Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
3 May 2022 Vol 7 No 9 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2022
Portia Priegert
From the Editor
For the last two years, I’ve stayed close to home in Victoria. So it was fun to make a quick trip last week up to Nanaimo with publisher Tom Tait.
Our route took us to the Nanaimo Art Gallery, where we checked out an excellent show, Carried Through the Water by Diyan Achjadi, a professor at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.
We also visited Mary Fox, a potter in the small town of Ladysmith. She recently published My Life as a Potter: Stories and Techniques, a book so frank and open that I almost felt like I was reconnecting with a friend.
The book’s images, as good as they are, do not do full justice to the wonderful textures of Mary’s ceramics. Funny and warm, she thanked me for a review I wrote for BC BookWorld, joking that she was especially thrilled to be the centrefold. Mary struggled in her early years and is now organizing a legacy project that will offer residencies at her studio to help young potters establish themselves.
Driving down the hill from her house, I suddenly felt I was looking at a landscape painting by E.J. Hughes, who lived in nearby Duncan and Shawnigan Lake for most of his life. As I stared at the panorama of dark green conifers offset by the leafy green of budding deciduous trees, I realized how well his paintings capture the sharp contrasts of spring in the Cowichan Valley. Hughes seemingly followed us as we wended our way down the old highway near the ocean, where ships and other vessels, among his favourite subjects, plied a narrow strait.
Wanderlust seems to have spilled over into this issue’s stories. We are pleased to publish a commentary by Zainub Verjee, who heads Galeries Ontario / Ontario Galleries, which works on behalf of that province’s art spaces. Verjee, who will receive an honorary doctorate this month from NSCAD University in Halifax, is passionate about cultural policy, knowing how important it is for people working in the arts to understand and influence government decisions that impact them.
In War and Cultural Immunity, she explores international repercussions of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and revisits a piece of Canada’s cultural history – a landmark 1976 exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, courtesy of the Soviet Union. Zainub’s commentary covers a lot of ground, and is necessarily complex, but increased my understanding of international lending practices.
This issue also includes Sarah Swan’s review of a new book, Art in the After-Culture, by one of the top American critics, Ben Davis, who addresses recent developments in the international art world, including digital art, artificial intelligence and the impact of social media. Her assessment? “It’s a relief to really grapple with things that matter, instead of relying on easy punditry and hot takes.” Davis, by the way, thanked us on Twitter for a thoughtful review, saying: “I will take being called ‘weird, fascinating and humane’ any day.”
To feast your eyes after all that deep thinking, journey with John Thomson’s story about a Vancouver-area exhibition by Indian photographer Rajesh Vora. He documented Punjabi villages where residents build eye-catching sculptures – horses, soccer players, airplanes and even military tanks – atop their homes.
Other stories offer something more akin to time travel: Douglas Coupland recreates his childhood neighbourhood in staged photographs at the West Vancouver Art Museum, while the Art Gallery of Alberta’s exhibition by the late folk artist Sidney Kelsie may evoke memories for Edmonton residents. Our final article is a little more futuristic. It looks at Arianna Richardson, an artist from Lethbridge, Alta., who examines our society's wasteful use of plastic, and by extension, the coming environmental reckoning, but in a playful and disarming way.
Looking ahead, we are working on stories about other interesting artists, including Bill Burns, Shahla Bahrami and Carol Wainio.
I don’t think I would have made it through this busy week without the help of our new intern, Shazia Hafiz Ramji. Shazia, who is completing her doctorate at the University of Calgary, has published a book of poetry, Port of Being, a 2019 finalist for the British Columbia and Yukon Book Prizes. We are thrilled to welcome her to our team.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Agnieszka Matjeko, Tyler J. Stewart, Sarah Swan, John Thomson, Zainub Verjee
We acknowledge the support of the Government of Alberta Media Fund, the Government of Canada Special Measures for Journalism Fund and the Canada Council for the Arts.
