Author Archives: khughes

Origin Stories II

Serigraph prints from the UVic Legacy Art Galleries

Guest curated by Jackson McDermott (Dene/Cree), organised by Wyatt Schiefelbein

On until the end of August, 2018

First Peoples House, UVic Campus

This exhibition of serigraph prints was created in response to the Government of Canada’s celebration of 150 years since Confederation. It is intended to acknowledge a much longer history by presenting Indigenous narratives that move beyond limited settler versions of the history of where we live and where we come from. Through serigraph prints chosen by guest curator, Jackson McDermott (Dene/Cree) from the Fort Nelson First Nation, this exhibition explores centuries-old stories that continue to live in the people, communities, nations and lands of this place.

Image: Kwaht-Yaht is Born, Art Thompson (Tsa Qwa Supp), 1989.

Landmarks: The Art of The Malahat Review

January 25 – August, 2018

Legacy Maltwood (at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Caroline Riedel, Legacy Art Galleries, UVic.

The Malahat Review one of Canada’s most iconic and long-standing literary journals. In its fifty-year run, its pages have featured the work of established writers, emerging talent and critical essays on both literature and the visual arts. The synergy between art and literature is particularly evident in the cover art and essays of the journal’s first decade, which presented new work by internationally acclaimed artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Warhol, and Roy Lichtenstein. These prestigious contributors were followed by the gradual introduction of west coast Canadian artists who at the time were making their mark on the emerging modern art scene of Victoria and Vancouver in the 60s and 70s. Thereafter, Canadian artists were equated with the visual identity of the magazine.

This exhibition pays tribute to the role of art in the journal – selected from 200 cover images over the past 50 years- and focuses in particular on works from the journal’s home institution, the collection of the University of Victoria. Featured artists include Maxwell Bates, Robert De Castro, Glenn Howarth, P.K. Irwin, Davidee Kavik, Jack Kidder, Tony Hunt Sr., Elza Mayhew, Eric Metcalfe, Myfanwy Pavelic, Margaret Peterson, Bill Reid, and Gordon A. Smith.

Commemorative limited-edition publication The Malahat Review at Fifty: Canada’s Iconic Literary Journal

Click here to view the PDF | This publication was produced by UVic Libraries as part of its imprint and publication series.

The limited-edition monograph highlights The Malahat’s achievements while looking forward to the future, and is richly illustrated with archival material from UVic Special Collections and University Archives and art from the UVic Legacy Art Galleries’ collection. Essays, critical commentaries and memoirs were provided by past and present editors, contributors and editorial board members—as well as nationally prominent writers with long associations with the journal—including Jan Martel and UVic Chancellor Shelagh Rogers, as well as Phillip Kevin Paul, Derk Wynand, Eve Joseph, Jay Ruzesky, Jan Zwicky and others.

Image: Head of Cadmium, Margaret Peterson.

The Time of Things: The Continuum of Indigenous Customary Practices into Contemporary Art

Gestation, Maureen Grueben, 2016.

April 11 – July 7, 2018

Guest curated by France Trépanier

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

View the exhibition publication online & posters BOYER GRUBEN PAVEL REECE SWAN

THE TIME OF THINGS proposes to challenge the binary of traditional and contemporary art. It considers the continuum of Indigenous customary practices into contemporary Indigenous art through the work of five women artists – Daphne Boyer, Maureen Gruben, Susan Pavel, Skeena Reece, and Marika Echachis Swan. Through their various Indigenous perspectives, this exhibition explores how the concept of time informs the production of Indigenous art today. It looks at how time influences connections to materials and process and it delves into the influence of intergenerational memory and knowledge passed through time on art making.

