Nicole Bauberger: Get There From Here

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Nicole Bauberger, "Get There From Here," nd

In 2013 artist Nicole Bauberger of the Yukon, stopped by the Art Gallery of Swift Current to visit curator Kim Houghtaling. At the time Nicole was working her way west across Canada along highway 1. As the artist went she would stop each 50 kilometers and paint a small oil on panel of the landscape scene she witnessed there. Without judgement or pretence Nicole represented the reality of each place she observed. After thousands of kilometers east to west - south to north the artist has documented in hundreds of paintings the common routes that describe our experience traveling throughout Canada. 

Nicole Bauberger writes, “People respond most easily to familiar landscapes. This show links the familiar to the unfamiliar landscapes across Canada, connecting the viewer’s experiences to the wider country - the known to the imagined. That’s the subtle pun in the show’s title, which refers not only to the compulsion behind driving, but to the idea of “getting” a place. Perhaps viewers can understand other landscapes (“there”) in the context of their own (“here”), linked by the common road.”

“Canada has a strong landscape painting tradition. Many of the works in the canon look towards the wilderness. Fewer look at the way the artists got there. Canada’s contemporary arts mostly inhabit urban centres, and so focus on those places. This series spreads out the attention, measuring, 50 km at a time, the mundane Canada between these cities, painted from many of the nameless places where people seldom stop: boring views from ditches as well as mountains; dramatic skies and traffic signs. By means of the paintings and booklets, the audience travels with me, and we can look at Canada together.” 

This exhibition will present over three hundred paintings and related booklets from this very special artist project.

Organized by the artist and toured across Canada. Presented at AGSC with curator, Kim Houghtaling. 

This is a Canada 150 project for AGSC.