Tag Archives: British Columbia

Honoris Causa: University of Victoria First Nations Artist Honourands

Henry Hunt, Kwagiulth Chief and Frog

Henry Hunt, Kwagiulth Chief and Frog

February 2014

First Peoples House at the University of Victoria

Curated by Emerald Johnstone-Bedell

Twice yearly at convocation the University of Victoria awards honorary degrees to those who have demonstrated distinguished and extraordinary achievements. During its 50-year history UVic has granted honours to seven First Nations artists who have contributed not only to the arts but also to the community at large as leaders, activists, visionaries, role models, and groundbreakers. This exhibition features works from the University of Victoria’s art collection and an excerpt from the citation that was read at the occasion of granting the degree.

Paradox

Daniel Laskarin, blue chair :: if this

Daniel Laskarin, blue chair :: if this

October 31, 2013 –  January 11, 2014

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Mary Jo Hughes

par-a-dox n. 1. A statement that seems to contradict itself but may nonetheless be true.

The notion of paradox provides an apt means of curating seven divergent artists who make up the University of Victoria’s Visual Arts department. Despite their widely varying practices, they share fundamental interests in the contradictory nature of our very physical and psychic experiences in, and of, the world around us.

Paradox presents the recent work of the artists teaching in department of Visual Arts of the University of Victoria. The seven faculty members (Daniel Laskarin, Sandra Meigs, Robert Youds, Vikky Alexander, Lynda Gammon, Jennifer Stillwell, and Paul Walde) are mid-career and senior artists with national and international careers. Each artist will be represented by work characteristic of current practice relating to the theme of the paradox implicit in our experience of art.

Paradox aims to bring wider understanding to the particular strengths of this nationally acclaimed academic program, which is rooted in explorations of phenomenology and in the perceptual, conceptual, and interactive contexts of contemporary visual art.

Events:

An opening reception was held on November 1, 2013 with the seven artists and public in attendance.

On December 1, 2013 an experimental concert titled Music for Mycologists was held in support of Paradox. Paul Walde’s large mushroom spore prints (Interdeterminacy, 2012) also act as musical notation. Tina Pearson (flute, voice), George Tzanetakis (bass clarinet) and Paul Walde (bass guitar) interpreted the prints sonically and also played pieces by John Cage and Vaclav Halek.

American composer John Cage was an avid mycologist. Cage often quipped that music and mushrooms have nothing to do with one another except for the fact that they appear next to each other in the dictionary. Experimental Music Unit put this statement to the test.

Similar Exhibitions:

Coalescence: Bridging Contemporeneity & Tradition

Richard Hunt, An Eagle [and golf course]

Richard Hunt, An Eagle [and golf course]

August 28 – November 18, 2013

Legacy Maltwood (at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Emerald Johnstone-Bedell and Lesley Golding

This exhibition at the Maltwood Prints and Drawings Gallery offers an in-depth look at the work of five contemporary Northwest Coast artists: Francis Dick, Charles Elliott, Richard Hunt, Tim Paul and Moy Sutherland. Drawing on works from the University of Victoria’s extensive Northwest Coast print collection, this exhibition demonstrates how the artists use traditional stylistic elements and cultural references to express contemporary experience.

These five artists represent the three main culture groups of Vancouver Island: Coast Salish, Nuu-chah-nulth and Kwakwaka’wakw and were selected for their innovative work as well as their longstanding influential relationships with both the university and the local community.

Highlights of the exhibition include Richard Hunt’s An Eagle [and golf course], which injects both humour and unexpected imagery into a traditional formline composition, and Francis Dick’s Comes a Woman, which addresses female spirituality. Additional themes include environmentalism, the Christian faith, cultural revival, commercialization, mentorship and personal relationships. The prints are accompanied by quotes from the artist providing insight into the inspiration and creative process associated with the work.

