Peter von Tiesenhausen: The Watchers – 20 Years Later

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Peter von Tiesenhausen: The Watchers - 20 years later

Jarvis Hall Gallery is pleased to announce “The Watchers – 20 Years Later”, a monumental exhibition by internationally acclaimed environmental artist; Peter von Tiesenhausen.  We hope you will join us for the opening reception on December 2nd between 5-8 PM. An Artist Talk with Peter and current Director of Stride Gallery, Nicole Kelly Westman will be held here at JHG on Saturday, December 3rd at 2 PM.  All are welcome, seating is limited.

20 years ago, Peter embarked on a journey across Canada with The Watchers.  These 5 enormous charred wooden figures originally exhibited on the rooftop of The Stride Art Gallery, before embarking on a 30,000 km journey and circumnavigating Canada.  Along their way they gazed upon everything from Calgary’s skyline, to the Confederation Bridge, to the choppy waters of the Northwest Passage and the land therein between. These stoic figures stood tall and witnessed the wild and the urbane, the unspoiled and the disturbingly damaged landscape from coast to coast, before coming to a sober rest on von Tiesenhausen’s property in Demmitt, Ab. They now return to Calgary, 20 years later, and weathered with time, experience and history.  With this exhibition, Peter retraces that monumental journey and artistic voyage he has been on ever since.

Peter is best known for his love of the land and his practice reflects his environmental concerns.  He’s as passionate about the making of art as he is sustainability and to him, they are interconnected.  Often sourcing natural, local and reclaimed materials, Peter builds upon ideas of community, preservation, and the human endeavour contained within the landscape.  The land where he lives constitutes his primary and ongoing artwork and in 1995 he claimed copyright over that land.  He has been successful on several occasions defending this artwork against the incursions of multinational corporate interests. Recently he was a driving force for the construction of a sustainable timber frame straw bale community centre in his community of Demmitt, Alberta.

Peter has exhibited and lectured widely across Canada as well as in Europe, the United States and Mexico.  He has had over 50 solo and many group exhibitions, which have been widely reviewed and the subject of 3 national television documentaries including a one hour award winning film “Elemental” produced in 2000 for “Adrienne Clarkson Presents”. In 2014, the Esker Foundation, featured Peter von Tiesenhausen: Experience of the Precisely Sublime, and the Glenbow Museum presented Island – a video-based work on the Vanishing Ice caps of Iceland.  Opening this November 2016 at the acclaimed AVHA, Audain Art Centre, is This Is It With It As It Is, a group exhibition.