Upcoming Exhibitions
MAIN GALLERY ~
SEPTEMBER 10 TO NOVEMBER 7
Betty Spackman: Found Wanting
Artist Walk & Talk ~ Saturday, September 11 at 2 p.m.
Click here to view the online portion of this exhibition!
The Penticton Art Gallery is proud to present "Found Wanting", the first major Canadian exhibition by the Fort Langley based installation artist Betty Spackman. In this exhibition Spackman tackles the multilayered and troubling questions which surround today’s large scale factory farms while shedding some light on where our food comes from and the journey it took to get to our kitchen table.
In her installation, Spackman doesn’t pull any punches as she wrestles with the dilemma we have as consumers between the objects we consume and the stories connected to them. To illustrate this point she has methodically collected and cleaned the bones of those domesticated animals we readily consume as meat often without thinking about them as animals. In so doing, she forces the viewer to reconcile and acknowledge the origin of the meat products we consume.
This work is not one of protest but a stark and touching lament. It is a story, a song about grief, but a grief filled with hope knowing that if the right choices and the right sacrifices are made, the end of our stories can change. More...
THE PROJECT ROOM
Carin Covin & Joanne N. Gervaise: Retro-Geographies
Artist Walk and Talk Saturday, September 11 at 1 p.m.
This exhibition continues the ongoing collaborative dialogue between recent UBC Okanagan MFA graduates Joanne N. Gervaise and Carin Covin which started with an exhibition at Island Mountain Arts in Wells, BC earlier this summer. Combining installation, video and painting with visual and written language, these artists challenge the viewer to question the role of language in our understanding and experience of the world around us and to question how this contributes to our ultimate understanding of identity.
For Carin Covin this body of work combines creative non-fiction and contemporary painting which investigate place and identity as lyrical mappings of language and postcolonial histories. Written language, used in conjunction with visual language, produces meaning that is read through the use of text. Using the format of the lyric essay, Carin allows for meaning to be blocked in through suggestion and in so doing gives form to silence, articulates absence and composes through fragments.
This series of lyric essays interweaves multiple narratives of the psycho-social aspects of identity to articulate a multi-cultural heritage within a specific location. The visual art works provide for the arrangement of place and identity as compositional components for contemplation of the multiple interpretations of these ideas. The ongoing investigation seeks to map visual and written language through a process of intuition and intention, reflecting the pluralistic nature of these conceptual underpinnings of place and identity. Carin’s challenge in creating this body of work was to find an original voice which allowed these ideas to be written in numerous variations and provided the opportunity for constant re-interpretation and re-visioning.
Joanne Gervais is a video based artist whose work explores cultural identity through nostalgic constructions of the past. As a UBCO MFA graduate, Joanne was the recipient of a Pacific Century Scholarship. She has collaborated with other artists and researchers on projects and documentaries and continues to work in new media on a variety of projects for UBCO through the Centre for Social, Spatial and Economic Justice.
Joanne Gervais’s artistic practice explores how the past is manifest and manipulated through photographic and digital imagery and how one chooses to interpret and record historical narratives. Joanne’s work challenges the historic stereotypes and marginalized perspectives while demonstrating the ongoing, often complex process of identity exploration and formation. She looks at the role nostalgia plays in the formation of identity and its capacity to stimulate constructive perspective of both the past and the present. The amalgamation of photographs, video, narration, text and reflective material depict the non-linear nature of nostalgia and its capacity to imaginatively restructure historic narrative. The works included in this exhibition attempt to address how visual images and their associated narratives shape identity formation and how personal histories and nostalgia are subsequently manifested through these representations and in some cases reinterprete the past.
TONI ONLEY GALLERY
Beyond Words, not Beyond Reach ~ The 3rd Annual Exhibition of Psychiatric Art
Exhibition Walk and Talk with Dr. Mark Welch on Saturday, October 2 at 1 p.m.
The Penticton Art Gallery is proud to once again partner with the South Okanagan Mental Health and Addictions Services and the BC Schizophrenia Society in presenting this touching and profound exhibition which explores the complex and often misunderstood world of those who suffer from mental illness. The exhibition aims to promote a greater understanding of those in our community who experience and wrestle with mental illness and/or psychological trauma and to foster an appreciation of their creativity through the ethical presentation of their original works of art.
The experience of mental illness is one of the most profound, disturbing and often misunderstood of all human conditions. It can be both difficult to comprehend and hard to describe. Sometimes a person has to find creative forms other than words to express it and often this creativity can lead to greater understanding. Art works like these speak to us emotionally, cognitively and perhaps most importantly, with compassion.
Psychiatric crisis is not a new phenomenon, nor a new subject for artists. Indeed, there is a long and distinguished history of artists from Albrecht Dürer to Francis Bacon who have explored the issue. However, there is something especially compelling about the autobiographical experience, and that is an aspect that is prominent in the current exhibition. The artists represented in this exhibition all have or have had a personal relationship with mental illness. Some works directly refer to this, some act as a catharsis and release of emotion. Still others do not directly refer to mental illness, but rather showcase the talent and expressiveness of the individual.
As viewers we are invited into the experience of the artist. We are privileged to witness the personal expression. We can catch glimpses of a perspective on the world that can both illuminate the experience of another, and cause us to reflect on our own. Art, in this way, allows us to enter into an empathetic relationship with the world of the artist, but be willing to learn more about ourselves. It can work to combat stigma and stereotypes, it can help to validate the individual, it can contribute to community understanding and connectiveness.
The exhibition coincides with Mental Health Awareness Week from October 3th to 9th . For further information on the week’s programme or for information about mental illness, please access the following websites: