ANCESTORS, ANTENNAS AND FLAG HOLDERS: DIASPORIST ANCHORS FOR FUTURE MEMORIES
Gambletron, Johnny Forever Nawracaj and zev tiefenbach
The Cube
Exhibition and Residency
July 13 to September 21, 2024
PIECES
Victoria Kjargaard
The Cube
April 13 to July 6, 2024
Curated by Elsie Joe, Curator, Secwépemc Museum and Heritage Park
Pieces brings together the artwork of settler artist Victoria Kjargaard, in dialogue with Nłeʔkepmx curator Elsie Joe. As well as being a path towards personal reckoning, the exhibition and collaboration enacts reconciliation through a process of coming to terms with and communicating difficult histories.
BLUTO’S CAVE: ALLEGORY OF THE MAN CAVE
Patrick Lundeen
The Cube
January 13 to April 6, 2024
Curated by Craig Willms
Through Bluto’s Cave: Allegory of the Man Cave, Patrick Lundeen transforms The Cube into a man-cave that, rather than providing respite from reality, challenges the tropes of masculinity and manhood. Bluto is the consummate villain, bully, and the arch-nemesis of the cartoon and comic strip character Popeye the Sailor Man. In his video and sound installation, Lundeen reimagines Bluto as the malevolent mascot for the contemporary masculine archetype.
TOB TOB KIN
Paula Ducharme
The Cube
September 16 to December 30, 2023
Curated by Craig Willms
In a new body of work called Tob Tob Kin, Paula Ducharme, a recent Thompson Rivers University Bachelor of Fine Arts graduate, fuses traditional and contemporary materials and ideas to explore her Indigenous ancestry.
Generously sponsored by Wilson M. Beck Insurance Services Inc.
THE FADEAWAY
Mallory Tolcher
The Cube
July 8 to September 9, 2023
Curated by Craig Willms
The iconic fadeaway jump shot in basketball is executed when the shooter gracefully and effortlessly glides away from the defender while still maintaining control of the ball. In The Fadeaway artist Mallory Tolcher captures the essence of this move by focusing attention on the history of women’s basketball. Through a series of photographs, sculptures, and textiles, Tolcher challenges gender stereotypes of women in sport and celebrates the rise and acceptance of professional women’s basketball. In the context of prescribed social gender roles, basketball was historically deemed too rough and cardiovascular for women. Despite these attitudes, women’s professional basketball has excelled. As the game has evolved, calls for equality, empowerment, and social justice have been amplified.
THE 215 LE ESTCWICWÉY̓ (“THE MISSING”)
Johnny Bandura
The Cube
April 15 to June 24, 2023
Curated by Craig Willms
Upon hearing the news in May of 2021 of the 215 children discovered in graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Johnny Bandura began painting 215 portraits as a therapeutic process. He felt compelled to respond to the findings as his grandmother was a Residential School survivor from Kamloops and Bandura remains connected to family in the region.
QUEER NEWFOUNDLAND HOCKEY LEAGUE (QNHL)
Lucas Morneau
The Cube
January 14 to April 1, 2023
Curated by Craig Willms
Playfully and provocatively challenging the prevalence of homophobia and hyper-masculinity in the culture of team sports, Lucas Morneau’s Queer Newfoundland Hockey League (QNHL) proposes 14 fictional teams that reclaim, empower, and amplify LGBTQIA2S+ voices. With team names that include the St. John’s Sissies, Bonavista Buggers, and Ferryland Fairies, Morneau subverts pejoratives used against the LGBTQIA2S+ community, paired with places historically associated with senior hockey league teams in Newfoundland and Labrador.
ASTRAL
Autumn Christopher
The Cube
September 17 to December 31, 2022
Curated by Craig Willms
This exhibition shares work by a recent graduate from Thompson Rivers University (TRU) as part of the Gallery’s annual partnership with TRU’s Fine Arts department. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, this exhibition highlights an emerging artist or artists from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) graduating class, giving artists an opportunity to work with a professional curator to create new work for a professional exhibition space outside the context of school. This year the work of Autumn Christopher is presented.
GHOST DAYS
Terrance Houle
The Cube
June 30 to September 10, 2022
Organized by the Kamloops Art Gallery
This exhibition is the culmination of GHOST DAYS projects developed since 2018. Initiated in 2015, GHOST DAYS is an experimental art adventure, bringing together film, video, performance, photography, and music. This project conjures spirits and ghosts of Indigenous, colonial, and non-colonial history that exist in the light of night, as well as in the darkness of the day.
SAILING PRETTY CLOSE TO THE WIND
Robin Hodgson
The Cube
April 23 to June 18, 2022
Curated by Craig Willms
In a new group of paintings, Kamloops artist Robin Hodgson investigates the psychological and emotional nature of post-able-body life. Through his large-scale colourful compositions, Hodgson incorporates autobiographical moments with broader narratives about the global pandemic.
MARKS IN PROGRESS
Christine Savage // Nathan Skyers // Clement Yeh
The Cube
January 15 to April 16, 2022
Curated by Craig Willms
Drawing is often understood as the preparation for a final work, not a fully realized practice, but over the past 50 years, as contemporary artists continue to explore its possibilities, drawing has been elevated from a supporting role to a primary medium alongside other art forms.