Opening Celebration
Thursday, April 12, 7-9 pm | Facebook Event Page

Curator Talk: With France Trépanier
Saturday, May 26, 2pm | Facebook Event Page

Performance: Conceptual Carving with artist Skeena Reece.
Thursday, June 7, 7pm | Facebook Event Page

Workshop Coast Salish Wool Weaving with Chief Janice George and Willard ‘Buddy’ Joseph Sunday, June 10th, 2018 | 10am – 4pm | Facebook Event Page

Join acclaimed weavers Chief Janice George and Willard ‘Buddy’ Joseph for an in-depth course on the cultural significance and traditional methods of Salish wool weaving. Working with individual looms, participants will learn the twill and the twine techniques of Salish wool weaving and create a unique wall hanging to take home. This workshop is organized in conjunction with our newest exhibit, The Time of Things and will take place in the exhibition.

Skwetsimeltxw Willard ‘Buddy’ Joseph and Chepximiya Siyam’ Janice George are accomplished weavers and teachers from the Squamish Nation They have co-founded L’hen Awtxw Weaving House to share the teachings and practice of traditional Coast Salish wool weaving.

Along with Leslie Tepper, they also co-authored the 2017 book, Salish Blankets: Robes of Protection and Transformation, Symbols of Wealth.

Innocence: West Coast Art and Artists Through a Visitor’s Eyes

**Image:** Film Still, *In Search of Innocence*, 1963.

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St. | Inner Gallery

January 20 – March 29, 2018

Curated by Art History & Visual Studies graduate student Nellie Lamb with supervision by Williams Legacy Chair Dr. Carolyn Butler Palmer, UVic

This exhibition presents Leonard Forest’s 1963 NFB film In Search of Innocence and examines the notion of innocence as it pertains to the West Coast in the 1960s and the artists Forest featured in his film. This exhibition includes work by Jack Shadbolt, Margaret Peterson, Roy Kiyooka, Fred Douglas, bill bissett, Joy Long, Sing Lim, Jack Hardman, and Donald Jarvis.

Curator’s Tour February 3, 2018 | 3 – 4:30pm | *free | Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

Guest curator Nellie Lamb will talk about her research on In Search of Innocence, tell stories that have emerged through this research, and discuss the idea of innocence as it relates to the West Coast as space/place. There will be a conversational question period following the tour. Participants are invited to share their own stories of the arts on the West Coast in the 1960s.

Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects: The University of Victoria Transgender Archives meets the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art (MOTHA)

January 13 – March 29, 2018

Legacy Downtown – 630 Yates St.

Guest curated by Chris E. Vargas, Executive Director of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art (MOTHA)

Exhibition publication

Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects brings together art and archival material from UVic’s world-renowned Transgender Archives to narrate an expansive and critical history of transgender communities. It is the third iteration in a multi-exhibition, multi-venue project organized by Chris E. Vargas.

Media: Galleries West | Border Crossings | CBC

Cassils Becoming An Image Performance Still No. 4 (National Theater Studio, SPILL Festival, London), 2013 c-print 22 x 30 inches edition of 5 photo: Cassils with Manuel VasonCourtesy the artist and Ronald Feldman Gallery, New York
Debbie Humphries, Gender Crossings: Photographs Exploring the Boundries of Gender, 1993-1996.
Misty and Joey at Hornstrasse Berlin, Nan Goldin, 1992.

Programming

Curator’s Talk & Tour

Curator Talk with Chris Vargas & Exhibition Tour with Aaron Devor, Chair in Transgender Studies, Founder and Academic Director, The Transgender Archives, University of Victoria

Legacy Downtown 630 Yates St. | January 13, 2018, 2pm | *free

Public Talk

Gender in the Round: Trans, Non-binary and Two-Spirit Reflections on Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St. | February 21, 2018 | 7pm | *free

Join gender diversity facilitator Kingsley Strudwick for an evening of audience engaged conversation with 4 guest speakers.

Facilitator: Kingsley Strudwick, founder of Ambit Gender Diversity Consulting, has been working in the community engagement and education sectors for ten years. Kingsley’s work focuses on transforming relationships as a means for greater social change.

