Store.
Iain Baxter Bagged Day-Glo Oranges [from the Centennial Suite], 1967 screenprint on paper Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Gift of the Faculty and Administration of Simon Fraser University
Known for its revolutionary collapsing of the boundaries between high and low culture, the array of 1960s artworks that we have come to know as Pop Art has fundamentally changed how we think about art today. The new wave of 1960s artists borrowed from the bold graphic style, bright chromatic colours, and “new era” imagery associated with mid-twentieth century advertising and product design. The manner in which this exciting new universe of promotional pictures translated across television, magazines, and the built environment inspired a generation of artists to abandon expressive forms of art making and instead mimic and adapt these new languages of convenience, sensationalism, and glamour to develop new approaches to picture making.
Exploring the influence and legacy of leading figures in Pop Art, the exhibition Pop Prints provides a rare opportunity to examine the work of British, American and Canadian Pop artists together in one exhibition. The diverse set of prints in this exhibition demonstrate how Pop Art, with its emphasis on repetition of the image and the appropriation of imagery from mass culture, had been especially drawn to the technical and aesthetic aspects of printmaking. Chosen by celebrated Vancouver Art Gallery curator Ian Thom from the VAG permanent collection, the works in this exhibition include prints by Pierre Ayot, Iain Baxter, Peter Blake, Patrick Caulfield, Greg Curnoe, Jim Dine, General Idea, Betty Goodwin, Richard Hamilton, David Hockney, Robert Indiana, Jasper Johns, Allen Jones, Alex Katz, Ronald Kitaj, Gary Lee-Nova, Roy Lichtenstein, Michael Morris, David Mayrs, N.E. Thing Co., Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Michael Snow, Joe Tilson, Andy Warhol, Tom Wesselmann and Joyce Wieland.
Kathy Slade Alighero Boetti (after Portrait by Paolo Mussat Sartor), 2005
embroidery on cotton
In a world of high-speed file sharing and endless “top ranked” still and moving images, the 15 minutes of fame that Andy Warhol once promised us may have arrived in democratic spirit, but it has done so in a fleeting way that even he could not have anticipated. At this moment of the instantaneous star, today’s visual artists are re-examining the notion of celebrity and the iconic moments of the past through the changing visual habits of the present. The exhibition Celebrities of the Self presents artworks in which the self is constantly under a process of redefinition through the picturing of famous and/or notorious individuals. The exhibition features a variety of artworks that represent figures, personas and icons of popular media history in a manner that foregrounds the role that digital reproduction plays in the intense subjectivity of the fan. The exhibition includes work by Tim Lee, Michael Markowsky, Shannon Oksanen, Kathy Slade, Dan Starling, Althea Thauberger, and Weekend LeisureBR>
Students in Mrs. Battjes Grade 5 Art Class
photo by Adina de Jong
Candy, cake and bubblegum! Grade five students at Kamloops Christian School couldn’t believe they were actually “studying” these very objects in Mrs. Battjes art class! American artist Wayne Thiebaud’s vibrant paintings of cakes and bubblegum machines were the main inspiration, along with the many artists featured in the Pop Prints exhibition at the Kamloops Art Gallery. Thiebaud painted the objects that supposedly surrounded him on one of his jobs working at a café. His paintings actually predate the Pop movement, but deal with similar issues of mass consumerism and culture. Using paint, Plasticene, and a variety of other media, these young artists create their own candy store. What a mouth-watering, delightful art experience!
Howard Glossop
P.E. Trudeau (after Warhol), 2007
inkjet on canvas
Responding to a retrospective of pop culture’s greatest practitioners poses an interesting problem for contemporary artists, and the Kamloops Printmakers have enthusiastically taken up the challenge in this group exhibition. If the Pop art movement of the 1950s and 60s was fuelled by a fascination with media and the proliferation of repetitive images in consumer advertising, then it is equally true that artists working in the first decade of the 21st century are no less affected by the culture of global mass media and marketing. We need look no further than our TVs, computer monitors and PDA devices to find an ever-deepening archive of images and sound bytes to serve as source materials. Just as Pop artists adapted and co-opted the bold graphic language of commercial print technologies of the mid-20th century, so today’s print artists increasingly choose commercially-driven digital processes and image manipulation and combine them with traditional print technologies to navigate the signs and symbols of our own time.
The works in this exhibition include prints by June Emery, Howard Glossop, Linda Jules, Darlene Kalynka, Maureen Light, Sherri May, Jana Sasaki.
More Soup For You! features the work of several Kamloops-based artists who were invited to create their own renditions of Andy Warhol’s famous Campbell’s Soup Cans. The original Warhol creations were done in the 1960s, sparking an uproar over their depiction of mass consumer objects. Warhol screen printed all the flavours of Campbell’s soup available at the time and displayed them as they would be seen in a supermarket aisle. The Gallery Under Glass artists use plaster, steel, paint and print to create not only labels, but also oversized soup cans.
The exhibition includes works by Tara Bauer, Chris Bose, Lea Bucknell, Doug Buis, April Fairbrother, Royden Josephson, Mike La Rocque and Martin Tuba.
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