Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
5 October 2021 Vol 6 No 20 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2021
Portia Priegert
From the Editor
In a nod to the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Sept. 30, this issue of Galleries West highlights the work of two Indigenous artists – Charlene Vickers and Sho Sho Esquiro.
I recommend spending a few minutes with Mark Mushet's video about Vickers, a Vancouver-based Anishinaabe artist who is exhibiting at the city's highly regarded Contemporary Art Gallery until Jan. 2. The video gives you a glimpse of beautiful, culturally relevant work by an artist who has exhibited internationally.
Meanwhile, Esquiro's show, at the Bill Reid Gallery in Vancouver, is reviewed by longtime arts writer Beverly Cramp, now publisher of BC BookWorld. Yukon-raised Esquiro, who is of Kaska Dena, Cree and Scottish heritage, is a fabric artist whose work has appeared in Vogue magazine. Her pieces resemble haute couture, Cramp writes, but are “like the proverbial iron fist in a velvet glove – they are embedded with political messages to inspire conversations about the injustices of colonialism.”
This issue also includes a look at A Practice in Gestures, a show by six British Columbia artists at the Richmond Art Gallery. It's a gorgeous show – our images do not do it justice – that explores the role of gesture in negotiating complex issues, such as inequality, forced migration and environmental destruction. A thumbs-up to curator Nan Capogna, and the six artists she selected, from reviewer Amy Gogarty, an artist and former professor at what is now the Alberta University of the Arts in Calgary.
In Edmonton, Galleries West intern Megan Klak reviews an exhibition, Culture of Resistance, by longtime artist Mary Joyce, at La Galerie Cité, located in a cultural centre for the city's French-speaking residents. The two had an interesting cross-generational exchange while reflecting on Joyce’s vibrant paintings of recent protests, including the 2012 student movement against tuition increases in Quebec. “I realized the moments she paints – although they emerge from anger at the state of the world – vibrate with movement, expectancy and hope,” Klak writes.
Artist and educator Helena Wadsley writes about the work of Parvin Peivandi, an Iranian-born artist now living in Vancouver, who reflects on her two worlds in Returning Tenderly Triumphant, at the Burrard Arts Foundation until Oct. 23. Her work brings together folded metal sheeting and fragments of threadbare Persian carpets in what Wadsley calls “a study in contrasts.”
Our final article in this issue is my review of Outdoor School, a book that presents a variety of recent contemporary environmental art, a subject dear to my heart. It features inspiring work from before the pandemic that makes me yearn for large, joyful gatherings in the outdoors with its photographs of people foraging for mushrooms, working in organic gardens, sharing food by a campfire and even milking a goat.
We’re putting our final touches now on our nest issue. Watch for Jayne Wilkinson, a former editor of Canadian Art, writing on Hunkpapa Lakota photographer and filmmaker Dana Claxton’s Scotiabank Photography Award exhibition at the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto.
Longtime Ottawa arts writer Paul Gessell reviews a new book, Women at the Helm: How Jean Sutherland Boggs, Hsio-yen Shih and Shirley L. Thomson Changed the National Gallery of Canada. It's written by Diana Nemiroff, a senior curator at the National Gallery from 1990 to 2005.
Artist Sandee Moore, curator at the Art Gallery of Regina, reviews Time Holds All the Answers, by the Indigenous interdisciplinary art collective PostCommodity, at the Remai Modern in Saskatoon.
Calgary-based poet Shazia Hafiz Ramji makes her debut in Galleries West with a review of Tensile Strength: Weavers and War, an exhibition of Afghan war rugs at the Founders’ Gallery.
We’ll also feature another of Mark Mushet’s stellar short videos, this one about Vancouver painter Nancy Boyd’s upcoming show at the Wallace Galleries in Calgary. We are developing a good collection of videos, which I like to describe as a pilot project for Canada's version of Art21. We're hoping to expand our video presence further into Calgary, so please take a look at what we've been doing and let us know if you have a show coming up that might work for a video spotlight.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Beverly Cramp, Amy Gogarty, Megan Klak, Mark Mushet, Helena Wadsley
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.