Guest Speakers: Christine Fletcher comes from English settler families. She was a teenager in the ‘70s in the lands between prairie and foothills in Alberta, where gender was a rule, and journeys through or around it were drug assisted fantasies. She sits on the board of the Inner Activist, a non-profit whose mission is to help change workers improve the personal sustainability and systemic effectiveness of their work. While being grateful for advances made in recent decades, she writes songs and other stuff about how much more work there is to do.

Serena Bhandar is an uninvited settler on unceded WSANEC, Kosampson and Songhees territory. Her essays, stories and poetry have appeared in publications across Canada and the United States, and are featured in the print collections Fear This Queer and Nameless Woman. She works in community relations with the Anti-Violence Project, UVic’s sexual assault centre, and is in the midst of writing a manuscript on the embodied dualism of energy and entropy.

Waishan Yan

Public Performance

Cassils: Becoming an Image

Artist Talk with Cassils

March 8, 2018 | 7:30pm | *free | Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

Los Angeles-based Canadian visual and performance artist Cassils performs Becoming an Image. Originally conceived as a site-specific work for the ONE Archives in Los Angeles, this performance and artist talk are presented by UVic Legacy Art Galleries in conjunction with the exhibition Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects. This is a collaboration with UVic Visual Arts and Open Space with generous support from BC Arts Council, Camosun College Visual Arts, UVic Libraries, and the UVic Chair in Transgender Studies.

Visit Cassils Website for more info.

Curator’s Talk

Introducing the Museum of Trans Hirstory & Art (MOTHA)

With Chris E. Vargas, Executive Director of the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art (MOTHA)

March 22, 2018 | 3pm | *free | Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

In this talk MOTHA Executive Director, Chris E. Vargas will introduce the past and future plans and programs for this “forever under construction” institution. Vargas will also talk specifically about the museum’s on-going exhibition and book project Trans Hirstory in 99 Objects which is a creative and critical exploration of transgender archives and collections.

Chris E. Vargas is a video maker and interdisciplinary artist originally from Los Angeles, CA, currently based in Bellingham, WA. His work deploys humor and performance in conjunction with mainstream idioms to explore the complex ways that queer and trans people negotiate spaces for themselves within historical and institutional memory and popular culture. From 2008–13, Vargas collaborated with Greg Youmans to make the web-based trans/cisgender sitcom Falling In Love…with Chris and Greg. He also co-directed with Eric Stanley the movie Homotopia (2006) and its feature-length sequel Criminal Queers (2015). He is the Executive Director of MOTHA, the Museum of Transgender Hirstory & Art, a conceptual arts and hirstory institution highlighting the contributions of trans art to the cultural and political landscape. chrisevargas.com

Disobedient Women: Defiance, Resistance and Creativity Past and Present

**Image:** Trudy Williams, *1990. Photo courtesy Georgina Nelson.*

Legacy Maltwood (at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

October 18 – January 21, 2018

Curated by Dr. Darlene Clover (Faculty of Education, Leadership Studies) with Kathy Sanford, Project Co-lead and Graduate Assistants: Karin Zylstra, Zuzanna Szkudlarek and Tracey Murphy

In response to the Government of Canada’s celebration of the 150th anniversary of Confederation, this exhibition addresses missing narratives of the lives, struggles and creative acts of women who have for decades overtly and covertly disobeyed, resisted, challenged and subverted patriarchal and colonial authority and power, and gender injustices and constraints.

The multi-media exhibition profiles a selection of the activist practices, objects, stories, artworks, imaginings, writings, photographs and other works of women from Vancouver Island, British Columbia and beyond. It draws on ‘disobedient’ works housed in the University archives, created arts-based workshops, and from the studios of contemporary artists.

Click here to read a short article about the exhibition and to view photos of the exhibition openings at the Victoria Arts Council (2017) and the Legacy Maltwood (Oct. 2017).

