Tag Archives: Travel

Money, Sovereignty and Power: Paper Currency of Revolutionary Ukraine, 1917-1920

August 22 – November 3, 2014

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

In the wake of the Great War, from the detritus of imperial collapse there emerged a new political order of nation-states. Amongst the newly established entities there appeared an independent, sovereign Ukraine. From the outset, Ukraine was the object of invasion and its survival was in doubt. Nevertheless, in the search for legitimacy, extraordinary efforts were made to affirm the state’s sovereign, national character. This was to be accomplished by consciously connecting with Ukraine’s historical past both to invoke precedence and to encourage a narrative of political continuity. The symbols introduced in the currency of Ukraine during this revolutionary period were examples of this process.

The goal of the Ukrainian Revolution, which aimed at national independence, was not achieved. But the legitimizing efforts increased the conditions by which society in Ukraine would become progressively aware and accepting of an identity consonant with the idea of the nation. It also infused the public’s imagination and consciousness with a sense of its own destiny. Once engaged, a national alternative became a distinct and real possibility – one, however, that would have to wait for a different time and moment to be realized.

The Art of Jack Wise

Mandala, Jack Wise

June 8 – August 12, 2012

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Nicholas Tuele

Jack Wise’s work is deeply personal and spiritually profound. Known for his calligraphy, Chinese brushwork, and mandalas, which embody Buddhist cosmology or worldview, Jack Wise was a prolific artist and popular mentor and teacher. This exhibition features a selection of stunning and memorable paintings, prints, drawings and calligraphy by Wise, who spent a considerable part of his artistic career on the west coast. Most of the selected works are part of the permanent collections of the University of Victoria Art Collections and University Archives, given to the University in 2008.

Lords and the Land: Stone in East Anglia

July 6 – September 28, 2011

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Dr Michael F. Reed

This exhibit documents the relationship between stone and tenurial authority in the 10th and 11th centuries in Norfolk, Suffolk and Cambridgeshire, England. Many of the objects and buildings featured in the exhibit have not been the subject of scholarly discourse for over ninety years. Only a few archeologists even know of their existance. This exhibition presents rare photographs taken from four years of extensive archaeological fieldwork in East Anglia by Micael F. Reed, PhD (York, UK, 2009).

Dr. Reed is a specialist in the material culture of early medieval northern Europe. His research and teaching is multidisciplinary, incorporating archaeological, art-historical and literary methodologies. Dr. Reed’s area of special interest is Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Scandinavian England, particularly stone sculpture as a medium for the expression of lordship, ethnicity and eschatology.

Architecture and Power: The Legislative Buildings of Canada’s Capitals

November 3, 2010 – February 6, 2011

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

This travelling exhibition on the legislative buildings of Canada’s fourteen capital cities presents the main characteristics of each building, such as year of construction, cost , and dimensions, and features historical footnotes about their construction. The art and architecture exhibit features historical and modern photographs. Each capital’s of government is also depicted in a contemporary painting by the Murale Création team of artists. The exhibition’s content, which aims to educate citizens and foreign visitors about the capitals of Canada’s provinces and territories, was developed by architectural historian Ms. Denyse Légaré in collaboration with Commission de la capitale nationale du Québec.

Travels and Treasures: The Divine Inspirations of Katharine Maltwood and Treasures of the Turcomans

: Turcoman embroidered textile, Iran, 1930s.

October 5, 2009 – January 30, 2010 March 5, 2010

Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery

Curated by Bryn Dharmarante and Marnie Malinda Mandel

View the online catalogue:

Travels and Treasures – Catalogue

This exhibition showcases striking Middle Eastern textiles by Turcoman artists and sculpture by Katharine Maltwood. Maltwood’s sculptural work was inspired by her Asian and African travels. Also explore the Japanese influenced botanical illustrations of Elizabeth Duer.

The exhibition complements two views on foreign travel; The Divine Inspirations of Katharine Maltwood focuses on the renowned globetrotter and artist Katharine Maltwood and her travels to Egypt and Japan in the early 20th century. Treasures of the Turcomans exhibits the jewelry and carpets collected from an expedition made through Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan in the 1930s.

Katharine Maltwood obtained numerous works of art and was moved by the rich religious histories in the two regions. The show includes photographs and key pieces of sculpture that she acquired while in Egypt and Japan.

Treasures of the Turcomans features The Gastrell Collection of jewelry, textiles and carpets made by nomadic women and acquired by a British diplomat’s family whilst living in Iran and Baluchistan (northern India/Pakistan) during the 1930-40s.

Two Fish, Out of Water: Photographs from the Japanese Landscape

: Paul Kohl, Unknown

August 5 – October 5, 2009

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

After three years of exploration in the East, photographer Paul Kohl invites the viewer to discover an estranged view of Japanese landscape.

Kohl, also a professor in art, design and media at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, explores the state that the French call depaysement, the sense the traveler experiences where nothing is as you have known it; where the birdsong, the raked gravel, the telephone’s ring are joltingly exotic. Kohl’s unusual technique employs scanned black and white negatives using Photoshop as a darkroom. He then prints on Japanese paper with an Epson 7600 using pigment inks.

Works from the exhibit are from his recent book, Two Fish, Out of Water, which will be available for sale at the Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery and the University of Victoria Bookstore.

Inverting the Lens

June 6 – July 30, 2009

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Robbyn Gordon Lanning

This exhibit features photography by the al Manaja’as, a Bedouin family of the Howeitat trib from Humayma, Jordan. In collaboration with UVic Graduate student, Robbyn Gordon Lanning, members of the al Manja’a family take images of their community, family and daily life. These images are key to investigating how the al Manaja’as see photography as a way of documenting their lives and experiences for themselves, their families, and for cultural outsiders.

As residents of Humayma, a region of great historical cultural exchange, members of the al Manaja’a family possess complex relationships with photography. The family has spent many years cultivating personal photographic albums comprised of images made by visiting cultural outsiders, and more recently, have participated as representatives of the Humayma community through photographic exhibits created for local museum spaces. These exhibits, co-currated by Robbyn Gordon Lanning, brought together Ms. Gordon and the al Manaja’a family together through their shared interest in photography. The relationship formed during this initial project acted as a catalyst inspiring their most recent collaborative research.

The photographs featured in this exhibition were created by members of the al Manaja’a family to describe their experiences of community, place, family, relationship and identity as seen through their own lenses.

Icons of a Border: A Photographic Search for Traces in Today’s Berlin

February 26 – March 26, 2009

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

This exhibit highlights the photography exploration of 36 students from the University of Paderborn, who document both the visible and invisible remnants of the Berlin Wall in modern-day Germany. Under the direction of of Prof. Dr. Barbara Becker and photographer Jürgen Spiler at the Institute for Media Science at the University of Paderborn the exhibit came to life in the course of a photo-practical seminar.

Over the years traces of the wall have become scarce as new structures have been built over the wall’s remains. Aided by historical texts and images, the students located forgotten wall fragments, abandoned watch towers and mental traces of a “wall in the mind”. The city has grown more and more together, and many locations where the Wall or the border strip used to run are now buried under buildings and no longer recognizable as what they once were.

Still, the Wall lives on, not only in places “reconditioned” for tourism, at which material remnants of the Berlin Wall can still be viewed, but also in the self-image of the city, its residents and visitors – as an icon of the Cold War, the separation of Germany, and as a symbol and commemoration of personal destinies and suffering.

Starting with historic photos documenting the building of the Wall, and texts in which the Wall finds a voice, the students attempted to ferret out the atmospheres of the past. They researched where and from what perspective these photos had been taken in order to “document” with present photos, taken from a similar perspective, what has remained of these historically significant sites. For this exhibit, these photos generated during the research for remnants of the Wall were mounted on fifteen panels and supplemented with texts authored by the students themselves. Audio recordings, meant to provide an aural background fro the visual reception, can be listened to through stereophonic headphones, permitting a virtual immersion in Berlin, still “coloured” by its past.

Legh Mulhall Kilpin (1853-1919)

Untitled, Legh Mulhall Kilpin, 1919

September 29, 2008 – February 28, 2009

Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery

Circulated by the Langley Centennial Museum.

A travelling exhibition featuring 58 of Kilpin’s works from the Early Years in Great Britain.

While painting in England, Kiplin had applied his technical proficiency towards achieving a pleasing, but rigid, style that strongly adhered to the established rules of certain genres. Upon arriving in Canada and joining the Arts Club of Montreal Kiplin took up etching, which coincided with a print revival that was developing in Toronto. Even in this more relaxed medium he had a hard time letting go of his technical precision and his etchings from this time are reminiscent of conservative prints from Britain and France, while others are more spontaneous and “sketchy”, which were often contemporary Canadian scenes.

Woven in Time

August 7 – September 29, 2008

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

This exhibtion contains photographs by UVic student, Ashley Akins. The images document rural life in Peru’s Patakancha Valley, where textile weaving is an integral, but endangered concept.

After volunteering in Peru to brush up on her Spanish, Akins noted that the tourism in the country was both a blessing and a curse. Travellers scoop up their intricate, colourful products but in the haste to sell the work of their elders, younger people are not learning the skills to keep the traditional craft alive. In response to this she create the Mosqoy Foundation (which means “to dream” in the communities’ Indigenous language) which has a three-fold motto-to “educate, preserve and connect”. It accomplishes this through two main projects: the Proyecto Colibri (Project Hummingbird) and Banco de Jovenes (Youth Bank).

Under the former, Akins buys the woven products and sells them at three times the purchase price. One third of the proceeds is returned to the weavers, another third goes to projects chosen by the communities, and another third goes to the Youth Bank to fund 20 students annually to attend post-secondary studies in Cusco, the nearest city.

Encountering Islam: Collecting, Scholarship and Contemporary Visions

March 28 – May 7, 2008

Maltwood Art Museum and Gallery

Curated by Dr. Marcus Millwright and Dr. Astri Wright

This exhibition aims to provide insights into Islamic art’s long and varied history, through a selection of works from the University of Victoria Art Collections and Special Collections.

The academic study of Islamic culture represents another form of encounter. This exhibition will feature the activities of nineteenth-century British scholars and artists in India. Some of the displayed art works will demonstrate the influence of Islamic aesthetics on European art and design. Encountering Islam will also present current research now being conducted by faculty and students at the University of Victoria.

Living with Land Mines

: V. Tony Hauser

February 20 – March 8, 2008

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

V. Tony Hauser presents the shocking reality of war into an artistic context through 17 life- size portraits of Cambodian children who have suffered the consequences of land mines, accompanied by statements about each child.

After documenting the temples of Angkor Wat, Hauser unexpectedly found a different kind of beauty in the shadows: the dignity of these young victims of land mines. He encountered the Aki Ra Land Mines Museum in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Along with providing a dormitory and a school for young children injured by land mines, the museum also acts as an educational centre for visitors. Using Polaroid film and a seamless canvas backdrop, Hauser shines the spotlight onto the children’s lives. “I purposely chose to isolate them” he says “and, at the same time, reveal my admiration for their strength and defiance in facing the daily fear of living with land mines.”

Living with Land Mines was presented in conjunction with a land mines symposium organized by the Hon. Lloyd Axworthy at the University of Winnipeg in recognition of the 10th anniversary of the International Land Mines Agreement, and has travelled across North America, to the United Kingdom, Slovenia, South Korea, and Hong Kong.