AFA News

Group of Seven.

Three words that thrill Canadian art lovers everywhere. And while much of the work produced by the Group of Seven focused on eastern Canada, did you know there was a strong connection between Alberta and members of the Group of Seven?
 

This connection is explored in an exhibition now on view at Government House in Edmonton. Aptly titled Alberta and the Group of Seven, it was developed by independent curator and writer Mary-Beth Laviolette in partnership with Gail Lint, Art Collections Consultant with the Arts Branch.  

If this exhibition sounds familiar, a version of it, curated by Laviolette, travelled around Alberta from 2016 through 2018. The AFA Art Collection team installed the exhibition in Government House, made up of work from the Government House art collection, the collection of the Government of Alberta and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts art collection as part of our exhibition loan program. Click the arrows above to see a short slideshow of images of select artworks in the exhibition. 

Click on an artist’s name to see their work in the AFA art collection.*

Artwork ready to be installed at Government House. Far right: Illingworth Kerr, "Forest Reserve, Spring". 1973. Oil on canvas. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts. 

I had an opportunity to ask Mary-Beth Laviolette a few questions about this exhibition and the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven.

AFA: What is the connection between Alberta and the Group of Seven?

MB: A number of early Alberta artists like H.G. Glyde and Catharine and Peter Whyte sketched and painted alongside members of the Group such as A.Y. Jackson and J.E.H. MacDonald. Jackson, for instance, did not drive, so artists like Glyde and members of the Lethbridge Sketch Club drove him to different sites to sketch or paint outdoors. Banff’s Peter and Catharine Whyte knew MacDonald and Lawren Harris from their outdoor excursions in the Rockies.

AFA Art Collections staff, Gail Lint and Jackie Flaata, install an artwork in Government House

AFA: Why do you think these artworks still have so much resonance today?

MB: First of all, they are memorable works of art. I mean, Euphemia McNaught’s oil of Monkman Creek simply glows, while Jackson’s small 1935 oil titled Foothills, Alberta captures so much of the distinctive character of the coulees. There are a lot of striking artworks from this period that are not only landscapes but also depictions of small-town Alberta and especially their grain elevators. Most of those [the grain elevators] are now gone and were not admired as artistic subjects at the time. Annora Brown of Fort Macleod was even advised in her own town there was nothing worthwhile to paint, and she should go to Europe where they had windmills, such as France! I guess there was a feeling that art happened somewhere else.

AFA Art Collections staff, Neil Lazaruk (left) and Duncan Johnson (right) install on Government House H.G. Glyde’s "Stream Under Grotto Mountain, Near Canmore". 1948. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

AFA: What do you want people to take away from this exhibition?

MB: There is such a thing called ‘Alberta art’, and it has a very fine legacy that connects into Canadian art. That may sound like an obvious thing to say, but it needs to be said.

AFA: How do these artworks fit into the story of Alberta art?

MB: They all do. For example,  A.Y. Jackson’s 1943 painting of the newly constructed and remarkable Peace River Bridge was done at a time when the Alaska Highway was being built for reasons connected to the Second World War. H.G. Glyde, then of Calgary, accompanied him as an artist on this trip north.

Installed in Government House, Left: Euphemia McNaught’s "Monkman Creek". 1985. Oil on board. Collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts;  Right: A.Y. Jackson’s "Peace River Bridge". 1943. Oil on panel. Collection of Government House.

AFA: Do you have a favourite artwork or artist in the exhibition?

MB: I have a lot of admiration for all of the early artists no matter where they were based, like Euphemia McNaught and Annora Brown. It’s good to know that next year Brown will be one of the artists featured in a national touring exhibition being organized by the McMichael Collection of Art in Kleinburg, Ontario in connection with the Group of Seven’s centenary. Everyone will be asking who is Annora Brown and where is Fort Macleod?

Interested in seeing these artworks and more in Government House? Free, guided tours take place on Sundays and holiday Mondays.

Mary-Beth Laviolette is an independent art writer and curator based in Canmore, Alberta. She specializes in Albertan and western Canadian art.

