Tag Archives: Victoria

Latent

January 6 – April 6, 2024

Legacy Downtown | 630 Yates St.
Lekwungen territory

The exhibition Latent emerges from conversations between artist Lynda Gammon and curator Carolyn Butler Palmer over the past several years about how artists who identify as women are often overlooked, ignored and sidestepped. At the Legacy Art Galleries, over the past decade the majority of solo exhibitions have featured the work of women artists and this exhibition furthers a desire to bring forward their work by honouring the many women who remain hidden in the University of Victoria’s Art Collection and the mechanisms that conceal them from view: the vault, accessioning, and the catalogue.

Artist bio: Lynda Gammon
See all events: Latent events & programs

Image: 12-minute meditation on untitled (serigraph), Elza Mayhew, n.d., Lynda Gammon, 2023. 

Dance Like Everybody’s Watching

January 14 – April 8, 2023

Legacy Downtown Sidewalk Gallery | 630 Yates St.
Lekwungen territory

Local artist Simone Blais presents her debut documentary, Dance Like Everybody’s Watching. The short film exposes the lives of three Black dancers in Victoria, BC (lək̓ʷəŋən territory) as they expose their worlds of flamenco, hip hop, and dancehall. While the dancers grapple with racism, tokenism, and stereotypes, we are reminded that dance is always political. This film deals with themes of cultural appropriation in dance and is uniquely a BC production. 100% of the production, cast and crew are based in Victoria, BC.

Image: still from Dance Like Everybody’s Watching. 

Pop Anthropology

Oct 23, 2021 – Nov 13, 2022

Legacy Maltwood Gallery | On campus in the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library

Curated by Dorian Jesse Fraser, Doctoral Candidate, Concordia University (UVic MA, 2013).

Watch: Pop Goes the Art! Curator Talk 

Read: West Coast Modernism and the Pop Sauvage of Eric Metcalfe, essay by Dorian Jesse Fraser

Pop Anthropology is an exhibition of multimedia artist Eric Metcalfe’s oeuvre, spanning over sixty years, in celebration of the artist’s honorary doctorate from UVic (UVic DFA 2021, BFA 1970). This exhibition continues the playful and charged work of Metcalfe’s life: reimagining images, tropes and stereotypes as poignant and plentiful scraps from which to pull meaning. It honours his early development as a student in Visual Arts at the University of Victoria in the early 1970s, as well as his lifetime achievements as a pioneer in performance art in western Canada and co-founder of the Western Front, one of Canada’s leading and longest running artist run centres.

Image credit: Eric Metcalfe, Untitled, 1967, gouache and watercolour on paper.

Karl Spreitz: Self-Propelled

Exhibition PosterMarch 7 – July 26, 2015

Extented to August 16, 2015

Legacy Maltwood (at the Mearns Centre – McPherson Library) 

Click here for online exhibition

Curated by Naomi Shields and Emerald Johnstone-Bedell

Self-Propelled showcases Spreitz’s wide-reaching range of photography, films, and book and magazine publications, as well as his friendships and connections to other Victoria artists.

Spreitz uses whimsy and paradoxical imagery to challenge the conventions of mundane life. This self-driven, multi-talented connoisseur developed an authentic artistic style that echoes his character and life experiences. Anti-authority satire, human mechanization, and formal compositions derive from his Austrian upbringing, athletic training, and film and photography career. This selective retrospect presents various artwork, film, photographs and ephemera documenting Spreitz’s life and cultural contributions.

Image Exhibition Poster

Digital sign final Rack Card revised date Spreitz Poster

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Harmonious Interest: A Celebration of Victoria’s Chinese Heritage

Robert Amos, Untitled (Victoria's Chinatown) [detail]
Robert Amos, Untitled (Victoria’s Chinatown) [detail]

February 1 – May 13, 2013

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Caroline Riedel and Margaret Weller

Harmonious Interest draws on the archival and artistic holdings of the university with a selection of material from the Consolidated Chinese Benevolent Association. This association, founded in 1884, is a key community anchor and advocate for the Chinese in Victoria. Other important social, religious and cultural organizations such as the Chinese Freemasons Association (1876), the Tam Kung Temple of the Yen Wo Society (1911) and the Chinese Public School (1899) are represented in photographic collages by artist Robert Amos.

The important work of Dr. David Lai (Geography, UVic), known for his role in the revitalization of the buildings of China town and the Gates of Harmonious Interest, as well as other scholarly studies on Chinese communities in British Columbia are also referenced. As a whole, this exhibition is intended to show the role of some of these key organizations in community building and advocacy for Chinese people in Canada.

This exhibition was produced as part of the Victoria Symphony’s Chinatown Celebration project.

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In the Moment

In the Moment, Frances Baskerville

In the Moment, Frances Baskerville

May 16 – June 9, 2012

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Elyse Portal

Featuring Fran Baskerville’s creative process after answering a proposal to create public art at the Gordon Head Rec Centre. In the Moment reveals Baskerville’s creative process in response to a public art call to celebrate multiculturalism and community in the Greater Victoria Region. To answer the call, Frances embarked on an artistic journey of site-visits, photographic reconnaissance, and research spanning aikido, Degas, Cézanne and the Olympics.

