Concertino

March 2 – April 6, 2012
Curator: Jane Edmundson
Helen Christou Gallery

Music is one of humanity’s earliest and most innate manifestations of the creative impulse. The structured juxtaposition of sound and silence mimics our speech, while managing to communicate deeper emotions and ideas than we may be able to enunciate with words alone. Instruments carved from bone to produce controlled sounds have been found at prehistorical archeological sites, and clay tablets containing notations of songwriting have been dated to 1400 BCE. Representations of musical acts and instruments in visual art are present in the paintings found in Egyptian tombs, illuminated manuscripts of the Middle Ages, Italian Renaissance frescoes, and the collages of Cubist artists such as Braque and Picasso. This bond between music and art illustrates the impulse to document the temporal nature of music; to freeze the fleeting experience of hearing a melody and being momentarily transfixed by its sounds and the feelings they invoke.

Concertino presents a selection of works from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection that explore the desire to record the ephemeral nature of music into a fixed, concrete image, and representations of musical instruments (both functional, as in the case of the Slit Gong Drum from the Middle Sepik River in Papua New Guinea, and conceptual, demonstrated by Claes Oldenburg’s Soft Drum Set). The orchestra drawings of Raoul Dufy and Gen-Paul capture the frenzy of activity that often accompanies live symphonic performances, while Illingworth Kerr’s images of a steel drum band document his cultural experiences on the island of St. Lucia in the 1960s. Robert Rauschenberg’s famed pop collage treatment of the Talking Head’s seminal album ‘Speaking In Tongues’ renders the music album as a prized art object, and demonstrates the co-operative relationship between rock bands and the artists that design cover art, promotional posters, and collectible T-shirts. Representations of the body responding to music are also visible in Billy McCarroll’s abstracted Dance, Andre Derain’s Figures in a Landscape, and Bart Pragnell’s charming illustration of nude revelers, dancing to far-off music that the viewer is left to conjure in their own mind, or hum under their breath.

- Jane Edmundson, Assistant Curator, University of Lethbridge Art Gallery

Notebook (art+people=x)

January 6 – February 24, 2012
Helen Christou Gallery

A Bowman Arts Centre/ University of Lethbridge Art Gallery partnership.

The University of Lethbridge is renowned for its excellent art collection. People on campus and throughout the city take pride in knowing that a wonderfully diverse range of art work is housed here. The high profile of the collection also means that there are many rumours that circulate about it. One of my favourites is that the collection is stored in a vault under the lake. Given that it is important to maintain constant humidity and avoid catastrophic damage, why would we store a collection of art under a body of water? This kind of outlandish story does not concern me because it adds to the interest in the art collection, but I am concerned when I hear that people think the collection is inaccessible and people are not able to see and engage with the works. The truth is quite the opposite: the U of L Art Gallery has a remarkable record of providing access to the collection with our innovative on-line database; supporting class visits and other tours – 2486 participants in 48 different events; 72 works loaned to other galleries in 2011 including to Paris and New York; touring our own exhibitions; and including 103 works from the collection in our exhibitions on campus last year.

There are many ways that the art collection plays a active role for people on campus and in the local community. In order to help make these connections more visible, and to encourage new routes of access, I started the art + people = x series in 2009. The series has already included an exhibition, texts written about individual art works, and the commission of a 4 song EP and music video by the artist duo the Cedar Tavern Singers AKA Les Phonoréalistes. For the latest installment in the series, I was interested in supporting research by local artists and at the same time creating a project that would allow the broader public to have a sense of the importance that public art collections play in generating ideas and sparking artist’s creative practice.

