THE WILD MAN APPRECIATION SOCIETY
Emily Hope
The Cube
June 30 to August 25, 2012
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
This year’s Curator’s Choice is the eighth annual exhibition of work by students graduating from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice features Emily Hope’s museum of The Wild Man Appreciation Society.
The wild man is our feral double. He lurks in the corners of popular culture, appearing as the good-natured trickster Puck and the comic servant Harlequin, as Old Saint Nick, and the very devil himself. He is Enkidu, Nebuchadnezzar, and St. John of Chrysostom. Here in Canada, we know him as Sasquatch. Inspired by the rich history of this creature, Emily Hope has created The Wild Man Appreciation Society, a civil society and travelling personal museum dedicated to the preservation and promotion of tales about the wild man. Enter through the reading room and join Hope in the creation of drawings and the telling of stories about wild men you’ve seen or imagined, then continue through into the museum to see the artefacts, which include giant mittens and rings, sixteenth-century beer jugs, coins, stamps, playing cards, a tin type, a tapestry, toys, carvings, and costumes.
Generously sponsored by Simmons, Black & Emsland Insurance Services
Installation view the Wild Man Appreciation Society
Photo courtesy of the Artist