Programming

Opening Reception Disobedient Women
Thursday, October 19 | 5 – 7pm

Rm A025 – at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library

Join us for the opening reception featuring performances – drumming, songs, skits and words- by some of the disobedient women in the show including the Raging Grannies. West Coast League of Lady Wrestlers, and Indigenous women drummers.

Workshop Oppose/Propose: Intersections Between Art and Activism
Saturday, November 18th, 2017 | 10:30am – 4:30pm | Facebook Event Page

Is there something you have always wanted to see changed, but don’t know where to start?

Join artist activists Kemi Craig and Kim Croswell to work through ideas and share in discussion about how to oppose problematic social forces and build alternatives through collaborative actions. This activities-based workshop will offer artistic strategies to overcome internal resistance, create dialogue toward possibilities, and engage in creative deconstruction/reconstruction. This day is for anyone who sees opportunities for change and wants to apply inspired solutions. We will be using smartphones, so please bring one with full battery power, and approximately 500 MB to 1 GB of storage space, or room for 3 minutes of film. If you do not have access to a smartphone, please bring a small printed photograph.

There is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children’s Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools

Legacy Downtown – 630 Yates St.

September 23, 2017 to January 6, 2018

Guest curated by Dr. Andrea N. Walsh, Anthropology, UVic.

View the exhibition website here

There is Truth Here brings a new line to bear on the role of art as part of children’s knowledge, identity, and experiences of Indian Residential and Day Schools. Through paintings, drawings, sewing, beading, drumming, and singing, and drama produced by children and youth who attended them in British Columbia and Manitoba the exhibition seeks to contribute in vital and new ways to dialogues and initiative about true telling, reconciliation, and redress in Canada.

The first person perspectives of Survivors and former students, their families, and communities are told via children’s creativity to bring a multi-generational perspective on the lives of children in the schools. The exhibition explores the common thread of historical resilience in the creation of the artworks, and speaks to the importance of the art today as nodes of healing and resurgence.

Media: “Art of Innocence in Dark Times” Times Colonist | Galleries West | “First Nations children’s art, created at residential and day schools, opens pathways for healing and reconciliation“, Focus Magazine.

Image: Courtesy of Osoyoos Museum Society.

Programming

Panel Discussion & Public Celebration

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St. | September 30, 2017 | 2:30 – 5pm

Two back to back public events on Orange Shirt Day. A public celebration of the exhibition There Is Truth Here: Creativity and Resilience in Children’s Art from Indian Residential and Day Schools including welcoming speeches, a performance by A.N.S.W.E.R. drumming group (All Nations Strong Womyn for Education and Reconciliation), and refreshments and light food from Seefood Catering.

Public Celebration | 4 – 5pm | Panel Discussion | 2:30 – 4pm

Creative Acts: Art and Resilience in an Era of Reconciliation

Residential school Survivors, artists, students, and museum- based scholars will share their diverse range of experiences and perspectives on how creativity and art can be used as acts and forms of resilience. Set within the context of the exhibition There is Truth Here, the six panelists and moderator Dr. Andrea Walsh will explore how art in various forms in public spaces can be critical tools for change in the wake of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and in the midst of the National Inquiry for Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls.

Panel Participants

Mark Atleo was born in 1952 in Tofino, British Columbia and he is a member of the Ahousaht First Nation. He grew up in Ahousaht with his mom, dad, and 9 siblings. At 8 years of age he began attendance at the Alberni Indian Residential School (AIRS) until the age of 16. In 1968 he moved to Victoria and finished his high school diploma at Oak Bay High School. In 2013 Mark joined the University of Victoria’s project to repatriate children’s art from the Alberni Indian Residential School after his own painting was returned to him at the National Event for Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Vancouver. Through his work with the University of Victoria research group, his story is now part of the permanent exhibition of residential school history in the new Canada Hall at the Canadian Museum of History. He continues to share his story with a personal goal of educating present and future generations about residential schools in Canada, and is a supporter of continued dialogue about the schools as a form of reconciliation.