To make this idea more specific and feasible, I contacted Darcy Logan at the Bowman Arts Centre. I had been impressed by the exhibitions he had done out of workshops for local artists that focused on a specific topic, a Lethbridge Bestiary, and a specific technique, monotype printing. For this project, the main goal was to provide in-depth access to the collection for local artists so that the collection could support their current practice or generate ideas for new direction in their work. As well, I hoped that we would have a strong body of work from which to curate an exhibition. Darcy came up with the idea to channel the study of the collection through the process of written notes as the source for the creation of new work. Jane Edmundson provided the expertise to assist all the artists with viewing their selections from the 14,000 works in the collection while identifying works in the collection that related to their interests. Pushed out of their accustomed practice of making sketches or other visual points of references, the artists in Notebook responded with surprising shifts in their usual practice or completely new directions for their work. The result was a resounding success both for providing research access for local artists and creating an eclectic, engaging exhibition.

- Josephine Mills, Director/Curator, U of L Art Gallery

When I was approached by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery Director/Curator Josephine Mills about working on a joint project for her art + people = x series, I was excited by the potential. I have organized numerous professional development workshops for artists at the Bowman Arts Centre, including drawing and monotyping, with the resultant works being included in exhibitions. Josephine felt that there were some parallels between our respective initiatives, and asked if I had any ideas for research and workshop-based projects that would allow community artists to engage with, and learn about, the University’s art collection.

I began thinking about the tradition amongst both student and established artists to create work ‘after’ other artists that have resonated with or inspired them. I posited the question of how the faculties of observation, memory and writing inform this tradition. Visual arts and writing have many similar characteristics. Both trace and record the activity of the hand and body in an attempt to communicate with an observer. Both have a set of internal rules, and both rely on compositional conventions to try and make their messages clear. Often the two disciplines pollute each other in a myriad of ways.

After discussions with Josephine, we decided to invite all interested artists to visit the gallery, learn about the database as a research tool, and discover new works that inspired them. The artists were provided notebooks in which to write about these objects, and over many months visited the gallery, engaged with the collection and recorded their impressions textually.

These notations, and the artists’ memories, formed the foundation of a series of workshops held at the Bowman Arts Centre during the summer and fall of 2011. Armed with their memories and notes, the artists worked with their peers in re-imagining their chosen works. The whole project was one of translation; from the visual, to the written, and back to the visual.

- Darcy Logan, Curator and Gallery Manager, Bowman Arts Centre

outlandish

Helen Christou Gallery
Curator/artist: Faye HeavyShield

For the exhibition Outlandish, nationally renowned artist Faye HeavyShield has created a new work designed for installation in the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery’s satellite space, the Helen Christou Gallery.  References to, and images of, the landscape have been part of HeavyShield’s visual vocabulary and art practice for many years.  Previous work such as rock paper river, body of land and camouflage are installations that came out of an exploration of a very simple equation . . . environment = self.

Outlandish continues in this vein and explores perspectives of the coulee formations that line the Old Man river.  HeavyShield produced a series of cut-outs of simple female figures to reference the local formations. With their bodies made from detailed images of the land – grasses, the river’s edge, rocks – the figures appear to wear the land like a shawl and encourage meditation on the relationship to the land that sustains and defines its people.  HeavyShield’s subtle use of gestural drawing and materials creates a quiet approach that supports contemplation and in-depth thought. For those rushing to class or work as they pass through the Helen Christou Gallery, outlandish provides a moment of respite and an invitation to pause and consider the landscape that surrounds the university – to consider the land itself, its history, and its relationship to our sense of self.

HeavyShield is an Alberta-based artist who draws inspiration for her work from her experiences growing up on the Blood Reserve in Southern Alberta and her life as a Blackfoot woman.  Using her personal history as motivation and inspiration for her work, HeavyShield often begins her process with journal writing. From her writing she extracts particularly intense and poignant memories which she turns into drawings. These drawings inform her sculptures which are often realized through the use of multiples (repeating forms and images).  She studied at the Alberta College of Art and Design and the University of Calgary. Since the 1990s, her work has been exhibited extensively across Canada in numerous solo and major group exhibitions.

