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Luke Jerram, “Museum of the Moon,” 2016, imagery by NASA's lunar reconnaissance orbiter camera, 23' in diameter, installation view at Contemporary Calgary (photo by Blaine Campbell)

Calgary, We Have Lift Off

Contemporary Calgary launches its new home in a former planetarium with two shows that celebrate celestial themes.

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All things earthly and celestial shine in two stellar debut shows at Contemporary Calgary’s new home in the city’s former Centennial Planetarium.

Museum of the Moon, a stunning work by British artist Luke Jerram, is an absolute delight. His inflatable orb, which hovers regally in the building’s concrete dome until March 15, features high-resolution NASA imagery of the moon.

Internally lit, it's built to scale with each centimetre representing five kilometres of the moon’s cratered surface. It’s hard to describe how compelling it is to sit beneath this majestic sphere.

A second exhibition, Planetary, features some 60 works by local artists who participated in a six-month on-site residency. Along with themes related to outer space, this show, on view until April 26, also celebrates the the building's history and its Brutalist architecture, now refreshed with a $25-million renovation.

Celestial flowers, porcelain eyes and a fibre-optic forest are but a few of the curiosities viewers encounter as they meander through a new entranceway into display spaces spread over three floors. The show endows reverence on a building built to mark Canada’s 1967 centennial, a time of scientific wonder and optimism for a brave new future. 

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Atrium of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

Atrium of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

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Grotto of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

Grotto of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

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Front entrance of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

Front entrance of Contemporary Calgary (photo by Jamie Anholt; courtesy of Contemporary Calgary)

It’s fascinating to explore how the building has been repurposed. Canadian architect Bruce Kuwabara, who describes the site as both a cultural landscape and a cultural artifact, is overseeing ongoing renovations. Initial upgrades by the City of Calgary with local architectural firm Lemay + Toker, included new lighting, modern technology and improvements to the electrical system. Still to come is an addition to house a more traditional gallery, as well as retail space.

The opening is the culmination of a long and winding journey for Contemporary Calgary – an amalgamation of the former Art Gallery of Calgary (originally the Muttart Public Art Gallery), the Museum of Contemporary Art (formerly the Triangle Gallery) and the Institute for Modern and Contemporary Art. 

The merger’s vision – along with the move to the iconic venue near the Bow River west of the downtown core – is aimed at making Calgary a major art destination, putting it in the same league as Edmonton, home to the Art Gallery of Alberta.

Its first exhibitions, organized by Contemporary Calgary curator Ryan Doherty, play on the gravitational pull between the earth, the moon and the sun. Jerram’s moon is the centrepiece while the group show expands the macrocosm. 

Planetary includes works – some of them collaborative – by 36 local artists who participated in the Collider residency, which asked artists to consider ideas ranging from galactic journeys to speculative futures.

The artists, inspired by ideas related to spectacle, nature, invention and exploration, created everything from prints, paintings and sculptures to videos, glassworks and installations. The result is a vast and impressive show that embraces the new and the old with numerous approaches, whether humorous or cerebral.

The first floor features Rocio Graham's Future Memories, an installation composed of video projections and drawings bathed in ultraviolet light. Seeds and flowers explode, expand and disseminate across the walls in patterns that evoke parallels between the celestial and the botanical. 

Other circular or cyclical ruminations include a video installation by Dan Hudson, who was inspired by the solar eclipse he witnessed in 2017, and Joe Kelly’s kinetic video installation, a 360-degree landscape projected onto a cantilevered screen that rotates on a tripod.

The second floor includes work displayed in the atrium, a light-filled chamber with high ceilings, and in a lecture hall, where a video by Mark Clintberg offers a disjointed tour of the site prior to renovation, accompanied by a soundtrack inspired by David Bowie’s Space Oddity. 

Teresa Tam's Celestial Theatre (Universe 2) is a shiny yellow plywood box that mimics the vintage photo booths once found in shopping malls. Her version is built with a DIY aesthetic and is furnished with digital equipment that requires no coins to operate.

The third floor houses Jerram’s moon and a circular corridor gallery with low ceilings and angular walls. A challenging yet intimate space, it features smaller works by various artists, including George Webber, whose photographs capture the building’s architecture in dreamy blurs of light and dark. 

All in all, Contemporary Calgary has achieved an ambitious launch, one that celebrates the venue's unusual origins and stakes out celestial terrain in hopes of propelling Calgary into an international art orbit. ■

Luke Jerram: Museum of the Moon, on view until March 15, 2020, and Planetary, on view until April 26, 2020, debuted at Contemporary Calgary on Jan. 23, 2020.

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Contemporary Calgary

701 11 Street SW, Calgary, Alberta

403-770-1350

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