Hugh Conacher, “Neptune’s Bellows, Whalers’ Bay, Deception Island 62˚59’ S, 60˚34’ W, November 26, 2016”
Jane Ireland, who manages the new Heritage Home for the Arts gallery in Killarney, a small community in southwestern Manitoba, is excited to be showing photographs by Winnipeg’s Hugh Conacher this month.
His work, Antarctica: Layers of Time, Beautiful Monsters, is the gallery’s fourth exhibition since opening last fall and the first by an artist from outside the Killarney-Turtle Mountain area.
It’s on view thanks to the Manitoba Arts Network, a non-profit arts service group that is touring 16 of Conacher’s Antarctic photographs around the province. Next stop: The Pas, in northern Manitoba.
The network tours four or five professionally curated shows every year to small communities in Manitoba and sometimes beyond. Work can be on the road for up to 18 months, stopping at anywhere from four to nine locations. In most cases, communities receiving these subsidized exhibitions could not otherwise afford to show them.
Robin Smith Peck’s 2010 print “Casting the Form” was part of “Imprints,” a touring show organized by the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.
Across Western Canada, small communities like Killarney, population 2,400, are increasingly displaying exhibitions once limited to larger cities.
For instance, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, a public agency that funds the arts, recently sent out its first fly-in show. Imprints, composed of 19 prints by Alberta artists, was sent by air last year to the new Keyano College campus in the isolated northern Alberta community of Fort Chipewyan.
Meanwhile, the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils, a non-profit umbrella group, tours shows to more than three-dozen communities, some with only 1,000 residents.
British Columbia has no organization with a mandate to send exhibitions to small communities. But the B.C. Arts Council is planning to start a touring program in two or three years with promised new provincial funding.
The Vancouver Art Gallery curates exhibitions that it tours to galleries in Victoria, Kamloops, Kelowna, Surrey, Abbotsford, Prince George and Nanaimo. Some of those galleries, in turn, circulate their own shows to smaller venues in their regions.
Susan Turner, “Sphere 03e,” 2018
inkjet on paper, 20” x 20”
In Killarney, Ireland notes that the Manitoba Arts Network’s touring exhibitions allow the Heritage Home for the Arts, located in a splendid century-old house on a former experimental farm, to show a wider variety of art.
For instance, the gallery’s upcoming exhibition by Winnipeg’s Susan Turner, Spheres, Lens & Tabernacle is more experimental than the paintings and photographs the gallery ordinarily shows.Tabernacle, for instance, includes works that use vinyl, silk and Mylar as printing substrates.
The Manitoba Arts Network is financed by federal and provincial grants. As well, the trucking company Gardewine hauls the art around the province for free.
Nicole Shimonek, the network’s visual arts coordinator, says a survey of exhibiting artists indicated that they have had more opportunities since participating: “A lot of them are being asked to come to other small towns,” she says.
Miriam Körner, “Rutting Moon / Mating Moon / Velvet Shedding Moon – nōcihitowipīsim (y) / nohcihitowipīsim (n) / nimitahamowīpīsim (th),” 2016
watercolour, 22” x 22”
Meanwhile, the Organization of Saskatchewan Arts Councils circulates five or six new shows around the province each year. They can travel for up to three years, so as many as 14 to 16 shows can be on tour at any one time.
Juries composed of representatives from small galleries and professionals from larger cities meet annually to sift through submissions from artists, curators and galleries.
Kristin Teetaert, program coordinator for the Last Mountain Lake Cultural Centre in Regina Beach, a town in south-central Saskatchewan, has served on juries that have selected exhibitions, mainly by provincial artists.
The next touring show at her cultural centre, housed in an old schoolhouse, is a collection of watercolours celebrating Cree life by Miriam Körner and Bernice Johnson-Laxdal. That show, When the Trees Crackle with Cold: pisimwasinahikan, will arrive in March after showing at the Community Partners Gallery in Yorkton.
“To have a show that is pre-packaged is great,” says Teetaert.
Such shows are less work for community galleries, which typically operate with skeleton staffs. They are also affordable. Small galleries in Saskatchewan pay a subsidized, bargain-basement price of $175 a month for shows. That fee includes shipping, insurance and even posters.
Arthur Nishimura, “Mythical Landscapes: La Rochelle,” 1983
toned silver print on paper, 7” x 7” (Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts)
The Alberta Foundation for the Arts has operated its travelling exhibition program, TREX, since 1981. At any one time, an average of 64 exhibitions circulate amongst galleries, schools, First Nations offices and other venues. Some travel for up to four years. The foundation estimates some 300,000 visitors enjoy the shows each year in more than 100 communities around the province.
The foundation signs five-year contracts with four regional organizations to curate the exhibitions. Current contractors are the Art Gallery of Alberta in Edmonton, The Esplanade in Medicine Hat, the Alberta Society of Artists in Calgary, and the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.
Those four organizations organize one travelling show a year from the foundation’s collection of about 9,000 works as well as three shows from outside the collection by artists from different regions of the province.
Jeff Erbach, the executive director of the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie, describes the foundation program as “amazing” and says it meets the goals of the gallery “100 per cent.”
The gallery is showing Mystical Landscapes, a show by Alberta photographer Arthur Nishimura, who taught at the University of Calgary, until March 27. Curated by Todd Schaber, it includes 20 analog images from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. ■