Josephine Mills

Director/Curator,  U of L Art Gallery

Cereal Gen (Food Series)

Helen Christou Gallery
Curator: Josephine Mills

Artist: Alex moon and works from the permanent collection

Alex Moon’s installation in the Main Gallery continues here in the Helen Christou Gallery with artefacts from his fictional Uni-Farm corporation.  A selection  of work from the U of L Art Collection with agricultural imagery provides a sense of context for Moon’s project. Between October 1st through 6th, look for DodoLab’s project The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking In Lethbridge which will be appearing in several sites around campus.  The Food series will conclude with The Lion’s Share, a new installation by Rita McKeough in which she playfully explores our relationship to eating animals.

Given the essential role that food plays in our lives as sustenance and as part of social and economic systems, it has been a common subject for artists to explore in their work. With the major changes in recent decades in the application of scientific processes and the relationship between individuals and corporations involved with food production and distribution, there have been heated debate and volumes of research on this aspect of food.  Artists have engaged with this timely and important topic in many ways. Some take the role of activist and clearly critique genetic modification or the corporatization of agricultural production. Others, like the two artists with work on display in the Main Gallery, explore the fascinating imagery, complex emotions, and confident assertions of authority and certainty posed by corporations and scientific discourses that emerge within, and are part of, these debates.

Cereal Gen continues in the Main Gallery with more work by Moon as well as an installation by Lyndal Osborne.  The Art Gallery would like to thank Bruce McKay for proposing the initial idea for the Food series. The exhibitions have been planned in conjunction with the Liberal Education Program which is currently offering a course titled “Food: A Critical Examination,” taught by McKay. As well, during this semester the new U of L Centre for Culture and Community will be presenting a speaker’s series on campus that will engage further with ideas and issues related to the social and political aspects of food.

Josephine Mills

Director/Curator

Artist Statement

Uni-Farm is an agricultural science-fiction narrative depicting the power struggle over agricultural freedom between two groups; the Uni-Farm Corporation, representing large industrial farming, and the Real Food Alliance, representing the ethical and local food movements. The project consists of a series of installations and videos situating this narrative in the context of a near distant future, exposing the weakness of a society built on corporate control over the necessities of life. By posing the reality of the agricultural industry against what is essentially a conspiracy science fiction thriller, this project gives the impending food crisis a voice.

Uni-Farm: Field Lab 1-X

The Field Laboratory is another part of the ongoing saga “Uni-Farm.” On the surface the display looks to be a clinical outdoor laboratory where different kinds of seed genetics are being experimented on, but not everything is as it seems. It becomes apparent that this is ground zero for a disastrous food supply contamination, which could threaten the world’s food supply. This is all because of the newest invention by the Uni-Farm called the Terminator Gene.
Hopefully not all is lost for the already shallow gene pool that we rely on to survive.

Alex Moon

Cereal Gen (Food Series)

Main Gallery
Curator: Josephine Mills and Jane Edmundson

Planned in conjunction with Liberal Education course
Artists: Lyndal Osborne and Alex Moon (and works from the Collection)

Cereal Gen is the second exhibition in the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery’s Food series that runs June through December 2011. With three exhibitions and a public-site project, the series addresses social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. Green Thumb opened the series and featured works from the U of L Art Collection that explore gardens and greenery both in terms of pastoral imagery and political implications.  Consisting of detailed installations that play with the forms and technology from scientific laboratories, Cereal Gen includes recent work by two Alberta artists and focuses on social and economic issues related to seed production and farming.  Between October 1st through 6th, look for DodoLab’s project The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking In Lethbridge which will be appearing in several sites around campus.  The Food series will conclude with The Lion’s Share, a new installation by Rita McKeough in which she playfully explores our relationship to eating animals.

Given the essential role that food plays in our lives as sustenance and as part of social and economic systems, it has been a common subject for artists to explore in their work. With the major changes in recent decades in the application of scientific processes and the relationship between individuals and corporations involved with food production and distribution, there have been heated debate and volumes of research on this aspect of food.  Artists have engaged with this timely and important topic in many ways. Some take the role of activist and clearly critique genetic modification or the corporatization of agricultural production. Others, like the two artists in this exhibition, explore the fascinating imagery, complex emotions, and confident assertions of authority and certainty posed by corporations and scientific discourses that emerge within, and are part of, these debates.

