SOCIAL STUDIES
Garnet Dirksen
The Cube
January 13 to March 24, 2018
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Garnet Dirksen works in photography, opting to shoot with film for its attachment to a history of documentary photography. He looks at shifts in trade and industry, their effects on local economies and the human element within built environments. Having grown up in Merritt, BC, Dirksen has documented the effects of economic downturn and the closing of resource-based industries and their impact on workers, residents and associated businesses. He seeks out work spaces altered by labourers with their own personalized touch and the emptiness of spaces in the absence of them.
THE MEMORY BOX
Zev Tiefenbach
The Cube
September 20 to November 1, 2014
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Zev Tiefenbach’s practice is grounded in film photography. Past bodies of work have included large-scale photographs taken from medium format negatives. With the advent of digital photography and the camera phone, Tiefenbach has become increasingly interested in the way people capture, consume and disseminate images. The ease and disposability of images means that the rigour and concentration of capturing a moment on film and composing an image has become a rare pursuit. With social media and online sources available for storing images, dissemination can be instantaneous.
VESSEL
Stephanie Patsula
The Cube
June 28 to September 6, 2014
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Curator’s Choice is the tenth annual exhibition of work by students graduating from Thompson Rivers University. This year’s selection is Stephanie Patsula. Patsula works with found and constructed objects and explores their relationship to the space in which they are made and displayed. Inspired by a recent residency at TRU’s Wells Gray Research Centre, Patsula considers the materiality of found objects and utilizes colour theory to create installations where individual elements play off each other and engage in dialogue.
SUGGESTIONS FROM KAMLOOPS
Rhonda Neufeld // Rodney Konopaki
The Cube
April 5 to June 14, 2014
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Rodney Konopaki is Vancouver-based artist who teaches in the visual arts department at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. His practice is grounded in print media, drawing and painting. Rhonda Neufeld lives and works in Armstrong, British Columbia. She has taught in the visual arts department at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops. Her practice is based in print media, drawing and installation. Together, Konopaki and Neufeld have been walking and drawing their way through urban, rural and wilderness environments over the past five years. They have explored communities and locales across Canada and created collaborative drawings and prints that attempt to capture a sense of place unique to every location encountered.
STRINGS
Elizabeth Warner
The Cube
June 29 to September 7, 2013
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
This 2013 Curator’s Choice exhibition is the ninth annual presentation of work by a student graduate from Thompson Rivers University Visual Arts Department. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, this year's Curator’s Choice features Elizabeth Warner’s Strings.
PLACE IN MEMORY
Tara Bauer
The Cube
April 6 to June 15, 2013
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Place in Memory explores the relationship between people and place and reveals the common ground found in our memories of significant spaces. Tara Bauer interviews elderly people about their sense of home and community and asks her subjects to describe important places they feel tied to and resonate for them. She then creates paintings of “place in memory” based on these descriptions. The works are overlaid with text taken from the interviews and memory maps drawn by the subjects accompany some of the works, weaving together memories through a variety of sources. Much like memories, frosted glass in front of Bauer’s paintings obscures imagery with cut out windows revealing elements while other details are fuzzy or lost.
A NARRATIVE CORPSE
The Cube
January 18 to March 23, 2013
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
A Narrative Corpse brings together the comic strip format of sequential narrative and the Surrealist game of "exquisite corpse." In this collaborative project, artists from the region are invited to continue a chain story through a comic strip format that is painted directly onto the walls of The Cube gallery. Each artist receives only the final panel of the previous artist's work and is given the freedom to continue on their own tangent through a three-panel comic strip format. After the final contribution is revealed, the walls of The Cube will be transformed into one large-scale comic book created from a multi-perspective narrative.
CONFLUENCE
The Cube
September 8 to November 3, 2012
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Ernie Kroeger brings together historical and contemporary images in an examination of the confluence of the North and South Thompson rivers, a natural phenomenon that has been central to the shaping of Kamloops. Confluence traces Kamloops’ history through text and photographs, speaking to the city’s historical relationship to the rivers. The word “Kamloops” is derived from the Shuswap word “Tk'?mlúps,” meaning “confluence.” The text portion of the exhibition reveals the many iterations of the city’s name, sourced from signs, books, magazines, encyclopaedias, local historical accounts, and the Internet…
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.
IPHONEOGRAPHY
Sarah Jules
The Cube
January 14 to March 10, 2012
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
The camera phone has created immediacy in photography in a way never seen before in the history of image making and image publishing. Photographers are now able to post their snap shots of events and moments to social media and photo sharing websites within seconds of image capture; subsequently rendering the printed hard copy photograph out-dated and unnecessary. Sarah Jules captures moments of intimacy that hint at greater narratives through her iPhone. She weaves a story from her experiences through these snapshots shown on video monitors and the printed image.