Lindsay Delaronde is an Iroquois, Mohawk woman, born and raised on the Kahnawake reservation. She holds a BFA from the Emily Carr Institute of Art & Design and a MFA and a Masters of Counselling from the University of Victoria. In 2016 Legacy Art Gallery featured her exhibition IN DEFIANCE that challenged stereotypes of Indigenous women. She is currently the Indigenous Artist in Residence for the City of Victoria.

Dr. Jennifer C. Robinson has recently defended her PhD thesis in Visual Anthropology and Materiality in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Victoria. She holds an MA from University London, and has studied at University of British Columbia and Mount Royal University. She has won many academic awards including University of Victoria President’s Research Scholarship and Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council, Doctoral Fellowship. Her research is driven by her love of arts and culture, and by her belief that exhibitions, galleries, and museums can be spaces that create change. As a Visual Anthropologist, her research is focused on the diversity of Canadian culture.

Lorilee Wastasecoot is an Ininu iskwew (Cree woman) with roots in York Factory Cree Nation and Peguis First Nation in Manitoba. Lorilee grew up in Winnipeg, MB and respectfully acknowledges the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations on whose territory she currently resides. She is a recent Political Science graduate of the University of Victoria. In 2015, Lorilee and her family first became aware of a painting her father, James Wastasecoot, created in Robert Aller’s art class in Dauphin, MB at the Mackay Indian Residential School where her father spent 12 years of his life. Lorilee is a fourth generation inter-generational residential school survivor.

Gina Laing (Cootes) and her daughter April Laing are members of the Uchuklesaht First Nation, and their home community is Kildonan Reserve on the Alberni Inlet. Gina was a student of Robert Aller’s in the late 1950s and she has worked alongside her daughter April to use her childhood art, and experience of residential school to teach Canadians about this era of their country’s history. In 2015 they recorded the story of the repatriation of Gina’s childhood paintings from the Alberni Indian residential school from Gina’s perspective as a Survivor, and April’s perspective as an Intergenerational Survivor at the Canadian Museum of History. Gina’s painting and their story as mother and daughter now appear in the new Canada Hall at the national museum.

Natural | Supernatural: Nuu-chah-nulth Serigraph Prints from the University of Victoria’s Permanent Collection

Fall 2014 to Fall 2017

On the UVic campus at First Peoples House

Curated by Allison Grey Noble and Caroline Riedel

This exhibition of serigraph prints by artists Patrick Amos, Joe David, Ron Hamilton (Chuuchkamalthnii), Tim Paul, Art Thompson (Tsa-Qwass-Upp), and Glen Webster visually articulates knowledges of histories and stories that are important to the people of the Nuu-chah-nulth nations. These prints are from the university’s permanent collection and originate from the print making studio of Vincent Rickard, who worked with these artists in the 1980s and 1990s. Rickard and donors George and Christiane Smyth have given the university nearly 3,000 contemporary Northwest Coast prints, making UVic’s collection the most comprehensive in Canada.

Image: Supernatural, Joe David (Nuu-chah-nulth)

Origin Stories: First Nations Prints and Carvings

April 8 to September 16, 2017

Legacy Downtown – 630 Yates St.

Guest curated by Jackson McDermott (Dene/Cree) with Gillian Booth & Katie Hughes.

As Canada celebrates 150 years since Confederation, the Legacy Art Galleries respectfully acknowledges a much longer history by presenting First Nations narratives that move beyond limited settler versions of history. Through prints and carvings chosen by guest curator, Jackson McDermott (Dene/Cree) from the Fort Nelson First Nation, the exhibition explores centuries-old stories that continue to live in the people, communities, nations and lands of this place.

This Exhibition was shown in conjunction with There’s Blood in the Rocks, a video installation by Marianne Nicolson.

