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.
PLANNED PEASANTHOOD
Holly Ward
The Cube
September 16 to November 4, 2017
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Planned Peasanthood stems from the artist’s ongoing project The Pavilion, a geodesic dome that Ward is developing in collaboration with the artist Kevin Schmidt as a rural, site-specific facility for artistic research and production. For this exhibition in The Cube, Ward formulates a series of sculptural and two-dimensional works that explore connections between “natural” systems, skill building, self-reliance and artistic agency within late capitalism.
EXPULSION: PANOPTIC MACHINE AND FEED
Levi Glass
The Cube
July 8 to September 2, 2017
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
The 2017 Curator’s Choice exhibition features a new project by Levi Glass. The artist draws on modern methods of surveillance and a range of critical analyses of the gaze to create a work that involves audience interaction in order to create a mediated experience of viewing and a prompt for self-reflection. Glass cites Foucault’s theory of panopticism, articulated in his work Discipline and Punish (1975) wherein he reflects on the role of surveillance in power structures and as a means of control in society…
FALSEVOID
Matt Macintosh
The Cube
April 8 to June 24, 2017
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Kamloops–based artist Matt Macintosh’s video installation, falsevoid, explores the relationship between mysticism and culture, drawing on recent projects that address strategies for intercultural exchange and the role of signs, symbols and practices in relation to identities, cultures and discourses. For this project, Macintosh works within the parametres of The Cube, critically considering “the (white) cube” as a recurring motif in western modern art and architecture.
MOVING WHILE LOOKING AT THINGS THAT DO NOT MOVE
Laura Findlay
The Cube
January 14 to March 25, 2017
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Moving While Looking at Things That Do Not Move emerges from the writing of Scottish author Nan Shepherd (1893-1981) and her book The Living Mountain. In it, Shepherd champions a prolonged and contemplative experience of the landscape, foregoing a hurried ascent to a mountain peak in favour of savouring the expanse of the plateau. Shepherd asserts that “moving the eye itself when looking at things that do not move, deepens one’s sense of outer reality.”
NOT QUITE SURE ABOUT THE GLITTER THOUGH
Monica McGarry
The Cube
September 17 to October 29, 2016
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Monica McGarry’s work uses pop culture, kitsch and humour to challenge how people perceive and engage with images in the world around them. Her choice of material recalls a childhood fascination with glossy and shiny objects and materials. As we mature into adulthood, a fascination with eye-catching material remains, though perhaps our desire to interact with them lessens. The artist delves into how this perception changes as we get older and how we can be drawn back into an investigation of our surroundings, beyond appearances. Glitter, often a staple of children’s art projects, is used as the central medium in McGarry’s large scale painting to invite viewers to take in the shimmering surface more closely, while the text and interrogative titles of both the work and the exhibition wrestle with the seduction of this material, highlighting this uneasy relationship between criticality and the experience of wonder as we age.
CHATROOM PARANOIA
Ryland Fortie
The Cube
July 2 to September 10, 2016
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
This year's Curator’s Choice is the 12th annual exhibition of work by a student graduating from Thompson Rivers University. Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice annually highlights talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating class and gives emerging artists an opportunity to create new work for a professional exhibition space outside the context of school. The 2016 Curator’s Choice exhibition features a new project by Ryland Fortie. Fortie’s research-based practice explores materials and video through multi-media installation. The exhibition title, Chatroom Paranoia, references virtual social spaces found on the Internet as a real time forum for exchanging ideas on particular topics…
MEMORY LINES
Laura Hargrave
The Cube
March 19 to June 18, 2016
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Through her experimental drawings, Laura Hargrave recreates the experience of memory loss. With her back to the drawing surface Hargrave renders life-size figures as a way of challenging the normal observation and recording process of image creation. She draws blindly, relying only on memory for reference so that the resulting imagery takes on a mix of blind contour drawing and continuous line. The drawings are skewed and proportions take on a slightly altered look, playing with their relationship in space. Through this practice, Hargrave explores the loss of memory that comes with age and refl ects on its effects on friends and relatives. Figures in the drawings appear to wander the gallery as if lost or searching for something, both fl oating and grounding themselves across the walls of the gallery.