The title for this exhibition, Cereal Gen, is a play on words that references the subject of the works on display: “serial gen” is short for serial number generating software. In Alex Moon’s Uni-Farm project, a repurposed old dot matrix printer takes corporate branding to a new level and creates the seeds for his fictional corporation in the pattern of their logo. Moon cleverly questions the dominant assumption that technical progress intrinsically equals improvement in our health and well-being by using found objects, including old Macintosh computers, as the basis for the new-fangled devices and processes being promoted by Uni-Farm. Once the latest and greatest in technical advances, these devices and the surrounding climate of “progress at all cost” leads the employees of Uni-Farm, and the people of this fictional world to the precipice of worldwide food shortage. Moon further creates an awareness of the limitations on being current, let alone predicting the future, by using design elements straight out of a science fiction film. The colours, fonts for the text, and logo of Uni-Farm are all ordinary looking and thereby emphasize the ‘fiction’ part of science fiction.

Lyndal Osborne’s installation also takes the form of a fictional laboratory, but not one where things are going as terribly wrong as Uni-Farm’s.  The size, colour and detail of Endless Forms Most Beautiful immediately grabs one’s attention and demands closer inspection.  Up close, the work is equally visually compelling with the combination of organic and inorganic materials to create massive versions of seedpods. Osborne describes herself as an “archaeologist seeking and retrieving discarded fragments of the urban environment and the dried out remains of natures’ seasons.” Although beautiful, as the name states, the mixing of items to create the seedpods, their strong colours, and their gigantic size disrupts the fascination with scientific imagery and disturbs an uncritical acceptance of the prevalence of genetically modified food.

Cereal Gen continues in the Helen Christou Gallery with more work by Moon as well as works from the U of L Art Collection.  The Art Gallery would like to thank Bruce McKay for proposing the initial idea for the Food series. The exhibitions have been planned in conjunction with the Liberal Education Program which is currently offering a course titled “Food: A Critical Examination,” taught by McKay. As well, during this semester the new U of L Centre for Culture and Community will be presenting a speaker’s series on campus that will engage further with ideas and issues related to the social and political aspects of food.

Josephine Mills

Director/Curator

Artist Statement

In my piece, Endless Forms Most Beautiful, the setting is a laboratory and the nine forms represent enlarged seedpods in the process of genetically modification. In GMO science three main techniques are employed for implanting genes into the seed cell – developing tumors, electricity, or a gene gun. In this imagined lab my forms reference these processes through the shape of the seedpod (with growths on the form), the materials used (pierced by electrical capacitors) and scientific equipment (pipets injecting DNA).

Many of the seedpods are created from actual seeds. In some cases the forms are seductive and beautiful. This represents the intellectual arguments used by the chemical companies to expand their research through the patenting of seeds (11 billion to date), gradually gaining corporate control of food production. There is also an element of the grotesque in other seedpods, suggesting a darker side to the shrinking of seed biodiversity. This hints at hidden dangers. Some genetically altered seed contains a terminator gene that ensues its infertility and lack of ability to reproduce. Could this government – patented suicide gene pollutes all crops around the world? What impact does this have on third world countries that no longer control the productivity of their own food?

The fictional laboratory created contains a small selection of heritage seeds (original, unaltered) that are set to one side. They exist as a miniaturized version of our past, something that is not available any more .The glass flasks and plastic tubing represent both an aspect of this genetic modification process and, more importantly, the interconnections we humans have with the plant world. I wish, as co-inhabitants of this earth we might agree to negotiate more checks in how far we go in our manipulation of the planet.

Lyndal Osborne

Green Thumb (Food Series)

Helen Christou Gallery
July 29 – September 8, 2011
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Opening the Food series, this exhibition from the U of L collection will include a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures depicting vegetation both wild and tamed. Artists: Raoul Dufy, Gathie Falk, Gershon Iskowitz, Tony Urquhart and others.

