In My Room: Interior Environments

July 4 – August 15, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: July 4, 4 – 6 pm
Curator: Jane Edmundson

Works from the UofL Art Collection

There’s a world where I can go
And tell my secrets to
In my room
In my room

In this world I lock out
All my worries and my fears
In my room
In my room

Do my dreaming and my scheming, lie awake and pray
Do my crying and my sighing, laugh at yesterday

Now it’s dark and I’m alone
But I won’t be afraid
In my room
In my room

- Brian Wilson/Gary Usher

The border between public and private space is one that each of us traverses daily. Navigating the codes of conduct required of us by peers and strangers alike requires a performance of sorts, where we act to conform to the expectations of our “public” selves – characters that we play in the production of our external, social lives. Through pressures applied from without and within, the construction of public personhood is an ever-changing, yet inevitable constant of interpersonal reciprocity. Given the amount of effort this endless maneuvering requires, the private sphere becomes, for many of us, a space of refuge, relaxation, and quiet. Our fortresses of solitude, the inner rooms of our homes, are where we can temporarily lay down the mantle of public responsibilities, and exist without pretension or posturing. In this way, our private environments mimic our bodies’ interiors; there can be comfort and protection in being contained inside one’s intimate space. Conversely, while the strain of social norms is relaxed when we are at rest from our public lives, isolation and the opportunity for obsessive interior thoughts can reconfigure private rooms as sinister sites of imprisonment for some.

The artworks selected for In My Room depict rooms where we are often solitary – bathrooms, bedrooms, studios. In most of these representations, the spaces are starkly empty, suggesting they were formed via the artists’ personal, private experiences with seclusion. The few works that do offer peopled environments vacillate from warm, intimate scenes of domesticity (Chamber’s Diego Drawing and Smith’s Woman in Tub) to symbolic examinations of the ominous aspects of psychological withdrawl (evident in Hudson’s Shark diptych, where the secluded figure has only the glow of his televised portrait to fend off the menacing creatures in the dark). The mood here is quiet, introspective, and perhaps reflective of the hushed tones and careful movements we, as viewers, employ in the public-yet-sequestered interior environment of the gallery.

Jane Edmundson,
Preparator/Assistant Curator

The Uncanny Valley

January 10 – February 28, 2013
Main Gallery
Reception: January 10, 4 – 6 pm

Curator: Jane Edmundson
Works from the U of L Art Collection

In his 1906 essay “On the Psychology of the Uncanny”, German psychiatrist Ernst Jentsch describes the experience of the uncanny as “a lack of orientation”, where something happens that causes one to feel unease and alienation.  This essence of discomfort is often brought about during the interaction between a living human body and lifeless objects which mimic the animate; in Jentsch’s day such incorporeal doubles included waxwork figures, realistic dolls and automatons. In the century since its first description, the opportunities for encountering the uncanny have multiplied exponentially, through the proliferation of mannequins in our limitless shopping malls, the development of artificially intelligent machines and highly efficient humanoid robots, the design and manufacture of anatomically correct “companionship” RealDolls, and customizable, personalized avatars in virtual reality games. Freud posited that the emotional disquietude that is felt upon interactions with these not-quite-human actors stems from our uncertainty at whether or not they indeed may be alive; this questioning dread was expertly tapped by George A. Romero in 1968’s gruesome satire, Night of the Living Dead, and continues in today’s mass zombie culture obsession. The humanoid imitations of life provoke increasing trepidation as they loom most closely to complete realism; the more convincing the fake and the greater familiarity and recognition of ourselves found in it, the more ghastly its void ofhumanness becomes. The extreme drop in emotional comfort level upon the confrontation of lifeless objects that very closely mimic the animate was dubbed the “uncanny valley” by Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori in 1970 (see Fig. 1).

