Recent Acquisitions

Laurie Papou

Burning Bush, 2007

painted burnt mahogany panel on fir stretcher, DVD

Laurie Papou is a Vancouver-based artist who graduated with honours from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in 1988. For the last 20 years, her practice has focused on large-scale realist oil paintings that depict human bodies, often nude, in natural settings, referencing the history of landscape painting and the relationship between nature and the human body. The Kamloops Art Gallery has earlier works by Papou in its permanent collection and is very pleased to have the opportunity to enrich this collection with more recent work by the artist. In the new acquisition, Burning Bush, Papou incorporates video projection and sound onto the traditional oil painting form to expand upon the narrative and the static nature of the painting. Burning Bush is a meditation on beauty, construction and destruction, nature and nurture.

The title of the work and the projected image allude to the biblical story of Moses encountering a spontaneously burning bush through which came the voice of God. The bush then extinguished itself with no apparent ill effect. In Papou’s Burning Bush, the bush depicted in the painting is infused with an other-worldly spiritual presence through the tonal resonance of the crackling fire and by the flickering glow of flames. The underlying narrative is brought forth through the confluence of realism and the dynamic temporality of the video and audio components. The KAG is delighted to be able to include this stunning example of Papou’s recent work in its permanent collection.

Jana Sasaki

(top) I'm told I take photos like a Japanese tourist, 2010

(bottom) Other Hapas can identify me as half something with alarming frequency, 2010

digital c-print

Kamloops Art Gallery Collection, purchased with the support of the Fred Doubt Memorial Fund

Jana Sasaki, a Clearwater based artist, creates work that reflects upon the experience of being half Japanese, or Hapa, and explores the experiences and memories of a ‘mixed’ cultural upbringing in Canada. It reflects upon the experience of being half Japanese and investigates how people of mixed cultural heritage view themselves and are viewed by others, an experience relevant to more and more Canadians.

I'm told I take photos like a Japanese tourist, and Other Hapas can identify me as half something with alarming frequency, are works that were featured in the exhibition Jana Sasaki, Hapa Family, curated by Craig Willms that took place in The Cube in late 2010.

Richard Prince
Ancient Language III, 1977
copper, bone, lead, rawhide, wood, electrical device
Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery
Gift of BCLC

Richard Prince, one of British Columbia’s most distinguished artists, addresses issues of poetic landscape by examining the ephemeral experiences permeating our relationship to land and place. Specifically, Ancient Language III, formulates a natural syntax with bones and eroded copper panels directly referencing the history of Coppers. Coppers, a traditional gift that carried economic value, were a symbol of surplus wealth, cultural nourishment, conspicuous consumption and spiritual power. They have had a long and illustrious history among the indigenous peoples of coastal British Columbia.

Richard Prince was born on Vancouver Island in 1949, but has lived in Vancouver since he was a young child. He received his formal education at the University of British Columbia and since 1975 he has been a faculty member in the Department of Fine Arts at UBC. Prince’s national and international exhibition record begins with his first solo exhibition in 1972 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. His work is included in private, public and corporate collections around the world, from the United States to Israel. Ancient Language III joins six other Richard Prince works in KAG’s Permanent Collection.

Ancient Language III was donated to the Kamloops Art Gallery by BCLC. It is part of BCLC’s mandate to distribute a portion of its net income to community grants. The Kamloops Art Gallery has been the recipient of a number of these grants including sponsorship of KAG’s free Thursdays.

Diyan Achjadi
Merapi, 2007
inkjet on paper, 1/3
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2009-008, purchased with financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts
Photo by Diyan Achjadi

Diyan Achjadi is a Vancouver-based artist who explores ways in which codes of behaviour, power structures, and belief systems are manifested in mass-produced materials.

