CONTEMPORARY CURIOSITIES: ODD OBJECTS FROM THE PERMANENT COLLECTION

Taiga Chiba // Jack Jeffrey // Liz Magor // Dianne Michel // Ros Eldridge // Andrew Atagootak // Attila Richard Lukacs // Eldon Garnet // Raymond Dupuis // Alan Wood

Central Gallery
October 28 to December 31, 2007

This exhibition features a selection of artworks from the Gallery’s permanent collection, all of which share a certain lack of recognisability—or at least a very surprising form! Included are recent additions to the collection by British Columbian artists, such as Taiga Chiba's sumi-e paintings of prehistoric life forms, misshapen "chocks" by Jack Jeffrey, and mittens mysteriously stuffed with cigarettes by Liz Magor. Other works in the exhibition have not emerged from storage for a decade or more, including extraordinary wall hangings from the 1970s by Dianne Michel and Ros Eldridge. These works join an improbable cribbage board by Andrew Atagootak, portraits of hanging beef carcasses by Attila Richard Lukacs, evocative photographs of dead matter by Eldon Garnet, and eccentric assemblages by Raymond Dupuis and Alan Wood. Contemporary Curiosities celebrates the ambiguous, the mysterious, the playful, and the downright weird in contemporary Canadian art.