Creating Con[text]

Jack Shadbolt, Biomorphic
Jack Shadbolt, Biomorphic

March 13 – June 15, 2013

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Dr. Carolyn Butler Palmer, Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest

Creating Con[text] activates works of art in the University of Victoria’s Michael Williams Bequest Collection through the oral history research of Dr. Carolyn Butler Palmer and her graduate students. Over the course of a number of years Dr. Butler Palmer and her students have gathered an extensive array of interviews with people associated with the late downtown businessman and art supporter Michael Collard Williams and the artists he collected.  Featuring paintings by Angela Grossman, Jack Shadbolt and Emily Carr, eminent British Columbia painters whose careers span more than a century into present day, the exhibition allows the stories of artists, dealers, collectors, and viewers to infuse the works of art with more deeply understood meaning.

Similar Exhibition:

To Reunite To Honour To Witness

Phyllis Tate, Untitled (1959)

Phyllis Tate, Untitled (1959)

May 8 – June 15, 2013

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Dr. Robina Thomas and Dr. Andrea N. Walsh

The vibrant and powerful paintings in this exhibition were created by children who attended the Alberni Indian Residential School in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The works were created in an extra-curricular art class run by artist Robert Aller.

Over 50 years later, residential school survivors who attended the school and created these paintings are working together with UVic faculty and staff to document the role of art in residential schools through individual stories and works of art.

The paintings in this exhibition provide an exceptional and rare opportunity to witness the power of children’s creativity during residential schooling, when their voices were actively silenced by assimilationist government policies. The exhibition asks viewers to consider the role of this art today at a time when Canada is attempting reconciliation around this history with Indigenous peoples.

Karl Spreitz

Karl Spreitz scouting locations for the BC FIlm Commission in Stewart, B.C.

Karl Spreitz scouting locations for the BC FIlm Commission in Stewart, B.C.

Online Catalogues

There are two online catalogues of Karl Spreitz’s work. Karl Spreitz and Collaborators Archival Film Collection (2013) features many of his films, essays, transcripts and biographies of Spreitz and his collaborators.  Karl Spreitz Film Collection (2001) has an inventory of his works, a glossary of film terms and information about Spreitz’s work.

More About the Exhibitions

The Karl Spreitz Film Collection at the University of Victoria consists of more than 100 reels of 16mm film in various stages of production. Many of these films were produced by Spreitz in collaboration with other artists and friends such as Colin Browne, Vicky Husband, Anne Mayhew, Michael Morris and Herbert Siebner and are both personal and documentary in nature.

Covering a period of more than three decades, the content of the films describe the working process of local artists, historic events, and political and environmental issues. The collection is of tremendous historic value both in terms of film production in British Columbia, subject matter, and as a partial record of Spreitz’s career.

 

Understanding Place in Culture: Serigraphs and Transmission of Cultural Knowledge

Francis Dick, The Dragon
Francis Dick, The Dragon

October 18, 2012 – January 28, 2013

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Shelby Richardson

The Understanding Place in Culture online catalogue is available here. It features a curatorial essay, numerous works of art and information about the artists.

Museums and other educational institutions are often seen as sites of privileged knowledge production, spaces that have often excluded minority perspectives and realities. This exhibition presents a selection of prints from the George and Christiane Smyth and Vincent Rickard Northwest Coast Print collection that focus on representations of place and Indigenous knowledge production. The perspectives represented by these artists challenge the hegemonic practices of institutions, such as museums, by positioning the artists as the ethnographic authorities on their cultural expressions and knowledge.

The University of Victoria: A Community of Communities

University of Victoria Alma Mater Society President Paul Williams leads a large group of students down Douglas Street protesting fees increase on 18 October 1965.

University of Victoria Alma Mater Society President Paul Williams leads a large group of students down Douglas Street protesting fees increase on 18 October 1965.

August 22 – October 15, 2012

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

This exhibition features a selection of historic and contemporary photographs of life at UVic over the past 50 years. Taken from Ian MacPherson’s book ‘Reaching Outward and Upward: The University of Victoria 1963-2013, this exhibit promises a vibrant look at the people, places and events that make our campus unique.