Achjadi’s ongoing print series The Further Adventures of Girl, of which Merapi (2007) is one, features an awkward cartoon character, a young girl of unspecified ethnic or national origin. Sometimes she is alone and isolated, and other times she is multiplied into a perfectly uniform army. She exists in an imaginary space where she may be both heroine and victim of a series of vague actions in changing urban landscapes. Merapi is one of Achjadi’s works featured in the KAG-organized exhibition Sugar Bombs, which was curated by Kristen Lambertson and shown in the spring of 2009.

Vera Frenkel, Canadian, born 1938 Bratislava, Czechoslovakia
Big X Window, 1975-1976
lithograph on paper, edition 14/70
4 panels, 106.5 x 73 cm each
Kamloops Art Gallery collection 2008-034
Gift of Canada Council Art Bank Outreach Program

Vera Frenkel, one of Canada’s most distinguished artists, addresses themes of human migration, cultural memory, language, and the ever-increasing presence of government in our daily lives. She is the recipient of many honours: the 1989 Molson Prize, the 2000 Bell Canada Award for Video Art and the 2006 Governor General's Award in Visual and Media Arts. Frenkel graduated in anthropology and fine arts from McGill University and did further studies in Montréal under Arthur Lismer (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts) and Albert Dumouchel (École des Beaux-arts).

“Big X Window,” says Frenkel, “is a work that distils a number of the themes that permeate my work and can be considered a palimpsest of my visual preoccupations, from windows to video, from light to language, accompanied by the ambiguity of the X mark. This mark, used to indicate both presence and absence, is especially charged in the printmaking context, where it is used to score and cancel permanently a stone or a plate once its edition is completed. These prints were created at the Open Studio in Toronto, and pulled from some of the largest litho stones in the country, requiring two, sometimes three, master printers to assist in handling them in order to realize the work.”

This work, along with several others, was donated to the Kamloops Art Gallery by the Canada Council Art Bank, specifically for KAG’s Art in the Hospital Program. All the works will be hung in various locations at Royal Inland Hospital for the viewing pleasure of patients, visitors and staff.

Tania Willard
Ancestors, 2009
ink toner & acrylic on canvas
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Tania Willard
Photo: Victor Hamm

Tania Willard, born and raised near Chase, B.C., is a Vancouver-based artist, writer, illustrator, graphic designer, and curator. She is the former editor of Redwire magazine and is currently the curator in residence at the grunt gallery in Vancouver. Redwillow Designs is her graphic design company.

Willard's art offers an intimate and passionate probing of territorial issues. Her practice is concerned with cultural displacement, transfer and translation. Willard’s grandparents were key interpreters of Secwepemc stories, and her work often emphasizes the narrative potential of picture-making. Ancestors (2009) features a photographic image of sweat lodge rocks. According to Interior Salish tradition, the volcanic stones used in sweat lodge ceremonies refer to ancestors; in this case, the stones specifically represent the artist’s four grandparents whose photographic portraits she has superimposed onto the stones’ surfaces.

Arnaud Maggs (b.1926)

Elora Gorge, 1966

silver gelatin print

Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2008-059

Gift of Eleanor Hurlbut-Fitzpatrick

At the age of 47, Arnaud Maggs gave up his successful graphic design and fashion photography career to become a visual artist. He has exhibited extensively in national and international solo and group exhibitions and in 2006 won the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts.

Maggs is best known for his detailed, grid-like portrait studies. Elora Gorge, one of his early works, depicts three young Mennonite women standing in a grove of trees. In 2003 he gave this work to Eleanor Hurlbut-Fitzpatrick, who generously donated it to the Kamloops Art Gallery Permanent Collection in 2008.

B.C. Binning (1909-1976)
No title, Cariboo Country series
graphite and carbon pencil on paper
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2008-043
Gift of the Estate of Jessie Isobel Binning

In 2008 the Estate of Jessie Isobel Binning donated 21 graphite and carbon pencil drawings from B.C. Binning’s Cariboo Country series to the Kamloops Art Gallery Permanent Collection. Bertram Charles Binning (1909-1976) had a long and distinguished career as a teacher, arts administrator and architectural innovator. He received numerous honours throughout his career, including the 1962 Allied Arts Award from the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada, the Order of Canada in 1971, an Honorary Doctorate from UBC in 1974, and in 1997 a posthumous Honorary Doctorate from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (now Emily Carr University).