*Note: Two artworks mentioned in this article are not part of the AFA art collection. A.Y. Jackson's Peace River Bridge and Foothills, Alberta are in the art collection of Government House.

Written by: Kimberly Van Nieuvenhuyse, Writer/Social Media Officer

Absence Inhabited is curated by Ashley Slemming, and Dear Alan is curated by Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por. Both exhibitions have been generously funded though the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Emerging Curator Fellowship.  
 

Absence Inhabited

This exhibition represents 29 artworks by 27 Alberta artists. These artists all highlight unique perspectives on object-hood and have contributed to a rich survey of domestically-situated artworks. These works ring into focus notions of intimate home spaces within a continually growing and interconnected relational world. 

Curator's Statement (excerpt)

The works featured in this exhibition all tell different stories. The represented objects all appear to hold a patina or residue of life, yet all the objects presented are inanimate lifeless forms. Absence Inhabited consequently serves as an examination of absence representing presence and the inherent states of being that are reflected in these various artworks. The range of objects represented allows for consideration of the concept of home and being from a variety of viewpoints - and challenges us to think about how we live, communicate and function on a day-to-day basis. 

Ashley Slemming, curator, Absence Inhabited

About the Curator: Ashley Slemming

Ashley Slemming is a Canadian embroidery and print artist based in Calgary, AB. Her work invites curiosity into our sentimental connection with repetition, pattern, and colour in both nature and textiles.  In her conceptual art practice she often explores the parallels between human and animal behaviours that are revealed by our relationships to our living environments, both man-made and natural.

In addition to the AFA's Emerging Curator Fellowship, Ashley has explored curatorial avenues as a Curatorial Intern with the Illingworth Kerr Gallery. She has completed her BFA with distinction in Printmaking from the Alberta College of Art and Design.

Dear Alan

This exhibition represents 32 artworks by 31 Alberta artists. 

Curators' Statement (excerpt)

Dear Alan brings together a dizzying number of landscapes from the AFA permanent collection, displayed in a digital gallery, salon style. Rather than present works within a cohesive curatorial theme, based on typical modes of exhibition-making that rely on continuities such as concept, form, or historical period, this exhibition seeks instead to show varied, and at times disparate, artistic approaches to landscape representation, across time and medium—a curatorial methodology that speaks to an impulse to approach art through a productive un-knowing, a state of wonder, that eschews the reliance upon expertise in a given area of research. Like the permanent collection itself, which in all institutions shifts and morphs with changing leadership, access to funds, and artistic vision, Dear Alan chronicles the ebbs and flows of the AFA’s ever-changing collecting ethos and the evolving artistic and political sensibilities in Alberta more broadly.

Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por, curators, Dear Alan

About the Curators: Natasha Chaykowski and Yasmin Nurming-Por

Natasha Chaykowski

Natasha Chaykowski is a writer and curator based in Calgary. Currently, she is Director of Untitled Art Society. She has organized numerous exhibitions, discursive programs and arts-based events. Chaykowski held a curatorial assistant position at Art Gallery of Ontario, co-curated the annual Emerging Artist Exhibition at InterAccess in Toronto with Nancy Webb and is the co-recipient of the 2014 Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators. She was Editorial Assistant for the Journal of Curatorial Studies and the Editorial Resident at Canadian Art magazine in 2014. Her writing has been published in Carbon Paper, the Art Gallery of York University, esse: arts + opinions, Canadian Art, Gallery 44, and the Journal of Curatorial Studies.

Yasmin Nurming-Por

Yasmin Nurming-Por is a curator, writer and educator currently based in Toronto, Ontario. In 2017, she was the recipient of the 5th Middlebrook Prize for Young Canadian Curators, and an Alberta Foundation. In addition to the Emerging Curator Followship exhibition, Dear Alan (co-curated with Natasha Chaykowski), 2018, other recent and upcoming projects include In shadows of the individual (2017); My curiosities are not your curios (2017); TV Dinner (2017); ARCTICNOISE (2015); At Sea(2015); and Blind White (2015). In 2015-2016 she was a sessional faculty member at Humber College in Toronto. In 2017 the position of Assistant Curator at the Walter Phillips Gallery at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and currently holds the position of Research Assistant at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

Both exhibitions are available to view on Google Arts and Culture. 

