Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria will remain open with a free Public Open House on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Thursday, Sept, 30, from Noon to 5pm. 

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Harold Mortimer Lamb, "Emily Carr in her studio," c.1939

AGGV.1980.087.003;

Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen opens with a free Public Open House on Saturday, July 17, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. 

June 5, 1936; “I painted this evening.  Mellow, high-keyed night with no clouds, white streaks, blue sea, grey green stretch of grass, two stumps. Great scoops out of the gravel pit, wide scoop of sea, grass that quivers over the earth.”  (Hundreds and Thousands, Emily Carr).

Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen examines how  Emily Carr saw the land and sites she painted in British Columbia and on Vancouver Island, and how she is seen by both artists and historians in a new exhibition.

“Emily Carr’s legacy is intertwined with the land and sites of this region. She is celebrated for the way in which she articulated what she saw in these landscapes through painting and for how she interpreted and portrayed Indigenous village sites, landmarks, and culture,” said AGGV Acting Chief Curator and exhibition co-curator, Nicole Stanbridge.

Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen is divided into two sections, one half of the gallery will look at how  Carr  documented what was around her, highlighting many of the works she is praised and admired for today. The second half, focusing on how artists and historians of various backgrounds and worldviews have, and continue to react to, and interpret Carr’s legacy and body of work.

The section called Seeing displays 13 works from the collection of the AGGV, by Carr, including; Odds and Ends, Big Eagle at Skidegate and Above the Gravel Pit. This half of the exhibition will focus on bringing a more fulsome narrative to the intersection of land and cultures that Carr was documenting through her work. Not only showing what Carr recorded through her paintings at these sites, but also what other stories and lived experiences exist there. That is the stories, peoples, and cultural significance that long precede these fleeting moments captured by a settler person at a very specific point and perspective in time.

Being Seen examines works by other artists impacted by Carr’s legacy. Artists who admire her work, historians who adore her, and works that hold her accountable and critique her engagement with Indigenous peoples. Showcased in this section are artists such as: Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher, Pat Martin Bates, Jack Shadbolt, Isabel Hobbs, and Joan Cardinal-Schubert offering many varied perspectives to engage with. Schubert’s work titled Birch Bark Letters to Emily Carr: Astrolobe Discovery depicts letters written to and imagined conversations between Carr and the artist of Kainaiwa ancestry. 

“All of these artists see Carr through their own unique vantage point, and contribute to the ongoing discussion about what her work and legacy represent. The lens through which artists are seen by others shapes their legacy throughout their lives and after they are gone, and Emily Carr is no exception,” said exhibition co-curator, Mel Granley.