Binning first came to national prominence through the works on paper he produced from 1938 to 1946, after which he devoted himself to painting. His drawings are engaging, accomplished and technically correct, but at the same time Binning had a lot of fun with his subjects. He managed to give a sense of three-dimensionality without the use of shading or colouring. His line drawings tell stories, have depth and are often humorous.

Joseph Plaskett
Apple Harvest, September 1989, 1990
pastel on paper
6 panels, installed 130 x 150 cm
Gift of Roger Boulet and Merv McLeod

Joseph Plaskett is considered one of Canada’s most talented and established artists. In 2001 he was awarded The Order of Canada for excellence in the field of visual art. Since the 1940s, he has had over 65 solo and group exhibitions, with work in major public, private and corporate collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. Plaskett studied art in Banff, San Francisco, New York, London, and Paris.

Plaskett’s chosen subjects have always been intimate expressions of everyday life: interiors, still lifes, and portraits of friends and models. There is a warm humanity to his work, a love of light, form and colour that is evident in every work he produces.

Apple Harvest is a still-life of apples strewn on an old table in the artist’s Suffolk studio. The donor mentions that the artist once told him that he had never drawn or painted an apple without thinking of Cezanne. Apple Harvest was exhibited at the Kamloops Art Gallery in 1999 as part of the touring exhibition Joseph Plaskett: Reflections and Shadows.

Mary Longman
Elk Woman’s Strength, 2004
mixed media
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2008-016
Purchased with support of the Canada Council for the Arts

Mary Aski-Piyesiwiskwew Longman is Saulteaux and a member of Gordon First Nation, near Punnichy in Saskatchewan. Now living in Saskatoon, Longman was an influential artist in the TNRD region, having lived and worked in Merritt for over a decade, until 2007. Her sculptures are distinguished by their lyricism, political invective, and narrative sensibility.

Elk Woman’s Strength is inspired by Longman’s own passage into motherhood a few years ago, her appreciation for women’s contributions to the community, and for a woman’s personal power. Every material in the sculpture serves a specific symbolic function; the stones, particularly, embody energy, strength and spirit. Elk Woman is positioned as though “calling out” to Longman’s earlier sculpture Elk Man Waiting for Love (1996). At the same time, she gently cradles her illuminated unborn child. Despite her metamorphic appearance, Elk Woman has a realistic presence due to the materials used in her construction: eyes, teeth, and tongue are replicas of elk parts; her hair comes from a horse; her spine is made of cow bones; her hands and feet are direct casts of the artist’s. Elk Woman’s Strength is an impressive sculpture that speaks powerfully in a simple, accessible language.

Jeff Thomas
Buffalo Dancer in Trafalgar Square, London, England, 2003
C-print, 2/15
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Jeff Thomas

Jeff Thomas  (b.1956) is Onondaga (Iroquois) and a member of the Six Nations in Ontario. He has been exhibiting his photographic work in solo and group exhibitions since 1980 in Canada, the USA, and internationally, as well as contributing to the development of North American post-colonial theory and artistic discourse as a prominent writer and curator.

Buffalo Dancer in Trafalgar Square, London, England is from Thomas’ Indians on Tour series. This photographic series, as with much of his practice, demonstrates the artist’s passion for urban exploration, particularly his engagement with the legacy of colonialism in architecture and public spaces. The photographs serve to disrupt the typically seamless readings of landscapes and city scenes with reminders of unresolved colonial history. For example, plastic miniature ”Indians” in this series are posed in front of buildings, monuments, bridges, pipelines, trains and other structures, assuming the presence of a dream—or nightmare, depending on the viewer’s perspective. 