Curatorial Statement

The artworks selected from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection for Green Thumb depict the initial stages of verdure, where seeds germinate, leaves unfurl, and vegetation grows both wild and tamed. These works examine the colour, shape and texture of foliage, flowers and branches in a variety of media. Though we consume only a select portion of the crops produced by our environment, the organisms and animals that are nourished by all varieties of natural growth are crucial to the sustainability of our ecosystem and our longevity as a species. Perhaps the emotional connection many of us feel with time spent puttering in our gardens comes from the innate knowledge that plants produce our oxygen; greenery is synonymous with life. The repetitive processes necessary to foster and perpetuate green growth allow the gardener to work in a meditative state, temporarily removed from the steel and concrete of urban living.

Though these romanticized visions of human-nature interaction inspire beautiful artworks, the connection between vegetation and capitalist enterprise should not be downplayed when examining the social, cultural, and political issues that shape our use of natural resources. Both Lucius O’Brien and Kathleen Daly’s historical depictions of human-powered logging practices stand in contrast to the contemporary reliance on mechanized deforestation to meet commercial demands. The proliferation of recent scholarly studies, media articles and films focusing on the environmental and medical ramifications of our factory-based food production and distribution system demonstrate the need to question the quality and practicality of the “natural” things we consume.

Green Thumb is the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery running from June to December 2011 that will explore social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. The Food series will also include a public-site project, a publication and cross-disciplinary research and performance projects across the UofL campus. Green Thumb continues in the UofL Main Gallery from July 29 – September 8, 2011.

Jane Edmundson

Green Thumb (Food Series)

Main Gallery
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Opening the Food series, this exhibition from the U of L collection will include a selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures depicting vegetation both wild and tamed. Artists: Raoul Dufy, Gathie Falk, Gershon Iskowitz, Tony Urquhart and others.

Curatorial Statement

The artworks selected from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection for Green Thumb depict the initial stages of verdure, where seeds germinate, leaves unfurl, and vegetation grows both wild and tamed. While some of the included works illustrate fruits and vegetables familiar to most diets (McNicoll’s ‘Apple Time’ and Falk and Cicansky’s cabbages), most examine the colour, shape and texture of foliage, flowers and branches. Though we consume only a select portion of the crops produced by our environment, the organisms and animals that are nourished by all varieties of natural growth are crucial to the sustainability of our ecosystem and our longevity as a species. Perhaps the emotional connection many of us feel with time spent puttering in our gardens comes from the innate knowledge that plants produce our oxygen; greenery is synonymous with life. The repetitive processes necessary to foster and perpetuate green growth allow the gardener to work in a meditative state, temporarily removed from the steel and concrete of urban living.

Though these romanticized visions of human-nature interaction inspire beautiful artworks, the connection between vegetation and capitalist enterprise should not be downplayed when examining the social, cultural, and political issues that shape the contemporary food production system. Baxter&’s multimedia installation, CO2 Landscape – Homage to Chico Mendes, employs the story of an Amazonian rubber tapper turned environmentalist who was assassinated by ranching entrepreneurs to illustrate the conflict between sustainable harvesting practices and corporate land exploitation. The proliferation of recent scholarly studies, media articles and films focusing on the environmental and medical ramifications of our mechanized, factory-based food production and distribution system demonstrate the need to question the quality and practicality of the “natural” things we consume.

Green Thumb is the first in a series of exhibitions presented by the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery running from June to December 2011 that will explore social and cultural issues related to food production, supply and consumption. The Food series will also include a public-site project, a publication and cross-disciplinary research and performance projects across the UofL campus. Green Thumb continues in the Helen Christou Gallery from July 29 – September 8, 2011.

