Molly Lamb Bobak: Talk of the Town
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Burnaby Art Gallery 6344 Deer Lake Ave, Burnaby, British Columbia V5G 2J3
Collection of the Vancouver Art Gallery, Purchased with the financial support of the Canada Council Joint Purchase Award and the Vancouver Art Gallery Women's Auxiliary, VAG 61.39, Photo: Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery
Molly Lamb Bobak, "Oslo (detail)," 1960
conté wash on paper, 41.8 x 54.7 cm
Molly Lamb Bobak (1920-2014) was famous for her wildflower watercolours and crowd scenes, painted in oil. This exhibition explores her early architectural views and city panoramas, primarily from the 1940s to the 1960s. Bobak’s work as a set designer, as well as her position as the first female Canadian official war artist during World War II, were vital influences on her cityscapes. While her depictions of crowds often portray faceless groups of people, her buildings are carefully worked and significantly individualized. For Bobak, buildings and cities seem to represent a stable counterpoint to human chaos and inconsistency.
The exhibition is accompanied by an in-depth catalogue offering a look at Lamb Bobak’s early life and influences growing up in a farmhouse on the shores of Burnaby Lake, and later at a second house in Vancouver. This catalogue features contributions by West Vancouver artist Gordon Smith and curator Cindy Richmond, a letter written by Molly Lamb Bobak’s daughter Anny Scoones and an essay by exhibition curator Dr. Hilary Letwin.
“Molly Lamb Bobak’s paintings are full of talk: people excitedly calling to each other in the crowd, chatting about this and that, whispering the latest gossip on a street corner. The faces of those doing the talking are often loosely drawn, devoid of detail, or completely obscured, but the language of everyday life is clear, in their gestures and bodies,” says Letwin.
While Lamb Bobak was very often described as someone who loved people and good conversation, the roots for her crowd-scenes, and the public settings for them, trace back to her childhood and early experiences as Canada’s first female War Artist.
Considering these experiences, Letwin further explains that
“these street scenes in particular reflect a democracy. From the bombed out and ruined buildings that Lamb Bobak recorded at the end of World War II, she repeatedly witnessed at first hand the random hand of death. The faceless people that populate her cities represent countless untold stories, both of disappointment and also of hope, capturing her optimism of good things yet to come. Her later, great crowd scenes are developed from these earlier street scenes, demonstrating her ability to capture fleeting moments of celebration among the unpredictable trajectories of life. “
The exhibition catalogue will be available for purchase from January 18. Molly Lamb Bobak: Talk of the Town will be on display from January 19-April 8, 2018 at the Burnaby Art Gallery. This exhibition features work from the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection and on loan from the Vancouver Art Gallery, the Canadian War Museum, the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery and multiple private collections.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Molly Lamb Bobak was raised in Burnaby and began her formal artistic training studying with Jack Shadbolt at the Vancouver School of Art. In 1942, she enlisted in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, becoming the first female Canadian war artist and was deployed to Europe. She met her husband, fellow Canadian war artist, Bruno Bobak, in London, returning with him to Canada after the war. From the early 1950s, Bobak and her family lived and worked in the Vancouver area before travelling back to Europe through various grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the French government. The Bobaks moved to Fredericton, NB, in 1962, where she lived and worked until her death.