LIVE STREAM: OPTICAL RENDERING
Dion Fortie // Ryland Fortie // Anyssa Gill // Levi Glass // Alex Jensen // Monica McGarry
The Cube
January 16 to March 12, 2016
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Running parallel with Midnight Sun Camera Obscura in the Central Gallery, Live Stream: Optical Rendering features a new project by Kamloops-based artists who took part in the exhibition Strange Things Done at the Yukon School of Visual Arts’ Confluence Gallery during the Midnight Sun Camera Obscura Festival in Dawson City, Yukon in the summer of 2015. Dion Fortie, Ryland Fortie and Levi Glass were among a group of emerging artists who created works that explored self-illuminated sculptural forms in relation to their research into cameras obscura.
INHERIT, REVISE, REPEAT
Lea Bucknell
The Cube
September 18 to October 31, 2015
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
In her solo exhibition Inherit, Revise, Repeat, Lea Bucknell’s new body of work observes, dissects and recognizes people's attachment to place. Bucknell explores two modes of memory most often associated with creating a sense of place. The first mode relates to stories told about a place. These are often informal and personal accounts that get passed from one generation to the next in order to build a picture of shared histories. The second mode is a form of symbolic heritage, one that relies on mnemonic triggers to initiate meaning. These consist of more formal or official records of a place, such as monuments, architecture, symbols and objects that represent stories or figures from the past. They are used to imprint a specific telling of history on a place. Using both personal history and community research, Bucknell creates a selection of images, texts and sculptures that investigate connections people have to Kamloops in an attempt to understand what makes this city distinct.
THE CAUSEWAY
Andrew Hood
The Cube
July 27 to September 5, 2015
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
This year's Curator’s Choice is the eleventh annual exhibition of work by a student graduating from Thompson Rivers University (TRU). Selected by Kamloops Art Gallery Assistant Curator Craig Willms, Curator’s Choice annually highlights talent from TRU’s Bachelor of Fine Arts graduating class and gives emerging artists an opportunity to create new work for a professional exhibition space. This year artists were invited to propose a project for The Cube that expands on their art practice outside the context of school.
TIME MACHINE FOR ABANDONED FUTURES
Colin Lyons
The Cube
March 28 to June 13, 2015
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Colin Lyons’ recent work fuses printmaking, sculpture and chemical experiments, pushing the role of the etching plate beyond its traditional boundaries as a re-enactment of the rise and fall of industrial economies. He explores industry through the lens of fragility and impermanence, considering planned obsolescence and the nature of what we choose to preserve. Lyons adapts etching plates and uses acid to create batteries that reclaim decaying industrial parts. Once restored, the surfaces are coated with a resist material. The artist then traces over the restored surfaces, submerging them in a bath of etching acid. The results create a contour map that marks the traces of decay.
FASTER THAN THE SPEED OF SOUND
Michael Markowsky
The Cube
January 17 to March 21, 2015
Curated by Craig Willms, Assistant Curator, Kamloops Art Gallery
Michael Markowsky’s practice combines painting and performance. He typically draws and paints while riding inside or on top of moving cars, buses, boats, trains, airplanes and even dogsleds. In July 2013, Markowsky made 100 postcard-sized drawings while flying faster than the speed of sound in a Royal Canadian Air Force CF-18 “Hornet” jet plane. The opportunity came about because of his involvement in the Canadian Forces Artists Program. Past participating artists in this program include members of the Group of Seven, David Milne, Charles Comfort and Alexander Colville.
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.
THE WASTE LAND
Andrea Kastner
The Cube
January 17 to March 22, 2014
Curated by Kamloops Art Gallery, Craig Willms
Andrea Kastner is a Kamloops-based artist. Her practice explores the presence of the unseen, both in her physical surroundings and in the human psyche. Previous bodies of work have included archeological excavations of household refuse and paintings that reveal the excess and sacred nature of rejected objects found in basements, alleyways and neglected spaces. In 2012, Kastner was selected as a finalist for the RBC Painting Competition for her painting Demolition.
MONUMENTAL IDEAS IN MINIATURE BOOKS
The Cube
September 21 to November 2, 2013
Curated by University of Akron, Myers School of Art, Professor of Art, Hui-Chu Ying
Organized by the Myers School of Art at the University of Akron, Monumental Ideas in Miniature Books is an international collection of hand -made books including work by Kamloops-based artist Darlene Kalynka. At a time when books and print are increasingly turning to digital media, this exhibition invites the viewer to embrace the book as a physical object. The artist book is something not only to be read for its content, but to be taken in as a crafted work of art. The books showcase a wide range of printmaking techniques including traditional relief, intaglio, lithograph, serigraph and digital processes. The viewer is invited to investigate the content and technique of artist’s books and explore the possibilities of what a book can be.
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.