Jane Edmundson

Re:Writing Art History

June 10 – July 22, 2011
Curated by Tyler Stewart, Museum Studies Intern
Works from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection

In 1971 art historian Linda Nochlin posed the question “Why have there been no great women artists?” – one of the most loaded questions to possibly ask during the rise of the feminist art revolution. Rather than attempt to answer that question in a singular manner, many writers have focused on the plethora of causes that keep excellent female artists on the margins of the art world, rather than at its core. This exhibition focuses on some of the many talented female artists working during the late twentieth century, before, during and after the apex of the feminist art movement during the 1970s, into the 1980s and early 1990s. While some would not self-identify as feminist artists per se, they all make important contributions to the realm of artistic knowledge as women.

Many were overshadowed during the most productive points of their careers by their colleagues or partners; the stunning photographic work of Berenice Abbott often negated by her former role as assistant to Man Ray; Lee Krasner’s mastery of colour and form eclipsed by her artist-hero husband Jackson Pollock and his ejaculatory drip-paintings; Joyce Wieland’s intensely personal stain paintings and later, her superb film works, both obscured by the work of her partner Michael Snow. However, other female artists were able to avoid being subjugated by their male counterparts and made significant advances in the world of visual art. Miriam Schapiro was one of the most vocal voices of the feminist art movement, creating the Womanhouse project, perhaps the most important collaborative project of the time. Her work often focused on creating a place for women in the art historical canon, where many female artists were ignored and excluded. The photography of Suzy Lake investigates how appearance can affect one’s identity, in a time where men and women were beginning to question their increasingly fluid gender roles and expectations for behavior. Her work also examines how the passive female figure is the receiver of the penetrating male gaze (see Laura Mulvey’s groundbreaking 1973 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” for more on this), but also how it can be confronted or subverted.

While the feminist art revolution of the 1970s and 1980s made progress towards achieving equity in the arts, during the 1990s and into the new millennium many of those changes have slowly eroded, as many gender theorists now claim that the “women problem” has been solved. This is simply not the case. Female artists must often work much harder and longer to reach the levels of success their male counterparts enjoy, which demonstrates a clear lack of anything one might call gender equity. The artists in this exhibition are valuable examples of how the patriarchal structure of the art world may be challenged, confronted and overcome by focused determination. Continuing the fight to achieve gender equity is not an issue that should be left to a few women artists though, but is a battle that we must all take part in to create positive social change.

- Tyler Stewart, Museum Studies Intern, Dept. of Art

Spectramatic Geometry

April 28 – June 9, 2011
Main Gallery
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Opening reception: 4-6 pm April 28, 2011

Works from the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery

What I wish to do is make painting objective, to bring it back to its source – where only painting remains, emptied of all extraneous matter – to the point at which painting is pure sensation…to say as much as possible with as few elements as possible.
-Claude Tousignant

I bought me an illusion
And I put it on the wall
I let it fill my head with dreams
And I had to have them all
-Axl Rose

The human eye interprets information from visible light to build a representation of the surrounding world. Our eyes include a lens, similar to that of a camera: the pupil and iris work together as the aperture, dilating and constricting in accordance to the amount of light refracting through the cornea. The information taken from this light is then sent through the photoreceptor cells of the retina, which contain protein molecules called opsins. Rod opsins are found primarily in the periphery of the retina and translate low levels of light and contrast. Cone opsins are present in the center of the retina, and read different wavelengths of bright light to distinguish colours. Due to a high concentration of cone opsins, the human eye can recognize over 10,000,000 colours. The retina’s perception of light is then sent along the optic nerve to be interpreted by the visual cortex of the brain.