How is the uneasiness of the uncanny engaged in the interaction between the viewer and hyperrealistic artworks that depict the human form? The works selected for The Uncanny Valley display representations of humanness (or spaces remarkable for being devoid of humanity, in the case of Richard Estes’ painstakingly rendered, eerily empty cityscapes) that unsettle the viewer with their realism, which serves to heighten their dreamlike (or nightmarish) quality. These human bodies, flattened on canvas and paper, are frozen, hollow, and dead; the act of their creation by the artist’s hand also surmising their deficiency as mere imitations of life. Ivan Eyre and David Inshaw’s figures exist in abstracted, surreal realms that are at once familiar and alien, while Elsbeth Coop’s Prosthesis depicts a tense marriage of flesh and machine. Christopher Pratt, Barbara Pratt, and Jeremy Smith obscure the faces of their human subjects, and Jack Chambers’ Diego, as we are told, is sleeping rather than dead, but the inability to connect to the faces in these works nonetheless unnerves. Finally, David Barnett and Phil Richards employ the suspended forms of children,  which have been used to great visceral effect in horror films about reanimation and ghostly apparitions, due in part to youth’s ability to remind the viewer of the ravages of time and their own mortality. The artists’ choice to render their human subjects in extremely realistic compositions draws us into these environments while concurrently inspiring apprehension and trepidation, as though we expect the depicted forms to suddenly move, grasping at the corporeal life they are denied by their illusory humanity.

- Jane Edmundson
Assistant Curator/Preparator

Dreams & Nightmares

July 20 – August 24, 2012
Helen Christou Gallery
Curator: Jane Edmundson
Works from the UofL Art Collection.

This exhibition features works from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection that explore the spectrum of light and dark that ranges through our dreams and nightmares. The artworks selected recall nighttime narratives that are common to many of us: flying through clouds, encountering strange and terrifying creatures, dark shadows, hyper-real colours, abstracted landscapes, and being caught in states of vulnerability. Artists featured include Fred Hagan, Bart Pragnell, Robert Young, Vicky Marshall, Frederick Brown, John Hartman, and Les Levine.

Recent Acquisitions

June 8 – July 13, 2012
Curator: Jane Edmundson
Works from the U of L Art Collection.

The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery houses one of the most significant art collections in Canada. Numbering over 13,000 objects, the holdings include works from Canada, America and Europe, span the 19th and 20th centuries, and continue to grow with 21st century additions. The collection’s major strength is its diversity, which not only represents a wide range of geographic locations, but also the full spectrum of media, artistic movements, genres and approaches. Initiated at the earliest stages of the University’s development to help facilitate the liberal education of students on campus, the collection stands as the backbone of the Art Gallery’s exhibition programming, with rotating collection displays accompanied by contemporary exhibitions in various Gallery spaces and public site installations throughout campus. The art collection continues to grow today through the generous gifts of artists and art collectors and focused, grant-funded purchases. In recent years, efforts have been made to strengthen the holdings of artworks of specific movements or genres that were formerly underrepresented within the collection.

Recent Acquisitions features a selection of works from the University of Lethbridge Art Collection that have been acquired over the past three years. These works were chosen for their historic, conceptual and geographical links to Lethbridge. Artists Chai Duncan and Len Komanac both have ties to our campus community; Duncan worked as a Technician in the Faculty of Fine Arts and Komanac is an alumnus of the BFA program. Carl Granzow was one of the earliest instructors in Visual Arts at the University, and animated campus for over 30 years with his vision for the Papokan Sculpture Park and Gushul Studio Residency Program before his untimely passing in 2009. Prairie artists Joe Fafard, Don Proch and Russell Yuristy are associated with the Regina Clay movement, which sought to depict everyday objects and scenes from rural life with humour, colour, and quirkiness. George Hunter’s photographs of mining operations in Lethbridge and urban life in burgeoning, post-war Albertan towns have documentary merit while also being beautifully composed and visually compelling. Finally, Calgary painter and printmaker John Will is one of the artists that the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery has committed to collecting in-depth; the collection holds over 120 works by Will, spanning over 45 years of his self-deprecating, neurotic and expressive art practice.