With this theme as the premise, Marks in Progress features work by three Kamloops-based artists who have divergent approaches to drawing. Applying techniques that range from traditional pencil on paper to digital rendering, much of the finished work emerges through preparatory sketches and experimental processes, where a physical artwork is not fully realized until the final stage. The act of drawing is evident in the final work; each artist emphasizes the gesture of lines and marks to capture memory and movement and to infer a narrative or ideas that do not exist exactly as they are drawn.
INJUSTICE AND IDENTITY
Jana Sasaki
The Cube
October 2 to December 31, 2021
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator
Injustice and Identity features work by Jana Sasaki, an artist originally from Merritt, BC, and now based in Vancouver, BC. The exhibition includes early photo and text-based works from the Kamloops Art Gallery’s collection that address the history of Japanese internment and the complexities of her family’s mixed-race or Hapa identity.
HOW HAVE YOU BEEN?
Amy Modahl
The Cube
June 26 to September 25, 2021
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator
Amy Modahl interweaves explorations of the vocabulary of space, visual-translation, and human and material gesture into her visual language. In her recent project developed for The Cube, Modahl worked with the Kamloops Art Gallery to circulate a call for letters in response to the question “How have you been?” She invited contributors to consider the changes and challenges of the past year and to share their experiences and thoughts. With the limitations of social interaction during the pandemic, our ways of interacting have been greatly altered. Physical interactions and movement in public spaces has to be consciously navigated, often adding stress to previously low-stress outings. Limited travel to see friends and family and the need to avoid comforting physical interactions and in person conversations has further contributed to our stress and general well-being.
THE SENSE ECONOMY
The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement
The Cube
April 10 to June 19, 2021
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator
Through their collaborative practice, The Laboratory of Spatial Bemusement, Megan Dyck and Tia Halliday have focused on presenting a series of kinetic sculptures and dance-based performances that incorporate design and accoutrement reminiscent of 18th-century French furniture and textiles. The Sense Economy invites viewers to engage in a tactile and movement-based consideration of luxury and hybridized domestic objects while being encouraged to think about our own relationship to these objects.
OMNIUM GATHERUM | A COLLECTION OF MISCELLANEOUS THINGS
Kelsey Blokland // Ashya Cross // Sophia Dodic // Marisa Drayton // Tenessa Gagnon // Sara Hall // Kalene Michalovsky // Sue Miller // Christyn Rebmann // Lyn Richards // Carol Schlosar // Elizabeth Spike // Emily Wood
The Cube
January 30 to April 3, 2021
Curated by Craig Willms, Assitant Curator
This exhibition celebrates the work of the Thompson Rivers University Bachelor of Fine Arts 2020 graduating class. The COVID-19 global pandemic has disrupted many events, including how students participate in university classes, resulting in the shut down of many public and private spaces, including the University.
AMBIGUOUS PARTS
Mark Soo // Lisa Klapstock
The Cube
November 21, 2020 to January 16, 2021
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
This exhibition brings together two unique photographic works from the Kamloops Art Gallery’s collection. Both works explore the viewer’s perception through abstraction by playing with scale to distort meaning and to question the subject. Each artist has specified an unconventional installation of their photographs to encourage the viewer to engage with the work in relation to the confines of gallery space.
PLEASANT FIELD
Anyssa Fortie
The Cube
July 7 to November 14, 2020
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Through the creation of a new body of work, Pleasant Field, Kamloops-based artist Anyssa Fortie has developed an immersive installation based on recollections of places and events as abstracted memories. Taking an autobiographical approach, Fortie pulls from past experiences and examines how they have transformed over time…
CLING
Twyla Exner
The Cube
January 17 to March 14, 2020
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Twyla Exner’s practice is inspired by nature and the reciprocal systems of electronic refuse and technological obsolescence. Of the pre-Internet generation, Exner is both frustrated and fascinated by the increasing use and invasion of technology in our daily lives.
UPON FURTHER DISCUSSION...
Josh Allan // Deb Fong // Kazia Poore // Elizabeth Sigalet
The Cube
September 21 to October 26, 2019
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Josh Allan, Deb Fong, Kazia Poore and Elizabeth Sigalet initiated a Polite Conversation in their final year as Bachelor of Fine Arts students at Thompson Rivers University. Coming from different perspectives and using different mediums, the four students began their project by employing a “call and response” approach as a way to step outside their own ways of working and to expand their methods of making art in an attempt to push the boundaries of their own practices.
POLY(MER)HEDRON
David Jacob Harder
The Cube
July 6 to September 7, 2019
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
David Jacob Harder started journaling his interactions with the materiality of everyday objects in 2012. While working on large-scale projects as part of his Bachelor of Fine Arts at Thompson Rivers University, he began keeping a “metal journal” where he recorded his daily encounters with metal objects. More recently Harder has been chronicling every plastic object he uses on a daily basis. For each object, he records what it is and its estimated lifespan and he writes about his personal connection to and use of the object. Harder then casts each object in concrete, creating a monument to each of these objects while quantifying the volume of space each object takes up.