Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
21 September 2021 Vol 6 No 19 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2021
Portia Priegert
From the Editor
Last week, Zainub Verjee, the executive director of Galeries Ontario/Ontario Galleries, which provides a voice for public art galleries, reached out to me with concerns about the lack of focus on cultural policy during the federal election campaign. Recalling the praise that politicians heaped on artists for buoying people’s spirits in the early days of the pandemic, she noted the irony of leadership debates set against the backdrop of a key cultural institution, the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Que.
“Art and culture is not even an item in this election campaign,” she said. “Cultural institutions continue to be used as props for public policy, and cultural policy remains dormant in the backwaters of the public policy discourse. Art as a public good is at risk.”
While culture is rarely a hot-button issue in Canadian elections, political attention this time around seemed particularly tepid. The major parties have a few measures related to culture in their platforms, and a debate on culture by five MPs was aired by CPAC, a cable channel that covers Parliament. For many electors, issues like the affordability crisis, pandemic recovery, climate change, racial justice and reconciliation are top of mind. Of course, those are important issues for those in the cultural sector, as well. But developing effective policies to support the arts at a time of unprecedented challenge is also vital. As Verjee notes, Canada’s cultural sector is a significant contributor to the economy, but exists in great precarity, a reality worsened by the pandemic. Indeed, Canadian artists and cultural workers have been leaving the sector, she says, in line with similar trends in Europe.
What to expect from the Liberal minority government elected on Tuesday? The party's platform includes the launch of an arts and culture recovery program, a transitional support program to provide emergency relief, and changes to the EI system that may help cultural workers. There are also plans to launch a summit within the first 100 days on restarting the sector.
It's incumbent for cultural workers keep up the pressure for policies that support the arts. The start of a new mandate is a busy time, and this new government needs to be reminded – frequently – that empty promises are not enough. Talking to your local MP is a good place to start, as is supporting groups that lobby collectively for measures to sustain creative production.
Now, onward to this issue of Galleries West. As I look at the articles we've posted online over the last two weeks, I’m struck again by how Winnipeg artist Jeanne Randolph’s photographs of empty parking lots serve as metaphors for the strange state of animated suspension we continue to endure as we wait for normal, or the new normal, whatever that will be, in a post-pandemic world.
Other powerful metaphors can be found in Rebecca Belmore’s remarkable sculpture, Body of Water, a cast aluminum canoe featured in the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s first Indigenous triennial, Naadohbii: To Draw Water. The canoe, overturned, covered with a tarp and too heavy to use, as writer Alison Gillmor notes, evokes threats to water from pollution and climate change. And Samantha Dickie, in her exhibition, A Moment in Time, at the Victoria Arts Council, transmutes earth – in the form of clay – into something light and spacious, evoking transcendent possibilities within an aqua blue surround.
Meanwhile, other stories include Uninvited, which focuses on female artists who were active – and largely overlooked – at the time of the Group of Seven. Shaping Calgary considers the contributions of some of the city's most notable sculptors. Our final article looks at figurative paintings by Leesa Streifler, who retired recently from the University of Regina.
These exhibitions do what art is supposed to do – provide pleasure, raise questions, provoke thought and all the rest; and in so doing inform us, challenge us and lift us – in short, help us face difficult realities, understand each other better, consider new ways of being, and deal with the many challenges of being truly human, in its best sense.
Artists make vital contributions – particularly in uncertain times. Let's not give the new government a chance to forget that.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Lauren Fournier, Paul Gessell, Alison Gillmor, Amy Karlinsky, Lissa Robinson
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.
