Reboot 2018: Amalgam

A flash-back to 10 favourites from 2018.

Some themes that emerged in Galleries West's coverage in 2018 included artists' continuing interest in the North and their ongoing exploration of new technologies. But we published many other memorable stories in 2018. Here are 10 favourites.

Trace, a group exhibition at the New Media Gallery in New Westminster, B.C., featured robots that drew portraits of gallery visitors. The work by French artist Patrick Tresset offered a fascinating exploration of the artistic possibilities of artificial intelligence. 

In Isachsen, Edmonton artist aAron munson explored depression and his father's youthful experience at the Isachsen weather station on Ellef Ringnes Island in Nunavut. His photographs of the abandoned station have a deep sense of mystery and an icy aura that chills the bones. 

Two Scores at Vancouver’s Contemporary Art Gallery explored the intersection of art and craft. Brent Wadden, an internationally exhibited artist who describes himself as an untrained weaver, presented large woven works that resembled hard edge paintings. “Someone who is traditionally trained would do things a lot differently," says Wadden. "At this point, I like and accept all the mistakes.”

“Everybody likes treehouses to some extent," says Calgary-born Erik Olson. "And, for me, I always liked them as a place of escape, as a place away from things." Indeed. It's easy to like Olson's exuberant paint and the intriguing back story that led to his show, In the Trees, at Calgary's VivianeArt.

The latest incarnation of the Vancouver Biennial keeps hitting it out the park, but images from one show in particular are hard to forget. Curious Imaginings, the fourth of eight major installations over the next two years, was composed of 18 life-sized resin sculptures by Australian artist Patricia Piccinini. They address family, motherhood and genetic tampering, and as Galleries West reviewer John Thomson noted, are both repulsive and compelling.

New Brunswick artist Anna Torma’s exhibition, Book of Abandoned Details, at the Esker Foundation in Calgary, presented whimsical work rooted in Hungarian textile traditions and the feminist avant-garde.

Margaret Nazon's free-form beadwork creations "pull heaven and earth together," Sarah Swan wrote about Beaded Universe at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife. Nazon, who lives in tiny Tsiigehtchic in the Northwest Territories, made the works after she became fascinated by astronomical images from the Hubble Space Telescope that she found online.

A public art project by Vancouver's Diyan Achjadi responded to the dizzying pace of development in B.C.'s Lower Mainland. Achjadi, a maker of beautiful prints, has been postering construction hoardings with illustrations of pylons, fences and the like. “There’s a lot of craft and care that’s gone into it and I’m putting them into spaces where I know they'll be destroyed by the elements," she said. "I hope it will provoke people to ask why somebody would do this.”

What's not to love about an 18-foot ice cream cone? And all the better on a long drive, the premise of Roadside Attractions, an ambitious project organized by 10 Saskatchewan galleries. The cone, made from corrugated plastic by Saskatoon artist Alison Norlen, was on display in Estevan. 

Forget theory and conceptual frameworks. The quiet and deeply interior work that Ontario artist Stu Oxley showed at the Paul Kuhn Gallery in Calgary as part of Distant Still is about seeing – really seeing – the nuanced mark. ■