THE BONES
Tara Look
The Cube
September 17 to October 29, 2011
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
The Cube is transformed into a projection room for Tara Look’s The Bones. Look explores her family history through a digitally recorded performance of herself playing a Celtic instrument called the bones. The instrument was one of the few creative endeavours passed on to the artist by her father who valued hard work and utilitarian skills over creativity and artistry. The movement required to play this instrument and the framing of the work draw the viewer in while the practice of playing the music serves as a reminder of the artist’s father and a way of dealing with grief after his passing in 2009. Look blends traditional with contemporary music playing along to country songs on the artist’s MP3 player.
CURATOR’S CHOICE
Eric Fagervik
The Cube
June 11 to September 3, 2011
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
Curator’s Choice is the seventh annual exhibition of work by students graduating from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice highlights some of the talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating class. Eric Fagervik’s installation is the second version of an actual camper recreated for The Cube at the Kamloops Art Gallery. The work draws attention to sensory experiences and physical awareness of the body’s position in space. Sitting down, opening an overhead compartment and simply entering the space triggers different actions within the camper.
RANGE: MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK PHOTOGRAPHS
Mike Andrew McLean
The Cube
March 26 to May 28, 2011
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
The large format photographs presented in McLean’s Range reflect on the Rocky Mountain National parks and their role in shaping the identity of Western Canadians. The Rockies provide a myriad of industrial opportunity, employment and recreation for tens of thousands of Canadians. Every year, it draws more and more admiring tourists from around the world. Canada’s National park system is vital to the protection and conservation of the region. McLean’s work follows in the tradition of historical mountain photography, capturing the natural beauty of these spectacular ranges and documenting human alterations to the terrain. The exhibition looks at our mountain National Parks in an attempt to better understand their complexities and provide a contemporary perspective on the changing roles and usage of these mountain landscapes.
CONSTRUCTION SITES: IDENTITY AND PLACE
Diyan Achjadi // Rebecca Belmore // Therese Bolliger // Dana Claxton // Allyson Clay // Andy Fabo // Leon Golub // Angela Grossmann // Shelagh Keeley // Jim Logan // Ken Lum // Takashi Murakami // Nhan Duc Nguyen // Manuel Pina // Philippe Raphanel // Brendan Lee Satish Tang // Jeff Thomas // Henry Tsang // Jin-me Yoon // Sharyn Yuen
Central Gallery
October 18 to December 31, 2010
Curated by Craig Willms, Annette Hurtig
The Construction Sites: Identity and Place exhibition presents works by contemporary artists who investigate and reflect on the social construction of identity and the production of social space. Made over the past several decades, the works in the exhibition respond to developments in feminist, gender, queer and postcolonial theories. The exhibition concept takes a cue from Henri Lefebvre’s thinking about alienation and modernity, the nature of society, and social revolution as a revolution in everyday life. In his writing Lefebrve speaks about producing one’s life as one would a work. Might we likewise produce our own identity? Or is identity determined by society? And, with the dramatic mobility of information, goods and people aimed for by corporate globalization strategies, what is the relationship between our identity and the places we inhabit?
HAPA FAMILY
Jana Sasaki
Central Gallery
September 18 to November 6, 2010
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
This body of work by Jana Sasaki explores experiences and memories of ‘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.In particular, Sasaki is interested in words such as hapa andhafu that are increasingly used to define mixed cultures. The word hafu is used in Japanese to refer to somebody who is ethnically half Japanese. The label emerged in the 1970s in Japan and is now the most commonly used label and preferred term of self-definition. The word hafu comes from the English word ’half,’ indicating half foreign-ness. Hapa is slang for a person of mixed ethnic heritage with partial roots in Asian and/or Pacific Islander ancestry.
CURATOR’S CHOICE
Kate Garrett-Petts // Melanie Perreault
The Cube
June 12 to September 11, 2010
Curated by Craig Willms, Kamloops Art Gallery
This summer marks the sixth annual exhibition of work by graduating students from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, the works in Curator’s Choice highlight emerging talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts 2010 graduating class. Students at TRU graduate with a wide variety of specialties, including ceramics, printmaking, sculpture, painting, photography and installation. This year’s exhibition features installations by Kate Garrett-Petts and Melanie Perreault. Like previous Curator’s Choice exhibitions, this is not so much a ‘best of’ show, but rather one united by thematic and aesthetic threads running through the work of these two emerging artists.