Much art of the last several centuries has been preoccupied with the creation of space, from the illusionistic space of Renaissance art to the presence of depth that can exist even within pure abstraction. Divided into three sections, this exhibition presents a range of historical and contemporary artworks by more than 30 artists that together communicate some of the countless ways artists have contemplated space – from its optical perceptions, to its emotional impact and finally, to its geographical or topographical limits.

The exhibition begins by evoking the early twentieth century, which saw the replacement of deep illusionistic space in painting with something more fractured and far more suggestive. In Canada, artists such as Emily Carr, B.C. Binning, Maxwell Bates and other West Coast modernists adapted European and British influences to the specificities of British Columbia. Many of their methods of fracturing the picture plane have been re-interpreted by contemporary artists from today’s perspective.

The exhibition takes its title from a book by the same name authored in 1958 by Gaston Bachelard. In The Poetics of Space he writes particularly about the home, where as children we have our first momentous encounters of space. Drawing inspiration from this, the second section of the exhibition introduces elements of intimacy and memory, featuring works about houses and homes that impart their mysteries, histories or, in some cases, the abuses that lie within.

The third and final section of the exhibition features works in which the artists have conceptualized space in non-traditional ways, mapping it according to their own purposes or acknowledging its layered socio-cultural histories. These artists use various methods to map or define space – some through performative actions, others through investigations of social use, and still others through depictions of signs that register spatial borders. In its totality, The Poetics of Space offers myriad ways to consider how we experience, create and contain space, perhaps in order to save ourselves from its infinity.

The Poetics of Space is organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery and curated by Daina Augaitis, Chief Curator Emerita and Emmy Lee Wall, Assistant Curator, Vancouver Art Gallery. Across the Province is generously supported by the Killy Foundation.

CIRCLES & WIGS is a collaborative practice between Jessica Groome and Ashleigh Bartlett creating drawings, paintings and installations. Living in different cities, they have conducted intensive self-directed residencies in each other’s studios since 2015 to produce new work playing off each other’s practices. For this exhibition, the two artists worked from their respective cities for six months before coming together at the Kamloops Art Gallery for a two-week residency to complete the project in The Cube.

The exhibition uses Imi Knoebel’s series of paintings titled 24 Farben für Blinky (24 Colours for Blinky), as a departure point. Knoebel painted the series in 1977 as a tribute to his friend, artist Blinky Palermo, following Blinky's death earlier that year. This was a turning point in Knoebel’s practice because of his embrace of painting and his selection of colours based on his feelings for his friend and the works he left behind. Groome and Bartlett will determine the other’s palette from a distance based on the idea of each other from memory. Using the selected palette, one artist creates circles while the other creates wigs consisting of shredded paintings. They will finish and install the work at the Kamloops Art Gallery in the final week leading up to the exhibition, and will continue with an open studio and an artist talk in the week following the opening. The title comes from an adolescent declaration of friendship that has come to have tongue-in-cheek connotations and a casualness in the abbreviated “BFF” shared through text messaging. CIRCLES & WIGS was concocted from text, Skype and email communication for the artists’ initial collaborative exhibition and continues in this manner since the artists still reside in different cities. They are poking fun at the term, but also embrace it as a link that identifies Groome and Bartlett as being something more than only being collaborators.

Re Present: Photography from South Asia is a landmark exhibition, the first of its kind in Western Canada to present a diverse range of the rich and varied histories of photographic media from the Indian subcontinent.

Photography was introduced to India almost immediately after it was invented in Europe. Louis Daguerre’s instructions for the new media were published in France in August 1839, and by 1840 professional photography studios were open in major cities like Calcutta and Bombay. Photography was soon adopted by the British colonial government to document the many different populations and communities they sought to control, and as a result the medium is deeply entangled with the colonial project as a tool of surveillance and policing. At the same time, photography was also enthusiastically embraced by Indians themselves as a means of personal expression and modern experimentation. The painted and embellished photographic practices that developed in nineteenth century South Asia are a unique contribution to the global history of the medium.

Re Present includes a historical section of nineteenth century photographs with examples of both colonial and vernacular forms of photography, including work by major artists including Samuel Bourne, Raja Deen Dayal and Linneaus Tripe, as well as work by many unknown or unnamed studio photographers. The second part of the exhibition features the work of several contemporary artists who use historical images or well-known compositions of visual iconography as the basis for their contemporary interventions. By re-presenting and subtly manipulating imagery that at first appears familiar, these artists insert the past into the present moment in a way that challenges long-held assumptions about photography’s capacity for accuracy and truth.

In addition to featuring the work of artists from South Asia, Re Present includes work by artists of South Asian heritage who live in the diaspora, including South Asian-Canadian artists, who use photography to reflect on themes of migration and relocation. The exhibition includes an interactive educational space highlighting the history of South Asian communities in British Columbia and the importance of photographic records in the immigrant experience.

This exhibition has an accompanying publication available here.

Two works by Gary Pearson – Under the Blue Palms, 2005 and When I get to Baton Rouge, 2005 – are on loan to the Kelowna Art Gallery for inclusion in the major solo exhibition Gary Pearson: Short Fictions. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue co-published with Black Dog Publishing, and includes essays on Pearson’s work by Aasron Peck, Michael Turner and curator Liz Wylie, as well as a transcript of an interview with the artist by writer and curator Ihor Holubizky.

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.

Currently residing in Montreal, QC, Dirksen explores the fur industry in the city after a decline in the 1990s and 2000s. He documents retail spaces, workshops, processing spaces and storage revealing a human element of those involved in the industry today. While it’s true there has been a recent resurgence in the market for fur, increased global competition and cheaper labour abroad have forced many of Montreal’s traditional furriers out of business. Dirksen looks at the changing industry through personal touches of workers within utilitarian spaces. The images show present-day working places and consider how inseparable this industry is from its role in the history of Canada. The images ask the viewer to question the relevance of this industry in contemporary terms and revisit its historical significance.

Three works by the Group of Seven artist A.Y. Jackson are on loan from our collection to the Audain Art Museum in Whistler for the exhibition Stone and Sky: Canada’s Mountain Landscape. Curated by Darrin Martens in recognition of Canada’s sesquicentennial, the exhibition explores how Canadian artists have interacted with the monumentality and vastness of mountain vistas over time. With over 100 objects on loan from 20 different public and private collections, Stone and Sky is the largest and most comprehensive art historical project that the Audain Art Museum has thus far undertaken; the exhibition is also accompanied by a book with essays by Martens, Roger Boulet and Lisa Christianson. The KAG was delighted to lend South of Razor Mt, BC, 1914; Mount Paul, Kamloops, BC, 1945; and Five Mile Glacier, Mt. Robson, 1914
for inclusion in the exhibition.