October 15, 2016 to January 7, 2017
Curated by Jenelle Pasiechnik (UVic MA, 2015)
With supervision from Caroline Riedel (Legacy Art Galleries)
Legacy Art Gallery Downtown | 630 Yates Street
Glenn Howarth was a pillar in Victoria’s arts scene from the late 1970s until his death in 2009. He also had an enduring connection to the University of Victoria — as a Visual Arts student in the 1960s, a sessional instructor, an artist-in-residence with the Engineering Department, and recently with a bequest of his archival papers and digital art. Howarth was an innovative creator and inspired teacher searching for ways to communicate the artistic process and the perceptual functions of the eye and brain that contribute to visual perception. His work was often infused with surrealistic imagery which recalls the work of Francis Bacon. Howarth was also responsible for innovations in computer graphic art in the early 1980s working on the Telidon system as an artist in residence at UVic’s Engineering Department with Dr. Ernest Chang. He represented Canada with this work in the Sao Paulo Biennale and at Expo 86.
The Averted Eye Sees draws on UVic’s significant collection of Howarth paintings primarily from the Michael C. Williams estate, as well as Howarth’s writing, sketches, ephemera, and digital archive, part of the regional artists archive initiative of UVic Libraries Special Collections and Archives. It also includes a fascinating case study on the challenges of ‘retro-computing’ in recreating Howarth’s early experiments in digital artwork.
Due to the popularity of the exhibition on campus this summer, a second edition of this exhibition will be featured in the small gallery downtown, allowing for the viewing of a larger selection of Howarth’s powerful oeuvre.