Event

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

Thursday, June 1st, 2017 | 7pm

Engaging with Indigenous Legal Traditions through Stories and Art

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The revitalization and recognition of Indigenous laws are essential to reconciliation in Canada. Indigenous art and stories play an important role in guiding this work as they not only depict cultural beliefs but also represent aspects of legal traditions.

Join Dr. Rebecca Johnson and Jessica Asch (LL.B) from the University of Victoria Faculty of Law as they share current research about Indigenous art and its relationship to law. During this program, the audience will engage critically with the art and stories in the current exhibition Origin Stories at Legacy Art Gallery Downtown.

Image credit: There’s Blood in the Rocks, Video Installation Still, Marianne Nicolson.

There’s Blood in the Rocks

April 8 to September 16, 2017

Legacy Downtown – 630 Yates St.

Video Installation

“Indigenous blood is in the very land itself.” Marianne Nicolson

Organized by Gillian Booth and Katie Hughes.

Kwakwaka’wakw artist Marianne Nicolson uses pictographic imagery and song in a quiet but powerful video installation that tells the often silenced history of the 1862 small pox epidemic in Victoria which utterly devastated thousands of West Coast First Nations people. Nicolson acknowledges the loss of her ancestors while affirming continued Indigenous presence in the land and the strength, endurance and resurgence of First Nations peoples over time.

This video installation was shown in conjunction with the exhibition, Origin Stories: First Nations Prints and Carvings.

Event

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

Thursday, June 1st, 2017 | 7pm

Engaging with Indigenous Legal Traditions through Stories and Art

Facebook Page

Image credit: There’s Blood in the Rocks, Video Installation Still, Marianne Nicolson.

So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright

FLW_window_2

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Inner Gallery

July 15 – September 16, 2017

Curated by Emerald Johnstone-Bedell

Exhibition website

After five decades of stewardship, the UVic Legacy Art Galleries is giving seven Frank Lloyd Wright designed windows back to the house they originated from. Say farewell to the art glass windows at our exhibition that celebrates this monumental gift during the 150th anniversary of the internationally renowned architect’s birth.

These original windows are intrinsic decorative and architectural parts of Wright’s unifying design principle called “organic architecture.” Wright was inspired by nature and natural materials to build harmonious designs that were integrated between their environment, architectural plan, fixtures and furniture.

The ‘light screens’, as Wright called them, were created in 1904-05 for the Darwin D. Martin House Complex in Buffalo, New York. In the wake of the Great Depression, the family house was abandoned and left in disrepair until recent renovations have restored the complex into a National Historic Landmark. These salvaged light screens are some of the last pieces needed to achieve Wright’s visionary intent and complete the major restoration project.

Event

FLW_window Presentation & Discussion

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.

September 16, 2017 | 3 – 5pm | Facebook Page

UVic Legacy Art Galleries’ return of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed windows back to their original home is a rare gesture of a museum transferring valuable objects out of their collection to serve a greater purpose.

Join us for a presentation by Director, Mary Jo Hughes and Darwin D. Martin House Curator, Susana Tejada as they discuss how UVic’s windows contribute to the restoration of a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Buffalo, New York.

Hughes will speak to the intent of the gallery’s decision and the significance of returning the windows to the context designed for them. Tejada will present the history of the Darwin D. Martin House and recent restoration achievements, while emphasizing how the original windows will have a lasting impact on Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy.

This event falls on the final day of the So Long, Frank Lloyd Wright exhibition and will be the last opportunity for the community to say goodbye to the windows.

