2017. 13 Exhibitions / 2 galleries
BIMPE IX
January 7 -21
BIMPE IX, the 9th annual international mini-print biennial, is produced by New Leaf Editions in Vancouver BC. BIMPE is held every two years and travels to Edmonton, AB, and Kelowna, BC. BIMPE is a celebration of printmaking as a diverse form of art production and a showcase for small scale print works, from traditional line etching to contemporary digital processes. This year we are hosting the ninth BIMPE with 420 works curated from over 800 international print submissions.
The Formalist’s Library / Jason Urban
Mar 16 - Apr 22
In The Formalist’s Library, Jason Urban meditates on the structure of the traditional brick-and-mortar library as a vehicle for delivering information as a we move from the physical to physible. The Formalist’s Library is an ongoing series exploring various aspects of library architecture and systems and the lifespan of printed media in both the micro (daily) and macro (centurial) sense.
Great White North / Jordan Blackburn
Mar 16 - Apr 22
In our contemporary moment, our cultural landscapes are largely dominated by varying forms of capitalist exchange. There exists little to no separation between experience and consumption, sincerity and farce, and authenticity has been distorted into something that can be photographed and shared, packaged and sold, bought and discarded.
Sahtuót’ine: Stories from Deline Elders / Laura Grier
May 4 - Jun 10
The act of storytelling is an act of Indigenous resistance, decolonization, and reclamation. We have a responsibility to hold on to our traditional knowledge. This series of screen prints are stories from the Deline of the Northwest Territories. As a Deline First Nation, Laura Grier feels obligated to learn and tell her peoples’ stories. It is imperative that she preserve and share stories and lessons to demonstrate the continuation of Indigenous culture.
Influence
May 4 - Jun 10
This exhibition presents recent work by Nova Scotia-based artist Ericka Walker. Her large-scale multi-colour lithographs draw on the vibrant history of propaganda, printed ephemera, and advertising from twentieth century Europe and North America, exposing nostalgia as an ongoing rhetorical device in a contemporary sociopolitical climate that clings savagely to destructive birthrights and colonial residues.
Fractures / Emmanuel Osahor
Jun 22 - Jul 29
This exhibition of photographs explores the complex duality that exists in Edmonton as a result of dynamic levels of marginalization and separation. Utilizing a process of photographic manipulation, these images reflect the challenge of questioning the dual nature of existence in contemporary society.
Growing up in a developing country with high levels of poverty, Emmanuel Osahor became aware of the various levels of separation and marginalization that exist as a result of the class and ethnic rivalry that has crippled the foundations of his country’s existence. Moving to Canada in 2010, he made the assumption that the grass was most likely greener here, and during his first few years residing here – removed from the larger community as he mainly focused on his university education – he believed he was right.
Monument: Coding a Woodcut / Beth Howe & Clive Martin
Jun 22 - Jul 29
This project is a collaboration between printmaker Beth Howe and digital media artist and programmer, Clive McCarthy. Howe and McCarthy developed custom software to cut large-scale photographic woodcuts of monumental infrastructure and landscape features using a CNC milling machine. The woodcuts are then printed by hand on an etching press. The large relief prints of Monument: Coding a Woodcut pull together the ubiquitous contemporary tools of algorithms and machine tooling with the histories of woodcut printing. These methods of making are nodes in the same trajectory, following the human impulse to make and multiply images and text, to pass information and ideas to a larger potential audience at ever increasing speed.
Last Resort / Leanne Olson
Aug 11 - Sep 9
In an ongoing quest to be near bodies of water, these images were gathered over the last three years. Locations of shoots varied between a set of neglected Alberta lakes and sulfurous streams of roadside debris. Shot through water, the subjects are the life forms found beneath the surface. These hardy survivors exist where the land and water meet, where the remnants of human interaction and water intersect. The life forms are prevailing, often amongst garbage, runoff, and the excrement of tourism. The allure of these waterscapes was the magnitude of change and uncertainty.
GIVE UP AND PARTY / Morgan Wedderspoon
Aug 11 - Sept 9
How do we respond to a global crisis of our own making? In GIVE UP AND PARTY, Morgan Wedderspoon brings together found objects and borrowed text to inquire into the relationship between the human subject and the changing climate in a time of anthropogenic global warming. Drawing from a list of eight responses to crisis from Margaret Atwood’s Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth, Wedderspoon uses chance operations and assemblage to create a suite of prints and a bookwork of collage poetry.
RE: How Many Reasons Do You Need? / Marie Winters
Feb 2 -Mar 4
Marie’s practice is often driven by her desire to overcome shame through as many facets as possible. Whether she is repurposing discarded industrial materials that denote the artist’s shame, or advertising her Shame Hotline, Marie hopes to communicate a more effective truth about interiority through sentiment and narrative. Her work employs melancholic phrases that allow viewers to create their own personal attachment to the pieces. By tapping into the universal nature of sentimentality, loss and self-deprecation, the work shifts away from evaluating art in terms of its capacity to reflect predefined conditions, and questions what art itself tells us through lived experience.
Instigators / Guillermo Trejo
Feb 2 - Mar 4
Instigators by Guillermo Trejo will feature a series of posters depicting quotes from Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre, Kerouac, Buda, and others paired with iconic images from protest and social resistance. The result of the combination is an uncannily appropriate protest poster as if the quotes and the images were initially planned to be together.
Guillermo Trejo is a Mexican-born artist who now resides in Ottawa, ON. He has a BFA from Bellas Arts School of Painting, Sculpture and Printmaking and an MFA from The University of Ottawa. Trejo is a consultant at the National Gallery of Canada, and teaches at the Ottawa School of Art.
The Story So Far
Sept 22 - Nov 4
An artist book offers an intimate sensual and aesthetic experience. It promises the possibility of story, of contemplation, of escape and of mystery. The exhibition space feels like a library, inviting viewers to spend time with the books. The Story So Far shows works that break with the notion of a book as a repository of knowledge or story, works that use the book form as sculpture, non-linear narrative, or a singular physical experience. Some books are hand printed and bound using fine archival papers and some are made on cheap photocopy paper. Some are one of a kind objects and some are part of a limited edition or multiple. The artists featured in the exhibition come from across Canada, the United States, France, Spain, Britain, and Germany. The works were made between the 1950s and 2017.” – Sara Norquay
The Story So Far includes works by Alberta artists Blair Brennan, Mark Dicey, Steven Dixon, Kyla Fischer, Barb Johnston, Alex Linfield, Meghan Pohlod, Sergio Serrano and Marie Winters as well as works by Denise Hawrysio and Annie Smith. The exhibition also presents borrowed works from the private collections of Sara Norquay, Rob Norquay, Denise Hawrysio, Barb Johnston, Joy McKinnon, Kim Fjordbotten and Jean Marcel Duciame.
SNAP Members Show & Sale
Nov 18 - Dec 30