“Whether it takes the form of physical movement, as in dance, or the form of emotional or spiritual intensity, I try to capture particular moments,” Frances Baskerville.

Her practice navigates themes of imprisonment and liberation through painting the human form, “My figures are striving …often for something they cannot reach or can reach only momentarily. Moments of release are short-lived but beautiful.”

Click to watch the video

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

In Her Own Words

Chill Day in June, Emily Carr, oil on paper, 1938-1939

Chill Day in June, Emily Carr, oil on paper, 1938-1939

October 5 – November 19, 2011

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Caroline Riedel

View the online catalogue:

In Her Own Words Catalogue

This exhibition explores the artistic visions and words, both spoken and written, of three of Victoria’s best-known artists of the 20th century: Emily Carr, Katharine Maltwood, and Myfanwy Pavelic. While their artistic expression led them along different trajectories each as a painter, sculptor and portraitist, they also crossed paths in a number of instances as supporters of one another’s artistic pursuits, in their shared search for iconic imagery from the point of view of artists on the West Coast of Canada and in their exploration of both modern and traditional means of expression.

The Emergence of Architectural Modernism I (Victoria Modern Series)

Centennial Square Fountain, Rod Clack and Jack Wilkinson (c.1965)

The Emergence of Architectural Modernism in Victoria I: Town and Gown: Centennial Square and the Gordon Head Campus: Seminal Projects (1962-1972)

March 10 – May 2, 2011

Legacy Maltwood (at Mearns Centre – McPherson Library)

Curated by Martin Segger

In the early 1960s two large architectural projects emerged in Victoria which redefined the urban landscape. The development of the Gordon Head Campus in its garden landscape suburban setting repositioned Victoria College as it emerged as the new University of Victoria. On a smaller scale the completion of Centennial Square, with its mix of heritage restoration and stridently modern buildings, provided a new direction for the revitalization of Victoria’s urban core.

This exhibition explores how these two important projects developed, sharing a mix of local young architects, planners and designers. In the process they created a set of iconic buildings and settings which set local architectural and design directions that have profoundly influenced urban design in Victoria to the present day.

No accompanying catalogue

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)

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

Click here for the Victoria Modern website

Regarding Wealth

U001.11.562

The Apple Tree Gang, Michael Lewis, 1992, acrylic on canvas

February 24  – June 10, 2010

Legacy Art Gallery Downtown

Curated by Dr. Carolyn Butler-Palmer

This was an exhibition concerning the intersections between art and homelessness. This exhibition was part of an ongoing series of projects and class seminars featuring artwork from the University of Victoria’s Michael Williams Collection led by Dr. Carolyn Butler-Palmer who occupies the Williams Legacy Chair.

Visit the HA 495/595 Regarding Wealth  website

Contributors: Dr. Carolyn Butler-Palmer, Williams Legacy Chair in Modern and Contemporary Arts of the Pacific Northwest

History in Art Students who enriched this project: Eric Anderson, Magdalyn Asimaskis, Julia R.M. Baker Veronica Best, Jennifer Cador, Won Chang, Sara Chekley, Gareth Clayton, Miranda Clement, Jaime Lynn Clifton, Emma Conner, Odessa Corletto, Heather Crowley, Melba Dalsin, Heather Dixon, Kim Drabyk, Susan Hawkins, Laura Hayward, Julia Hulbert, Elaina Keppler, Emma Knight, Stephanie Korn, Toby Lawrence, Sarah Lee, Katie Lemmon, Elyse Longair, Marnie Mandell, Mathew McKay, Kaitlyn Patience, Kathleen Prince, Andrea Porritt, Cassidy Richardson, Jysicca Richardson, Connie Quaedvlieg, Mike Quan, Aleta Salmon, Nancy Schnarr, Katy Scoones, Julia Simpson, Thomas Sluchinski, Leah Taylor, Filiz Tutuncu, Holly Unsworth, Christine Woychesko and India Young.

Research Assistants: Mebla Dalsin, Kaitlyn Patience, and Tusa Shea

Special Thanks to: Sarah J. Blackstone, Dean of Fine Arts, Catherine Harding, Department Chair, History in Art, Kate Hutchins, Legacy Art Gallery & Café, Martin Segger, Maltwood Gallery Director, Caroline Riedel, Maltwood Curator of Collections, Christine Woychesko, Manager, Legacy Gallery & Café, and Caitlin Cuthbert , Jenina Ceglarz, CEO Swans Hotel, Cindy Vance Maltwood Exhibition Team: Emma Conner, Caitlin Cuthbert, Kate Dahlgren, Mark Hovey, Karen Merrifield, Cam Northover, Nick Poppell, Heather Stone, Leah Taylor

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

Turcoman embroidered textile, Iran, 1930s.
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.