As visual media, painting and printmaking manipulate our visual perception through colour, form and composition. The artists selected for Spectramatic Geometry have strategically chosen hues and shapes to create the illusion of depth and movement across flat, static planes of canvas and paper. The viewer is enveloped in an abstracted environment that is crafted by the artist, and then transformed inside the natural technology of the human eye and brain. To this end, Claude Tousignant, Eric Cameron, Gene Davis and Marko Spalatin employ hard edge abstraction, which causes some shapes to advance while others appear to recede. Rita Letendre’s planes of colour move away from the viewer, retreating into the infinite space beyond the edge of the canvas. York Wilson’s alternating parallel lines present the illusion of depth in a looser, more painterly style, while Mary Shannon Will and Gordon Smith utilize the precision of Pointillism to create artworks that shimmer and vibrate. Ron Martin’s watercolour studies utilize colour theory principles while recalling the fluidity of Surrealist automatic painting. With this combination of artworks, the gallery space is transformed into an optical playground where geometric illusion pushes and pulls the viewer between the reality of the objects and the inner mechanics of the eye.

Jane Edmundson

The 1950s

April 15 – June 3, 2011

Helen Christou Gallery
Curators: David Smith and Allison Spencer, Museum Studies interns

Planned in conjunction with Historic Lethbridge week.
Works from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection and the Galt Museum & Archives.

Prints

The earliest accounts of printmaking in history date as far back as 105 A.D., shortly after the invention of paper. Historically, printmaking has been used by artists of all eras as a medium for artistic expression. It appeals to artists since the end product is a work that manifests itself in multiples. Each print is considered an original work of art because the prints are not copies or reproductions of an already existing work. Traditionally artists mark their prints with editions, which resemble fractions near the bottom edge of the print. The bottom number signifies how many prints were produced while the top number is the individual print number in the run. In this way, artists limit the amount of prints that are produced and thus the number of multiple originals created for that series.

The prints in this exhibition were chosen based on their medium and their subject matter, but also their collective aesthetic properties. On the wall opposite the prints, the photographs depict historic Lethbridge and are used to highlight the relationship between the prints and the photographs which are both objects of mass production. A painting by Ray Mead was chosen for the feature wall to connect our choice of subject matter from the prints to other media which focused on abstract expressionism in the 1950s.

Photographs

Photographs have constituted a major form of documentation since their invention in the 1800s. In the past couple of decades, photography has made a significant shift from analog, which uses recording media such as film and is developed in a chemical-based solution, to digital photography. The change in materials and processes has enabled new ways of creating documentation and making art. During the 1950s, there was a similarly significant change in photography as the equipment and processing technology became more accessible to a wide range of people, both professional and amateur, spurring an increase in both serious documentation and photography as a hobby. The widespread availability of photography in the 1950s created an increase in the images of smaller communities such as Lethbridge.

In conjunction with Historic Lethbridge Week, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery and the Sir Alexander Galt Museum and Archives have come together to display the historical past of Lethbridge through the photographic viewfinder. It was important for us to display images of architecture and city spaces that are still present today and are represented not only as historical documentation, but also as images of aesthetic beauty. These photographs were chosen for their examination of historical sites in Lethbridge and for the way the realism of the photographs contrasts with the abstract prints installed on the other side of this space.

***

Borrowed from the Sir Alexander Galt Museum and Archives, this photographic equipment was owned by residents of Lethbridge in the 1950s. The collection of materials represents the range of cameras used during the decade. Thomas H. McCready, the owner of McCready’s Drugstore, which existed on 3rd Avenue South from 1909 – 1981, made a large donation of photographic equipment to the Galt. McCready’s extensive collection of photographic equipment was regularly displayed in the pharmacy’s window through the 1950s. Many of the artifacts chosen for the exhibition are the same objects that would have been seen in his window 60 years ago.

Ray Mead is remembered as a pioneer of contemporary abstract Canadian painting. As a member of the artists’ collective known as the Painters Eleven, a group credited with bringing abstract expressionist painting to Canada, his work continues to inspire and influence artists today. Mead is best known for paintings created using non-figurative abstraction (compositions that are not derived from imagery). Cherry Season was chosen for this exhibition to illustrate that abstract expressionism was not contained to printmaking in the 1950s, but rather permeated many artistic disciplines including painting and its style is consistent and typical of Mead’s work.

David Smith and Allison Spencer
Museum Studies Interns, Dept. of Art