Charley Farrero, “Chez Marie Antoinette,” no date
mixed media, 18" x 8" x 13" (courtesy of Art Gallery of Regina)
Charley Farrero: A Certain (Whimsical) Detour (LAST-MINUTE CANCELLATION)
Saskatchewan ceramic artist Charley Farrero was compared to a delicious “rough around the edges” wine by the Art Gallery of Swift Current in 2021 upon launching his solo, traveling exhibition A Certain Tour. “Like this wine, Charley Farrero never fails to be assertive and bold, to be true to himself, and to remain deeply expressive of his origins and his experience,” said the gallery. A Certain Detour was scheduled to move to the Art Gallery of Regina for savouring Nov. 9 to Jan. 12, but the show has been cancelled. Originally from France, Farrero now lives in Meacham, Sask. There’s a definite Saskatchewan feel to many of his often mischievous ceramic pieces. One immediately thinks of whimsical ceramic sculptures by such Saskatchewan giants as Joe Fafard and Victor Cicansky. There are bowls of fruit, relaxing frogs, a unique take on free trade and much more. Farrero's oeuvre includes both functional and sculptural ceramic pieces, as well as large outdoor work. He incorporates a variety of materials, including commercial tile pieces and ceramic shards and has been exhibited across Canada.
Douglas Coupland, “Exxon Valdez,” 2023
oil and acrylic on canvas, 60" × 84"
Douglas Coupland’s new chilling ice age
Douglas Coupland became enchanted with a cornfield one day until he realized he was admiring genetically modified corn. “And suddenly it wasn’t just a corn field I was seeing — it had become something else, as if a hex or spell had been cast on it,” Coupland recalls. “Similarly, I was returning from Munich in 2021 and looked down out the plane window at Baffin Island and I realized that all of those glaciers and icebergs I was seeing down there had also had a spell cast on them.” They were part of what Coupland sees as a new Ice Age. The result of those chilling environmental experiences prompted the Vancouver artist to create a body of work, The New Ice Age, on display at Daniel Faria Gallery in Toronto from Oct. 25 to Dec. 16. Coupland’s icebergs are decidedly cubist yet they have a very contemporary feel, despoiled as they are by fireballs from the heavens and unparalleled melting.
Mehdi Darvishi, “The extended night,” 2017
mezzotint, 20" x 33" (courtesy of the artist)
Mehdi Darvishi: The death of art
The main theme of Mehdi Darvishi’s mezzotint exhibition at Alberta Printmakers Main Space Gallery in Calgary is “life and its undeniable result: Death.” Darvishi’s technique, actually, is all about death. First, the Iranian-American artist in Chicago takes a copper plate, burnishing, scraping and inking it to create an image for a print. Darvishi then uses the same plate, scraping it more, to create a new image and a new, different print. “The plate is inevitably erased by its own process,” says the artist. He sees this mezzotint exercise as “a metaphor for (the) life of an artist who leaves part of his existence into the works that outlive him.” The exhibition title is Centenary. It refers, says Darvishi, to a period of time that an artist is born, and inevitably dies, but also refers to the next hundred years when the artist is gone, and the works are destroyed by time. The exhibition runs from Oct. 13 to Dec. 1.
Paula Ducharme, “Skan,” detail, 2023
acrylic paint, aluminum jingles, hardboard, high-gloss varnish, ribbon, (photo by Teresa Donck-Matlock, courtesy of Kamloops Art Gallery)
Paula Ducharme: Indigenous theology
Paula Ducharme, of West Kelowna, fuses traditional and contemporary materials and ideas to explore her Indigenous ancestry. This is evident in her exhibition of mixed-media wall sculptures, Tob Tob Kin, at the Kamloops Art Gallery showing Sept. 16 to Dec. 30. Ducharme is a member of the Sioux First Nation in Manitoba and claims both Indigenous and settler ancestry. Her research is immersed in Lakota oral traditions and the study of Lakota stellar theology, a world view that connects humans, animals, the land, and the cosmos. The artist’s wall sculptures interpret the superior powers in this theology, including Wi (Sun), Skan (Sky), Makan (Earth) and Inyan (Rock) to tell the story of creation and its ongoing evolution. The artist integrates natural materials including leather, feathers and fur sourced in Lakota territory from her Manitoba homeland and combines them with traditional beadwork techniques. The resulting works honour cultural traditions and history while acknowledging the continuing evolution of a living culture.
Angeline Simon, “beef satay, rice, ribena, and midin,” 2023, ceramics (courtesy of the artist)
Angeline Simon: Food for thought
In a multi-ethnic country like Malaysia, each group treasures its unique culinary tradition. That includes Malaysia’s large ethnic Chinese population. Lethbridge artist Angeline Simon explores her own Chinese-Malaysian ancestry through food in her self-titled exhibition running Oct. 23 to Feb. 4 at Calgary’s Esker Foundation. In this site-specific installation, Simon exhibits a collection of hand-made ceramics of various foods shared with her maternal family while on summer trips to Malaysia – plates heaped with fiddleheads or skewers of beef satay, a batch of pineapple tarts or a gleaming cross-section of durian, a fruit with an obnoxious smell but a divine taste. Behind the ceramics is a large photographic mural of Simon’s grandmother’s kitchen in Kuching, Malaysia. The everyday objects in the photo collage are at once, unremarkable, yet laden with meaning, speaking to years of use, countless shared meals, and the careful work inherent in preparing food. ■
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