Jin-me Yoon
Unbidden: Precipice, 2004
C-print on Fujicolour paper
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2006-019
Gift of Jin-me Yoon

Vancouver-based Jin-Me Yoon is one of the most critically acclaimed artists working in Canada today. She is known for her conceptual photo-based works that investigate the representation of race, gender, and citizenship in contemporary mass culture. Yoon’s works often serve as touchstones for cultural theorists, and have been included in many prestigious national and international venues for contemporary art.

Unbidden: Precipice was created by Yoon for her exhibition Unbidden, which was organized by the Kamloops Art Gallery in 2004 and toured across the country. All the two-dimensional and video works in the exhibition were shot in and around Kamloops, which is portrayed as a non-specific landscape that could stand for any place. Through the works, Yoon expresses the fear caused by war and terrorism in the age of television and instant global communication.

Rebecca Belmore
White Thread, 2003
inkjet on watercolour paper, AP 2/3
Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery
Purchased with financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance Program

Rebecca Belmore, one of Canada’s most significant contemporary artists, consistently explores challenging social and political topics in performance, photographs, video, and sculpture. In 2004 KAG hosted her solo exhibition The Named and the Unnamed, organized by the Morris and Helen Belkin art Gallery and curated by Charlotte Townsend-Gault and Scott Watson. In the summer of 2005, Belmore’s exhibition Fountain was co-produced by KAG and the Belkin Gallery for the Canada Pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

White Thread explores ideas present in many of Belmore’s performance works. The tension and struggle captured in this image conjure contradictory emotions of comfort and loss, emptiness and claustrophobia. Red fabric binds a woman’s body, rendering the female form motionless, faceless, and silent. The title, with its reference to whiteness, speaks of the impact of colonization on Aboriginal women in Canada.

Leonhard Epp
Untitled, Parade series, 2004
clay, glaze
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Leonhard Epp

Leonhard Epp is a ceramist who lives in Falkland, B.C. His work has been exhibited in both commercial and public galleries throughout B.C. for over 40 years, and he has taught sculpture ceramics at Okanagan College in Kelowna and the Vancouver School of Art. This work from his Parade series was included in the 2005 exhibition Leonhard Epp: A Precarious Journey at the Kamloops Art Gallery. It was part of an ambitious installation of figures parading single file, fish in mouths. The darkly humorous works represent notions of over-consumption, and evoke thoughts of excess, abuse of power, and environmental destruction.

Ian Carr-Harris
In the Pacific Islands, 1992
steel shelving, back-lit book
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection 2006-010
Gift of Ian Carr-Harris

Ian Carr-Harris, one of Canada’s best-known conceptual artists, has an extensive exhibition history in Canada and Europe. Carr-Harris often explores relationships between text and image, a fascination stemming from his former profession as a librarian. His series of back-lit “book works” features lights shining through specific portions of images, thus “illuminating” the images by disrupting them and forcing the viewer to look anew at image and text as a whole. When the “readerly” experience of the viewer is interrupted, deeper questions can be asked about the relationship between image and text.

Taiga Chiba
Ancient Life – 4, 2002
ink on rice paper on wood
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Purchased with financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts Acquisition Assistance program

Taiga Chiba is a Vancouver-based artist who emigrated from Japan in 1981. He is well known for his outstanding ink paintings and prints. His ink paintings are fascinating fusions of Eastern techniques and Western themes. Chiba’s Ancient Life series of ink on rice paper attempts to represent the environment of ancient life as seen in the Burgess Shale in Field, B.C. The semi-abstract forms are representations of the famous Burgess Shale fossils of the Middle Cambrian era, such as clawed water insects, arthropods, trilobites, and sponges.