Mark Laver: Shining Examples

I Want to be a Shining Example, Mark Laver

I Want to be a Shining Example, Mark Laver

March 1 – March 31, 2012

Legacy Small Gallery

Dark, wet, Vancouver Island nights receive a painterly treatment in Mark Laver’s intimate Night Paintings and ambitious Rural Disasters.

Be it urban parks after midnight, trailer park fires, nocturnal car crashes or rural highways, the exhibit reveals a battle between the psychological and narrative power of nocturnal imagery and the allure of oil paint itself. Smeared, swirled, glazed and dripped, the luscious materiality of paint is as much the subject of these paintings as the landscape Laver calls home.

Similar Exhibitions

The Emergence of Architectural Modernism II (Victoria Modern Series)

Hubert Norbury, Bay Parkade Entry (1960)

Hubert Norbury, Bay Parkade Entry (1960)

The Emergence of Architectural Modernism II: UVic and the Victoria Regional Aesthetic in the Late 1950s and 60s

November 30, 2011 – February 26, 2012

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

It features a tour of 1950s and 60s UVic architecture, architect and designer biographies, and a free PDF of the catalogue.

This series of exhibitions and publication projects explores the relationships, personalities and projects contributing to the development of a regional modernist aesthetic in the post-war Victoria urban landscape (1939–2013). It celebrates and coincides with celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the City of Victoria (2012) and 50th anniversary of the founding of the University of Victoria at its Gordon Head Campus.

During the late 50s and 60s, a small number of legacy architectural firms changed Victoria’s built environment with forward-looking planning and bold new architectural forms. Using plans, drawings, photographs and architectural models from the period, this exhibit explores a number of planning initiatives, design projects and building programs that defined this important phase in the development of the Capital Region.

This is the second in a series of exhibitions and publications exploring the relationships, personalities and projects contributing to the development of a regional modernist aesthetic in the postwar Victoria urban landscape. This exhibition develops themes of the earlier exhibition Town and Gown: Centennial Square and the Gordon Head Campus: Seminal Projects (2011).

Exhibition Catalogue: Victoria Modern 3: The Emergence of Architectural Modernism II; UVic and the Victoria Regional Aesthetic in the Late 1950s and 1960s (2011)

Similar Exhibitions:

Victoria Modern Series Catalogues:

Victoria Modern 1: Investigating Postwar Architecture and Design on Southern Vancouver Island: an introduction (2005)

Victoria Modern 2: From a Modern Time: The Architectural Photography of Hubert Norbury: Victoria in the 50s and 60s (2009)

Click here for the Victoria Modern website

K’ulut’a and the Professor: The Friendship of Henry Hunt and Peter Smart

Sea Otter Feast Bowl, Henry Hunt, painted red cedar, c. 1970s

Sea Otter Feast Bowl, Henry Hunt, painted red cedar, c. 1970s

October 8 – November 26, 2011

Legacy Small Gallery

Curated by Kevin Neary

View the online catalogue:

K’ulut’a and the Professor Catalogue

K’ulut’a and the Professor celebrates the art and legacy of famed Kwakiutl artist Henry Hunt (K’ulut’a was his name in Kwak’wala, the native language of the Kwakiutl people). Henry Hunt’s influential style and personality can be detected in thousands of artworks produced by himself and his many students and by their students in turn.

Henry Hunt did not divide life into compartments; he enjoyed the company of people from all walks of life. He formed a particularly strong friendship with Professor Peter Smart, a friendship that ultimately resulted in the donation of a most significant collection of Henry Hunt’s art to the University of Victoria Art Collections (UVAC) in 2003. The entire collection donated by Peter Smart is included in the current exhibit, supplemented by additional examples of Henry Hunt’s art from UVAC and by some of Peter Smart’s own carvings.