A Year From Now: Works from the Permanent Collection

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Photographer: Yuri Akuney

Aganetha Dyck, "The Helmet," 2000

hockey helmet and beeswax on wooden beehives. Collection of the Kelowna Art Gallery. Gift of Deborah Dyck, 2005.

What can happen in a year? Lake Country-based artist and curator Wanda Lock delves deeper into the passage of time and the cycles in our lives by way of a new exhibition that opens this weekend at the Kelowna Art Gallery. Titled A Year From Now, it presents sixty-three works she selected from the Gallery’s permanent art collection.

“Where do you even start?” remarks Curator Lock. “There are over 900 artworks in the collection to choose from. I needed something to help centre my approach and create a narrative that visitors could bite into. So, I started with a pot of tea… Then, I spent many, many hours browsing the collection via the Gallery’s online database.”

Ultimately, Lock decided to divide this introspective exhibition into five thematic groupings that form a cycle for viewers to experience and reflect upon.

The first section gallery-goers encounter is Love is blind, which is imbued with romanticism and wonder. Around the corner is Home is where the heart is. It explores the place where commitment forms and domesticity often follows. Best Laid Plans considers the nature of disruption and unforeseen circumstances. When you crop a photo, you tell a lie visits transitional moments and change. Lastly, To everything, there is a season brings the journey full circle, returning to summer time in the Okanagan.

“I wanted to include a few of my favourite pieces (which didn’t all make the cut), but more importantly, I wanted to create an exhibition that would explore themes that reflect on the year we just came through, while looking ahead to the future with hope and reassurance,” says Lock.

A Year From Now features an eclectic presentation of work by Okanagan-based artists including Briar Craig, Fern Helfand, Jane Everett, and Jim Kalnin, along with Landon Mackenzie, Gathie Falk, Norval Morisseau, Carl Beam, and Wanda Koop, among others. Visitors will see art in a variety of mediums, including drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and more.

The exhibition also showcases five written works that were commissioned specifically from local poets Carin Covin, Asheigh Giffen, Shimshon Obadia, Laisha Rosnau, and Michael Turner.

“We are always delighted to share artworks from our collection with regional audiences and the visitors who might be in the city. After all this art is yours,” says Nataley Nagy, Executive Director at the Kelowna Art Gallery. “We hold these important pieces of art in trust for the City of Kelowna, on behalf of all of its citizens.”