About the Emerging Curator Fellowship

This fellowship is designed to support the growth and development of curatorial talent by contracting an individual or ensemble of individuals to develop content for an online exhibition of Albertan visual art. 

This initiative is intended to bring a new perspective to the artworks and artists featured in the AFA collection.

Jim Picco's Plastic Bag is part of the exhibition Absence Inhabited. 

Alan's Untitled is part of the exhibition Dear Alan.

Every year on April 15, World Art Day celebrates artistic creativity and promotes taking part in art. 
 

"World enough, and time" by Ken Macklin is a meditation on the simultaneous nature of time. A skyward reaching column supports three spheres, representing the historic past, the complex present, and our collective hopes and dreams for the future.

• Translated into emotive colour, the past is expressed through earth tones that evoke the quietude and strength of the natural environment.
• The present is expressed through maroon-red and green, evoking the present concern for the environment, as well as denim blue to symbolize manual labour.
• The future, reaching towards both hope for humanity and awe for the greater context of the cosmos, is expressed through rich black, grey, blue, and silver.

As part of Canada's 150^th anniversary, The Works International Visual Arts Society's Art & Design in Public Places Program (The Places) commissioned five original landmark sculptures along Capital Boulevard which lead to the Alberta legislature. This Project was made possible in part by the Government of Canada, with matching investments from partners: the Alberta Foundation for the Arts (AFA), and the City of Edmonton; and support from the Downtown Business Association, and The Works Society. In addition, all five sculptures were acquired as part of the AFA Art Collection.

• learn more about the Capital Boulevard Legacy Public Art Project - Canada 150

If you are in Edmonton, we encourage you to check out and marvel at the sculpture on Site 5, 108 Street between 103 Avenue and 104 Avenue. (You can also view it online using the button below.)

About the Artist:

Ken Macklin is one of several constructivist sculptors who emerged in Edmonton during the 1980s. Macklin earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts with Distinction from the University of Alberta in 1978 and studied advanced sculpture at St. Martins School of Art in London, England in 1979/80. He has exhibited both nationally and internationally, and has received numerous awards for his work. Macklin is renowned for the creation of large-scale, abstract sculptures.

Image description

The dark grey steel column sculpture supports three spirals. Each spiral steel with woven wire mesh has different colors - grey, blue and orange, red and green.

Did you know Lunar New Year is celebrated by various cultures including Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and other East and Southeast Asian cultures? Every year, the date changes depending on the first new moon to mark the new year. 
 

While each culture and ethnicity celebrates with differing foods, duration and traditions, each culture shares the same goal of reunion and well wishes of prosperity for the coming year. We hope the Year of the Tiger brings you a year full of good health, success and happiness!
 

About the artist:

Peter Greendale started his residency at the Banff Centre in 1984/85. He is inspired by the common everyday object and the culture's origin.

Double Take is curated by Shannon Bingeman, and generously funded through the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Emerging Curator Fellowship. Click through the images in the exhibition above, then scroll down to learn more about the pieces.
 

Explore this exhibition on Google Arts & Culture.

Double Take challenges perceptions of logical order. Each piece represented in the show has elements that are inherently familiar—a bed, a human figure, doorways, houses, vases—and yet, they provoke a feeling of the uncanny. There is something mysterious, alluring and in some instances, eerie, about each sculpture, photograph and installation.

The uncanny is a psychoanalytic concept that dates back to the writings of Ernst Jentsch in 1906. Although the term is difficult to define because it relies on personal experience, it is generally agreed that something that possesses uncanny characteristics combines elements of the familiar and the peculiar—a tension between the known and the unknown. Over the years, many artists have fabricated uncanny elements in their work as a method of questioning reality and exploring displacement and illusion.