Chris Woods
Golden Birthday, 1993
oil on canvas, diptych
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Lawrence E. Pierce

Chris Woods is a B.C. artist whose paintings of the past ten years have met with extraordinary critical and popular acclaim. Woods, who is primarily self-taught, has been labelled a “hyper-realist” for his dazzling and irreverent portraits of young Canadians grappling with the effects of consumer culture—paintings that are at once humorous and mystical, referencing everything from advertising billboards to Christian iconography.

Golden Birthday refers to the birthday that falls on the day of one’s birth—for example, a person born on August 13 will have his/her golden birthday the day he/she turns thirteen. Woods’ painting depicts seven of the artist’s male friends from high school mourning the death of another who lies prostrate in a campsite parking lot: he has apparently died of a marshmallow overdose on what may be his 22nd or 23rd birthday.

Jack Jeffrey
Untitled (Chock #5), 2002
wood, steel, cast rubber
Kamloops Art Gallery Collection
Gift of Jack Jeffrey

Vancouver-based artist Jack Jeffrey has been showing his work nationally and internationally for over twenty years. He is one of Canada’s most intellectual and refined contemporary artists, yet humour and the sensual quality of materials are ever-present in his work. Jeffrey is well known for his wry juxtapositions of industrial, bureaucratic, and utilitarian objects and images. Untitled (Chock #5) is one of three from the Chock series in the Kamloops Art Gallery Permanent Collection. It is an example of Jeffrey’s practice of examining objects that carry the authoritative presence to regulate our public environment.

A. Lee Rogers
Kamloops, B.C., c. 1888
oil on canvas
Collection of Kamloops Art Gallery and Kamloops Museum and Archives

The Kamloops Art Gallery and the Kamloops Museum and Archives collaborated in November 2005 to purchase Kamloops, B.C. by A. Lee Rogers at auction. The work, one of the oldest known landscape paintings of Kamloops, shows the river and right-of-way for the Canadian Pacific Railway just before the tracks were laid. Dave Davies, Kamloops railway historian, points out that the telegraph poles, river level, sandbar, and right-of-way shown in the painting indicate a time period of April to late May, 1885. Whether the artist sketched the scene at that time and made the painting at a later date, or whether he painted it in 1888 and chose to leave the tracks out is not known, although the latter is unlikely given his attention to other details in the painting.

Jim Logan
Look Out Kids, Here Comes Another Kind of Small Pox, 1992
acrylic paint and mixed media on wood
2005 Gift of Jim Logan

Jim Logan, of Cree/Métis/Sioux descent, was born and raised primarily in British Columbia and lived for many years in Kamloops. He currently lives and works in Ottawa, and his work has been shown in exhibitions across Canada, in the USA, and abroad. Like three other works recently donated to Kamloops Art Gallery by Jim Logan, Look Out Kids…, 1992, calls into question Eurocentric representations of Canadian history and values in an attempt to open dialogue between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal viewers. Through its symbolism, the work is a warning to young people (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal: “red” and “white”) of the dangers facing them in modern Canadian society: materialism, drugs, and the loss of soul to media culture.

Liz Magor

Humidor (brown), 2004

polymerized gypsum, tobacco

Kamloops Art Gallery Collection

Liz Magor is a Vancouver-based artist whose photographs and sculptures have shown in many solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, Mexico, and Australia. Two of her works were shown in the 1996 Kamloops Art Gallery exhibition The Culture of Nature. Magor and Ian Carr-Harris represented Canada at the XLI Biennale di Venezia in 1984. Humidor (brown) extends from a series of work exploring the idea of human refuge in the outdoors.

Bob Boyer (1948 -2004)

Just Another Indian Cowgirl in Iraq Hotels, 2004

oil on canvas

Kamloops Art Gallery Collection

Gift of Linda Jules

Bob Boyer, born in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, was a well-known Canadian First Nations artist. He studied art at the University of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus. He was at one time assistant professor and then head of the Indian Art History department at the Saskatchewan Indian Federated College. His work and his activities as a powwow dancer allowed him to travel widely, and he came into contact with the art and artists of many indigenous cultures.