SPRING 2023
School programs are available for this exhibition from May 1 to June 30, 2023.
Exhibition on view // Zoe Kreye: I know about lots of things I’ve never seen. And so do you.
Zoe Kreye’s fabric installations and sculptural objects transform the Gallery into an immersive environment, inviting us to rest, feel, and connect with our bodies. Kreye’s translucent, layered fabric constructions share her embodied ritual studio practice of pouring, spreading, and dancing dyes across canvas. I know about lots of things I’ve never seen. And so do you. recognizes the instinctive knowledge that we each bring to the gallery and creates a space of reverence, offering the potential for transformative experiences that can be carried into daily life.
This exhibition engages with visual arts curriculum. Below are a few connections we have identified. Your students will learn about embodied drawing practices and be introduced to the field of somatics. If you have specific outcomes in mind, please reach out to discuss how we can create something to suit.
Visual Arts
Create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play // explore elements, processes, materials, movements, technologies, tools, and techniques of the arts // reflect on creative processes and make connections to other experiences // describe and respond to works of art and explore artists’ intent // explore how the mind and body work together when creating works of art // learn about how artist’s experiment in a variety of ways to discover new possibilities and perspectives.
IN THE STUDIO
SOMATIC TAPESTRIES // SUITABLE FOR ALL GRADES
TEXTILES // PAINTING // MARK-MAKING
In the studio, students will work through a series of prompts to create marks, gestures, and layers using paint and water-soluble graphite on fabric. They will explore ideas from embodied drawing practices, embracing the physicality of drawing on a large scale - using their body, and the sensations within it, as the subject.
IN THE GALLERY
Our interactive tours are adapted for each group to allow for age-appropriate engagement with students of all grades.
In all cases, we employ a student-centered approach that encourages your students to find their voice and share with us what they see, feel, and wonder about the artwork on display.
Each tour is approximately 45 minutes in duration, depending on the engagement of the class, and includes in-gallery activities and discussion.
During their visit, students will learn about embodied drawing practices and be introduced to the field of somatics. They will experience an immersive world of layered, colourful fabric and be encouraged to move, collaborate with, and listen to their bodies.
Winter 2023
School programs are available for this exhibition from January 24 - March 17, 2023.
Exhibition on view // Paul Walde: Glacial Resonance
Through immersive video and sound installations, Glacial Resonance shares Paul Walde’s concerns about the environmental crisis. With glaciers as the primary focus, Walde’s work explores how land use and human activity impact Earth’s ecosystems and what these effects mean for us all.
IN THE GALLERY // FOR ALL GRADES
Our interactive tours are adapted for each group to allow for age-appropriate engagement with students of all grades. In all cases, we employ a student-centered approach that encourages your students to find their voice and share with us what they see, feel, and wonder about the artwork on display.
Each tour is approximately 45 minutes in duration, depending on the engagement of the class, and includes in-gallery drawing activities and discussion.
In order to allow time for deep and meaningful engagement, we select only a few individual artworks to discuss in each tour. Please let us know if you would prefer a full guided tour.
IN THE STUDIO
REFLECTIONS ON CLIMATE CHANGE // SUITABLE FOR All GRADES
Drawing // Audio Recording // Climate Conversations
Through a series of short prompts provided by the artist, students will be encouraged to reflect on climate change: How does it make them feel? What does it look like? Does it have a sound?
Reflecting on these prompts, students will create a drawing that illustrates climate change using graphite, coloured pencils, and markers.
Students will also be offered the opportunity to record their reflections in our “recording studio” to be shared with our community through the KAG website. This public sharing is voluntary.
Fall 2022
School Bookings are available October 3 to December 16, 2022
Exhibition on view, Alicia Henry: Witnessing
Alicia Henry’s mixed media installations evoke narratives of community, humanity, and connectedness. Henry combines wood, paper, acrylic, canvas, thread, dye, cardboard, leather, and cotton in figurative works that explore ideas of collective identity. Fascinated by the human form, Henry’s figures allow us to address and redefine our understanding of the body—our own and those of our neighbours, family, and community—and consider how bodies hold and communicate memories and history.
This season’s school programs connect to Arts Education Big Ideas across grades K through 8, exploring how art can be a way to connect with and understand our community and our role within it.
If you have specific curricular connections that you would like us to address, please reach out to discuss how we can create something to suit.
IN THE GALLERY // FOR ALL GRADES
Our interactive tours are adapted for each group to allow for age-appropriate engagement with students of all grades. In all cases, we employ a student-centered approach that encourages your students to find their voice and share with us what they see, feel, and wonder about the artwork on display.
Each tour is approximately 45 minutes in duration, depending on the engagement of the class, and includes in-gallery drawing activities and discussion.
In order to allow time for deep and meaningful engagement, we select only a few individual artworks to discuss in each tour. Please let us know if you would prefer a full guided tour.