- Jane Edmundson

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

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

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

Shifting Myths

Helen Christou Gallery
Curator: Jane Edmundson

This exhibition features work from the U of L Art Collection by three artists whose work conceptually addresses the perceptions and labels laid on Canada’s First Nations peoples. The varied and acclaimed practices of Alex Janvier and Carl Beam stand in juxtaposition with Garry Neill Kennedy’s painting series entitled “The Native”, for which the artist chose paint colours by their racially coded, commercially assigned names.

Statement

“… Canadian galleries outline a national narrative. Our goal should not be simply to expand it by including Aboriginal art. Our art can do much more – it can disrupt and challenge that narrative, be against it and at the same time be part of it, but not subsumed within it.” (i)
- Richard William Hill

“Let us remember that we are all related.”
- Carl Beam, 1992

It is no secret that the majority of Canada’s public cultural institutions have only very recently begun exhibiting work by First Nations artists as fine art rather than archeological artifacts. Even contemporary artworks were often treated as relics of cultures that for hundreds of years were falsely identified as racing toward complete assimilation, if not outright extinction. Over the past 20 years, many art galleries have chosen to appease this sordid history by holding exhibitions that exclusively featured work by First Nations artists, and Carl Beam’s October 2010 retrospective at the National Gallery of Canada is the gallery’s third large-scale solo exhibition devoted to a Canadian aboriginal artist in the past four years (the first and second being Norval Morrisseau and Daphne Odjig, respectively).

This shift in thought and policy is clearly necessary. However, there has most recently been a move toward integration of artwork by aboriginal artists into the larger, previously Euro-centric gallery exhibition system. By focusing on the subject matter or concept of the artwork itself, rather than the cultural identity of its creator, artists that have previously been “ghettoized” in repetitious “multicultural” exhibitions are finally having their work examined from a myriad of viewpoints. (ii)

Utilizing this idea, the works chosen for Shifting Myths were selected based not only on their examination of the construction of aboriginal cultural history, but also for the artists’ common approach to symbolic abstraction and formalism. Alex Janvier and Bob Boyer both utilize their background in formal art school training as a springboard to infuse highly abstract imagery with personal spiritualism and critique of colonialism. Janvier has made direct associations between his paint colour choices and particular events in his life, while Boyer’s specific use of blankets as canvases references both Plains native hide painting and the brutal history of trading post blankets that carried the European diseases that decimated Canada’s aboriginal population. Carl Beam’s complexly layered monoprints hearken back to the lithographs of American Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg, and indeed, incorporate many pop cultural and Judeo-Christian images. Each print is also rife with stereotypical representations of “the Native”, with Beam inserting his own portrait to both validate his existence and challenge the viewer to examine their notions of fine art and aboriginal identity.

It is for these reasons then that the work of Janvier, Boyer and Beam serves as an effective and necessary foil to Garry Neill Kennedy’s Twenty Indian Paintings from ‘The Native’. Kennedy’s conceptualist, formalist art practice allows him to explore the complicated nature of language and cultural construction, but from a removed standpoint. Janvier, Boyer and Beam are responding to the same history with a related strategy of combining First Nations approaches with European-based contemporary art forms. Exhibited opposite to Kennedy’s project, a dialogue is created between the artists and their paradoxical approaches to ideas of cultural oppression, linguistic taxonomy, and the modern state of cross-cultural hybridity.

Jane Edmundson

———————
i. Richard William Hill, ‘Getting Unpinned: Collecting Aboriginal Art and the Potential for Hybrid Public Discourse in Art Museums”, Obsession, Compulsion, Collection, ed. Anthony Kiendl. Banff Centre Press, 2004.

ii. Carol Podedworny, Reading / The Language of Culture. Art Gallery of Hamilton, 1994.