MartinHouseDirector Susana Tejada is Curator of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Darwin D. Martin House where she oversees exhibitions, interpretation, and scholarly programs for this National Historic Landmark—a multi-residential estate admired for its six signature buildings, interior and exterior gardens, and an extraordinary collection of art glass and furnishings. Prior to her appointment in 2012, Susana served in various capacities in the fields of museum, archives, and library administration and has held professional positions at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, the State University of New York at Buffalo, and New York State’s Documentary Heritage Program. Susana was an invited participant in The Getty’s prestigious Next Generation Leadership Institute, an executive education program for the art museum field’s top emerging talent. She holds a Master’s degree from the University of Michigan and a duel Bachelor of Arts in Art History and Medieval and Renaissance Studies from New York University. She is a native of Los Angeles.

MJHughes Mary Jo Hughes is the Director of the University of Victoria Art Legacy Art Galleries. From 2007 to 2012 she was Chief Curator at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. She has served as Senior Curator athe Winnipeg Art Gallery and Associate Curator at the Agnes Etherington Art Centre in Kingston Ontario. Mary Jo Completed her MA in Art History at Queens University, with a specialization in Canadian art history, and has taught at the University of Winnipeg and the University of Manitoba.

Survival by Design

Survival by Design

The Legacy of Early Modern architecture in Victoria

Guest curated by Martin Segger
Contemporary photographs by John Taylor & documents from the Pacific North West Architectural Archive, University of Victoria

Exhibition catalogue click here

This exhibition is part of a series – Victoria Modern – click here to view the Victoria Modern series website

TWO EXHIBITIONS – TWO LOCATIONS

Survival by Design: The Legacy of Early Modern architecture in Victoria in the Urban Landscape

April 19 to July 8, 2017

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown Inner Gallery | 630 Yates Street

Survival by Design: The Legacy of Early Modern architecture in Victoria: the UVic Gordon Head Campus

May 6 to Oct 8, 2017

Legacy Maltwood (at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

The two decades post-WWII saw some of the most intensive urban development Victoria has witnessed. The result, a flowering of design innovation by a small group of architectural, has created a built heritage which, still under appreciated, nevertheless still defines the look and feel of Victoria.

Initiatives such as Centennial Square and the UVic Gordon Head Campus, planned neighbourhoods to accommodate returning veterans, to commercial and residential high-rises, this “legacy”; building stock still defines the urban landscape, influences how we use it, and to a large part determines how we adapt and change it.

These two exhibits document this unique and creative architectural legacy, captured through the lens of architectural photographer, John Taylor.

As small group of local architectural practices, often working together, created a distinctive design approach to style and form, but working within the earlier 20th tradition of the European-influenced “International Style”. As regional influences coalesced, what we know today as a “West Coast Style” emerged.

Form and detail uniquely expressed not only the purpose and function of these buildings, along with climate, geography and materials availability, but also demonstrated how building traditions of the region were subsumed in new construction technologies.

Taylors’s images document adaption and change in the urban landscape as original designs have responded to the pressures architectural life cycles: changes in purpose, retrofits to meet modern life-safety and other codes, additions to accommodate growth. Archival evidence, drawing from plans, photographs and textual records, traces the original design intent of the builders. Some of the reasons and subsequent design approaches for both structural and cosmetic adjustments to built form and detail are also revealed.

This exhibition project is supported by a grant from the Canada Council of the Arts.

CreationSquamishPeople

Event | Public Talk

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates Street

Thursday, May 11th, 2017 | 7pm

Public talk by guest curator Martin Segger

Survival by Design: the Legacy of Early Modern Architecture in Victoria

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Join us for a lecture with guest curator Martin Segger. Survival by Design: the Legacy of Early Modern Architecture in Victoria Prof. Martin Segger’s talk will focus on a series of iconic Victoria buildings which defined a new urban landscape in the 1950s and 6Os. Illustrated by contemporary photographs by John Taylor and supplemented by textual and visual sources from the Architectural Archives of the Pacific Northwest at UVic, Prof. Segger explores the design origins and traditions represented by this much-neglected part of the City’s architectural heritage and examines the process of adaptation and change which has either enhanced or compromised the design intent which prompted their original construction.

Image credit: McPherson Library, UVic. Photo by John Taylor.