CORrE: Contemporary Okanagan Rank-and-file registered Exhibition

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Briar Craig

CORrE

Contemporary Okanagan Rank-and-file registered Exhibition

Doug Alcock

David T. Alexander

Glenn Clark

Briar Craig

Jen Dyck

Robert Dmytruk

Diane Feught

Johann Feught

John Hall

Joice M. Hall

Fern Helfand

Reg Kienast

Ann Kipling

Wanda Lock

Mary McCulloch

Steve Mennie

Amy Modahl

Ronda Neufeld

Herald Nix

Destanne Norris

Julie Oakes

Gary Pearson

Amber Powell

Heidi Thompson

David Wilson

Deborah Wilson

Briar Craig

Jen Dyck

Your are invited to the opening of CORrE With a Royal High Tea, (champagne, tea and crumpets) At Headbones Gallery, 6700 Old Kamloops Road on December 02, 2018 from two until five in the afternoon.

Contemporary means with-the-times, in-the-now. It connotes a position in history against the back drop of what has come before and prefixes what is to come next. The fine arts have often been associated with concepts of the avant-garde – in advance of time. The concept of art marching in time with the present is so endemic to the field that international museums of art that are showing the results of artists working in the present have the word ‘contemporary’ within their names like MOCCA (Museum of Canadian Contemporary Art) and all the rest; MOCA in NYC, MACBA in Barcelona, LACMA in LA, to name just a few. The content is made clear within a small number of characters like a tweet. Capturing the ‘now’ is the essence of Facebook, Instagram and a myriad of social media feeds. Even google and Wickipedia could be construed as an expression of the contemporary consciousness and the obsession with sharing the immediate. With the need to stay connected having managed to squire such a prominent position within the social register, ‘contemporary’ has gained popular focus.

Okanagan is the featured place and from Penticton to Salmon Arm, the artists assembled for this exhibition live and work in the extended valley framework. We see the same skies, breathe the same air and feel the same atmospheric temperature fluctuations within a similar range but still with astounding diversity; we have all had the experience of being in one spot under sunshine and yet looking at a vista where the dark clouds pour. And just like the weather, within the valley is a simultaneous artistic variety.

Rank-and- File is membership in a club and the visual arts is a ‘club’ where the stylistic variables are tied together by an unavoidable belief in the importance of art. The artists in CORE are committed adherents to practicesof image making for the purpose of furthering visual communication. There is no official roster, the ‘group’ is not so much organized through art as immersed in art. As in any engagement, there is a language that can be acquired to enhance articulation, a visual language that can cross national language barriers and even-out cultural and political differences. Art can also advocate - for identity, social consciousness, morality and philosophy . Or art may disassociate from idea to relate to the pure physicality of the medium as in McLewan’s famous phrase – “the medium is the message.”

There is a small r word, registered, after the capitalized Rank-and-file of our title which indicates Headbones Gallery’s ongoing commitment to cataloguing each exhibition. The mounting and viewing of an exhibition is temporal. The catalogue documents the works within an iteration of exposure. The exhibition catalogue for CORrE, as all catalogues from Headbones’ exhibitions, will be registered with the National Archives and therefore enter the anals of art history, taking a step further towards extending the ‘life’ and reach of the works.

Exhibiting the work especially in the context of a yearly show has a long history in the visual arts from famous salon shows of Royal Academies to the historic public and private investments made to establish galleries and museums in which art is made accessible to a greater audience.