Memorial Lecture Series

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“Knowledge Made Concrete: 100 Years of Teaching and Collecting,” 17 Jan - 8 Mar 2025

installation view of, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, AUArts, Calgary (Photo Credit: Katy Whitt) (courtesy of the Gallery)

In conjunction with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery’s Winter 2025 exhibition Knowledge Made Concrete: 100 Years of Teaching and Collecting, the Memorial Lecture Series will commemorate three artists featured in the exhibition who passed away in 2024: Isla Burns (1952—2024), Vera Gartley (1933—2024), and Alex Janvier (1935—2024).

The series will present lectures by Tak Pham, Diana Sherlock, and Adrian Stimson, emphasizing Burns, Gartley and Janvier’s respective lives and works while also discussing their lasting contributions to the art history of Alberta and Canada.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

Tak Pham is a Vietnamese contemporary art curator and writer. He is currently curator at the Illingworth Kerr Gallery at the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory. He was formerly associate curator at the Mackenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Treaty 4 territory. Pham holds an M.F.A. in Criticism and Curatorial Practice from OCAD University and a B.A. Hons. From Carleton University. 

He has curated exhibitions and organized curatorial projects for the mackenzie Art Gallery, Contemporary Calgary, Confederation Centre Art Gallery, Varley Art Gallery, Art Gallery of Ontario, and Nuit Blanche Toronto, among others. His writings and reviews have appeared in Canadian Art, C Magazine, ESPACE art actuel, esse arts + opinions, Galleries West, The Brooklyn Rail, artasiapacific and Hyperallergic. In 2023, Pham was awarded the Hnatyshyn Foundation-Fogo Island Arts Young Curator Residency.

Diana Sherlock is a Canadian independent curator and visual arts writer. Since 2018 she has been a curatorial consultant with CMCK Public Art developing context-responsive public art plans and commissioning strategies. She has curated dozens of exhibitions for museums and galleries with a focus on contemporary artists’ practices based in western Canada. Recent exhibitions include Between Things: Alberta Ceramics, co-curated with Lindsey Sharman at the Art Gallery of Alberta (2023–24) and the travelling Alberta Foundation for the Arts TREX Southwest exhibition Mary Shannon Will: dot.dot.dot. Organized by the Alberta Society of Artists (2022–24). This exhibition included almost thirty works on paper that extended Sherlock’s research for Mary Shannon Will: People, Places and Things, a career survey of the artist’s work at the University of Calgary Nickle Galleries (2020–21). Author of over eighty texts for gallery catalogues and contemporary art journals internationally, Sherlock is editor of six books including two artist’s monographs, Larissa Fassler: Viewshed (DISTANZ, Berlin, 2022) and Rita mckeough: Works (EMMEDIA Gallery & Production Society, M:ST Performative Art, and TRUCK Contemporary Art, Calgary, 2018). She taught curatorial and professional practices at the Alberta College of Art and Design (Alberta University of the Arts) from 2000–2020.

Adrian Stimson, a member of the Siksika Nation, is a multidisciplinary artist whose work explores Indigenous identity and historical resilience. With an MFA from the University of Saskatchewan, he creates art that confronts complex narratives of cultural experience.

Stimson’s performance art deconstructs identity through personas like Buffalo Boy and The Shaman Exterminator, examining the intricate intersections of Indian, cowboy, shaman, and Two-Spirit identities. His bison paintings are simultaneously melancholic, political, and occasionally whimsical, while his installations—deeply personal works informed by his residential school experiences—speak to genocide, loss, and survival.

Internationally recognized, Stimson has exhibited in biennales across Paris, Toronto, and Sydney. His public art commissions include: Spirit of Alliance, Saskatoon; Bison Sentinel healing gardens of the FNU, Regina; Inii Bison Heart, Animals that Roam the Prairie, Sweet Grass Bison, Past Present Future Count, Calgary; National Monument to Canada’s Mission in Afghanistan, Ottawa; and From Earth to Sky, Airdrie. 

A versatile artist, Stimson was part of the Canadian Forces Artist Program in Afghanistan in 2010 and has been honoured with numerous prestigious awards. These include the Governor General's Award for Visual and Media Arts (2018), the University of Saskatchewan's Alumni of Influence Award (2020), and the REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award (2017).