IN THE STUDIO
CONSTRUCTED COMMUNITIES // SUITABLE FOR ALL GRADES
COLLABORATION // DRAWING // STORYTELLING
Students will work collaboratively to design and build an imagined community in our studios using paper, cardboard, and a selection of drawing materials. Working together, the students will imagine their community: where is it? what does it look like? who lives there? what activities happen in this place? how would they navigate these spaces? Each student will then work individually to create their contribution to the community using a variety of drawing materials on a cardboard or paper tile. Once completed, the students will assemble the tiles in our studios, telling the story of their piece in the whole.
LAYERS OF MEANING: FABRIC SELF-PORTRAITS // GRADES 4 +
TEXTILES// DRAWING // MIXED MEDIA
In the Gallery, students will be guided through close observations of Alicia Henry’s mixed media figures through drawing and conversation. These sketches and reflections will then inspire their own work in our studios where they will create a self-portrait using fabric, thread, and a variety of drawing materials.
Winter 2022
School Bookings are available February 1 to March 18, 2022
Our winter exhibition, Kelly Richardson: Halcyon Fog will engage students in dynamic conversations about our relationship to nature and how this relates to climate change.
Halcyon Fog includes two large-scale immersive video projections, Embers and the Giants and Pillars of Dawn. Both were made in 2019 as a response to the imminent extinction of the Coastal Douglas-fir ecosystem and the associated environmental catastrophes as foretold by biologists and climate scientists globally. The exhibition also includes two new video works that suggest a link between unsustainable forest practices and the prevalence of wildfires. These works present a view of an untenable future on Earth. They also offer a call for action that can happen today.
Full descriptions of our interactive tour and workshop options will be available soon.
Fall 2021
School Bookings are available October 5 to December 17, 2021
The art works in Whose Stories? raise questions about how historical narratives are constructed and told. It asks: What experiences are excluded? Whose voices are silenced and marginalized and how can those voices be heard? How can we add our own voices and help to transform our future? Can we help to create an inclusive, more truthful history that restores human rights and dignity?
Whose Stories? explores how we perceive ourselves in relation to world events, and how we take into account the experiences of others. The work of this diverse group of artists encourages dialogue about new possibilities for co-existence by offering space to re-think our assumptions about the world.
In addition to the curriculum connections we have identified below, you can expect your students to leave with a basic understanding of empathy and resiliency in relation to human suffering, change, and facing life challenges. If you have specific outcomes in mind, please reach out to discuss how we can create something to suit.
CURRICULAR CONNECTIONS
develop personal and collective responsibility associated with creating, experiencing, or sharing in a safe learning environment
describe and respond to works of art
interpret symbolism and how it can be used to express meaning through the arts
create artistic works collaboratively and as an individual using ideas inspired by imagination, inquiry, experimentation, and purposeful play
use the arts to communicate, respond to, and understand environmental and global issues
Whose Stories? : In the Gallery
We will begin by analyzing and discussing Diyan Achjadi’s, We Expected Hysteria series. These works on paper depict GIRL, an avatar who represents the artist, as she navigates difficult landscapes.
Tomoyo Ihaya’s Eyes-Gwangju Jogakbo is about compassion. She uses the symbol of the eye to help us think about that which we can not see. This work is comprised of many small works on paper all stitched together, referencing the interconnectedness we all share through places and experiences.
We will finish the tour by looking at Naoko Fukumaru’s ceramic restoration works. She uses the ancient Japanese gold joinery technique, kintsugui. The gold embellishments holding these once broken pieces together, brings attention and celebration to imperfection rather than masking it.
Each tour is approximately an hour in duration, depending on the engagement of the class, and includes in-gallery drawing activities and discussion. In order to allow time for deep and meaningful engagement, we select only a few individual artworks to discuss in each tour. Plese let us know if you would prefer a full guided tour.
Whose Stories? : In the Studio
STUDIO PROJECT 1: WHOSE STORY? STORYBOARDS
SUITABLE FOR GRADES 3+
COLLABORATION // ILLUSTRATION // STORYTELLING // WRITING // DRAWING // EMPATHY
In this workshop, we consider how artists in the exhibition interpret the stories of other people and represent their voices through art. Students will write a short story about one of their own experiences and those stories will be interpreted by classmates as storyboards.
STUDIO PROJECT 2: STORIES THROUGH OUR EYES
SUITABLE FOR ALL GRADES
CREATIVE STORYTELLING // CURRENT EVENTS // DRAWING // WATERCOLOUR PAINTING // EMBELLISHMENT
In this workshop, we consider a few of the visual elements and storytelling themes in the exhibition. Students will be asked to think of an experience to share as a story through the symbol of the eye and other images. Students will use drawing, watercolour paints, and gold embellishments to create their works.