Allyson Clay: Imaginary Standard Distance

Allyson Clay?s Imaginary Standard Distance incorporates several bodies of work by this Vancouver based artist and includes a range of media from painting to video. The artworks explore the experience of a woman in the city and related issues of gender, identity, the politics of the gaze, lived architecture, and the boundaries between public and…

Herbert Siebner: A Celebration

Last year, the Art Gallery was busy organizing a retrospective exhibition to be entitled Herbert Siebner: 50 Years in Canada. Sadly, Herbert Siebner passed away August 3, 2003 as we were completing arrangements for the exhibition. A year later, the Art Gallery is proud to present this exhibition celebrating the life and career of this outstanding painter and printmaker. Beginning with works produced in Europe in the late 1940s and continuing to his most recent work, this exhibition will allow visitors to become reacquainted with, or introduced to, the work of this important Victoria based artist. Throughout his career, Siebner demonstrated a keen interest in expressionism through his prints and his paintings. These works feature bold gesture and rich colour as integral components. Myth, poetry, sensuality and sex are all key elements of his art. This variety of interests is reflected in the multiple ways in which Siebner created art and manipulated the surface of his paintings and works on paper. A selection of works from each of his five decades in Victoria will form a testimonial to Siebner?s contribution to the visual arts ? in our community and in Canada.

The LAB 4.2: Farheen HaQ Breathing Space

Farheen HaQ explores the notion of religious freedom of expression within a secular society through a video and photo installation which examines the spiritual and sacred in public spaces.

HaQ performs simple actions that are either religious or culturally coded, introducing subtle changes that push the gesture beyond its normal expression. Within the video projection, HaQ…

World Tea Party: Victoria

Since 1993, the World Tea Party has been a continually evolving international celebration of the art and culture of the world’s most-loved beverage ?tea! Victoria launches its own World Tea Party with an exhibition, tea tastings, lectures and other special events. At the centre of the World Tea Party is an exhibition about tea and…

Interface: The New Victoria Open

Interface explores how artists working in various media on Vancouver Island and in the Gulf Islands respond to and incorporate the diverse meanings of the term ?interface? into their current art practice. While initially inspired by last year’s provincial forest fires, the theme of ‘interface’ allows a diversity of ideas to be presented. As described…

Opium: The Heavenly Demon

Opium ? potent and evocative ? it holds a near-mythical place in the drug pantheon with connotations of mystery, languor and sinister beauty. For millennia opium has been used medicinally by many cultures around the world. In the West, opium was self-administered until the early 20th century. Trade in opium was legal, as long as duties and taxes were paid, but this changed with concern over the suffering caused by growing addiction in the United States, Europe and China. With changing pharmaceutical laws in the early 20th century, the availability of opium dried up and prices skyrocketed. A previously legal and affordable purchase became an illicit and expensive transaction. Smuggling increased and a whole new criminal class was born. Politicians and the media exploited this situation, demonizing and sensationalizing the addict, the pusher and the drug. On tour from the Vancouver Museum, this exhibition traces opium from ancient cultures to the shores of North America, revealing both the miraculous and devastating effects of opium and its derivatives. The exhibition includes paraphernalia related to opium smoking such as pipes, lamps, containers, an opium bed, movie posters and films which dealt with opium in the west and more.

The New Print Movement of Japan

Traditional ukiyo-e woodblock printing was all but dead in Japan by the early 20th century, and artists were anxious to find a replacement. Their efforts resulted in the shin hanga or New Print Movement. These artists wanted to build on the foundations of the ukiyo-e school using new designs and subjects appropriate to the modern…

The LAB 4.1: Jeremy Turner Psychomanteum: Emily Carr

The LAB will be turned into a proper ?Psychomanteum?, an environment where the artist Jeremy Turner will try and contact Emily Carr from beyond the grave.  A one-time performance  of attempting to contact Emily Carr will be recorded and be presented along with an installation of memorabilia used in the Psychomanteum performance….

The LAB 4.0: Tim van Wijk Landscape Generator

In conjunction with the E.J. Hughes exhibition, this LAB project comments on contemporary landscape and its changing use. A sculptural installation, the Landscape Generator appears like a giant die-cut windup machine with large circular cogs that reveal receding planes of a landscape altered by human intervention. Pristine mountains are covered with a patchwork of clear-cuts…