Mowry Baden and Roland Brener: Thirty Years in Victoria

This exhibition explores the sculptural influence brought to the region by these two significant artists through a two-part exhibition. Baden and Brener came to the city in the 1970s and have influenced a generation of young artists through their teaching in the University of Victoria’s sculpture program. Nationally and internationally prominent, the two have continued…

Small Treasures: Indian and Persian Miniatures

Indian and Persian miniature paintings and calligraphy demonstrate the variety and excellence of artistic expression within the limitations of a book page. Not only was the miniature painter confined by the small scale but also sometimes by the encroaching calligraphy around the painting. Artists often had limited creative freedom since the images they painted were often prescribed by religion, mythology, literature or the wishes of the patron. The brushes the artists used were of the utmost fineness and flexibility ? some with only the tip of a single hair.

The miniature prints include Muslim themes as well as some Rajput paintings produced by Hindu artists. Calligraphy miniatures were ranked foremost among the arts of the Islamic book. The Koran is considered the visual manifestation of God’s words and Islamic calligraphers were esteemed above all other artists and craftsmen. They received honours greater than most skilled painters. This exhibition features some recent donations from Dr. and Mrs. Morris Shumiatcher and Mr. and Mrs. J.L. Minnis as well as paintings and calligraphy which have been in the collection for some time, but have not been shown recently.

Birds, Beasts, Blossoms and Bugs: 20th Century Chinese Painting

Brian S. McElney, from Bath, England, has donated over 350 twentieth century Chinese paintings to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria over the past decade. This exhibition features a sizeable number of these paintings whose subject matter is birds, animals, flowers and insects. The Chinese portrayal of creatures and plants can be quite different from Western depictions. Flowers, animals, insects and birds are depicted with great elegance and frequently with humour, which is characteristic of the best in Chinese art. Subtlety of tone, simplicity and quietude can be found in these nature paintings. The artists’ sensitivity to compositional elements is further enhanced by luxuriant colours and meticulous brushstrokes. In their passion for painting nature, the Chinese devoted the same skill that Western artists dedicated to portraiture and still-lifes.

Their paintings have an underlying simplicity not bound by time or place and are aimed at being at harmony with nature. Some major 20th century Chinese artists included in this exhibition are Cui Zifan, Gao Jianfu, Huang Yongyu, Li Kuchan, Lin Fengmian, Lu Hui, Wu Changshuo, Xu Beihong and Chao Shaoang, to name a few.

LAB 4.5:Elizabeth Mackenzie Child of Slow Time

Vancouver artist Elizabeth Mackenzie is intrigued by the relationship between human face recognition and the genre of portraiture. Mackenzie notes, “Our brains are neurologically organized to recognize patterns in general and faces in particular. Psychologists call the pattern that constitutes the face a ‘preferred pattern. ‘We are predisposed, even at infancy, to try and make…

Beauty Queens

What is it about islands that fires the imagination? From treasure islands to gulag archipelagos, islands have been invested with a potent mix of myth and reality, fiction and fact. Romanticized and promoted as places of ideal perfection, of intimacy, retreat and renewal, islands also offer stark realities of exile, isolation, seclusion, ecological pressures, and…

The French Masters from the National Gallery of Canada

Masterworks of 19th Century French Realism from the National Gallery of Canada

In the 19th century, French artists started to move away from mythological and historical painting to concentrate on the world around them. Where former generations of artists had regaled themselves with illustrations of narrative-based subject matter, the Realist movement sought to recreate the visible…

The LAB 4.4: Ralph Stanbridge Daumier and Dystopia (Drawn from History, Drawing from the Present)

The French artist Honor? Daumier (1808 ?1879), through his caricatures, paintings and sculptural works, presented his contemporaries with images of the folly and absurdities of the social issues of his time. As one of art?s earliest social realists, he was able to illuminate the economic disparities, injustices, and the marginalization of many members of nineteenth…

The LAB 4.3: John Luna The Red Room

John Luna examines the parameters of cultural institutions in The Red Room, a project which transforms the LAB space into a mock turn-of-the-century picture gallery. Luna?s gallery makes thematic allusions to the Art Gallery?s history inside the Gyppeswick mansion.

The salon-like setting reflects the imaginative revision of period restoration rather than an archival past, while the…

Sugimoto Hiroshi: A Pilgrimage to Ancient Cities

A Pilgrimage to Ancient Cities is a look into the visually captivating work of esteemed contemporary Japanese painter, Sugimoto Hiroshi ? produced between 1998 and 2004. It features over 35 large format paintings on a variety of Japanese papers.

Sugimoto Hiroshi?s paintings capture the unique and rustic character of ancient architectural structures, such as bridges, ancient streets, shrines, temples and castles. He makes regular pilgrimages to sites of beauty across Japan, China, Cambodia and Italy, during which he captures scenes of grandeur with his brush, using subtle yet effective colours. His love of architecture and ancient ruins is well apparent in his breathtaking work.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1951) studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He has painted large sliding doors and screens for a number of important historical Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan. His knowledge of ancient architecture and interiors provides him with the ability to make the proper aesthetic judgments in his designs for these well known monuments. He has held numerous major exhibitions in Japan. The Gallery is extremely pleased to welcome his work to Canada.