In Greg Payce’s work the uncanny is achieved through manipulation of space. At first glance his ceramics read as a traditional arrangement of decorative objects but it doesn’t take long before illusions of bodies, faces and shoes emerge in the negative spaces. Kristopher Karklin and Colin Smith are artists who also explore illusion to create dynamic images. Karklin presents us with a seemingly ordinary photograph of a woman standing in a nondescript space but something is slightly askew. What we are actually looking at is a photograph of a miniature room modeled by the artist. The figure was photographed separately and superimposed to create the final image. For Smith, illusion is explored using a camera obscura, an optical device that predates photography. Images of exterior scenes pass through a small lens into a darkened room and are inverted and projected onto the walls. The result is an alluring juxtaposition between two seemingly disparate worlds that leaves the viewer ungrounded—what is up and what is down?

Michael Campbell, Sarah Fuller and Dan Hudson challenge perceptions of logical order through their interventions into nature. Campbell achieves this by including unexpected objects in the environment-- things that we would expect to find at an airport rather than in the interior of a forest. In Fuller’s work it is the opposite. The photographic prints on linen in Aldcroft Residence and Dubois Residence, which illustrate houses nestled into the woods, seem eerily fitting in their environment. Nevertheless, the viewer is aware that what they are looking at is an illusion. In Dan Hudson’s installation, River, it is the manipulation of time in the recorded landscape that lends itself to notions of the uncanny. We witness the season’s change at a rapid pace but the meticulous editing makes it feel as though the video was filmed in real time.

According to Caterina Albano in her article Uncanny: A Dimension in Contemporary Art “the uncanny happens as a blurring of reality at the erosion of the boundaries between the real and the imagined.”[1] All of the artists included in this exhibition explore that boundary through their use of scale, materials, optical effects and spatial manipulations. The result is a compelling arrangement of artwork that stimulates cognitive tension and warrants further investigation.

Artwork Descriptions

Kristopher Karklin, Jack and Jill Room, 2011, digital print on paper, 2012.018.001

Process and memory are fundamental to Karklin’s work. Jack and Jill Room is not a documented record of a specific place and time but a composite image skillfully crafted. The artist begins his process by re-creating environments from his memory in the form of miniature models. Like memory, these built environments are subject to distortion. The model and the figure are photographed separately and superimposed to complete the narrative. The lack of detail in the room and the anonymity of the figure are intentional. It removes ownership of the artist’s memory and allows us to recall our own lived experiences.

Sarah Fuller, Aldcroft Residence, 2013, archival inkjet print on ilford galerie gold fibre silk, 2014.016.001

Sarah Fuller, Dubois Residence, 2013, archival inkjet print on ilford galerie gold fibre silk, 2014.016.002

The buildings in Aldcroft Residence and Dubois Residence are both at home and displaced. The photographs are a record of a site-specific installation that the artist created in Bear Creek, Yukon Territory in 2013. Originally constructed as a company town for the Yukon Consolidated Gold Corporation, Bear Creek was abandoned in 1966 and many of the buildings were lifted from their foundations and transported to nearby Dawson City. Titled The Homecoming, Fuller’s installation integrated five of these buildings back into their original location using large-scale prints on linen. She also used theatre techniques from the 19^th century to manipulate the prints, making them appear to transition from dusk to night. The end result is a ghost-like conjuring of the past—one that reminds us of the transient nature of place.

Colin Smith, Sebee, AB, 2010, archival metallic lightjet print on plexiglass, 2010.042.004

Colin Smith, Vulcan Aerodome, 2010, archival metallic lightjet print on plexiglass, 2010.042.005

Colin Smith, 56 Trolley, 2010, archival metallic lightjet print on plexiglass, 2010.042.001

Light passes through a small hole in a darkened room and the space is transformed. An inverted image of the exterior world is cast over the interior walls and the effect is photographed by the artist using a single exposure that can take hours. The process appears complex but the physics behind it is quite simple. Smith creates his work using a camera obscura, an optical device that dates back to antiquity and has been used as a tool by artists including Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675). Like the camera obscura, the scenes that Smith captures have a rich connection to the past. Sebee, Vulcan Aerodome and 56 Trolley are all records of abandoned Albertan landscapes included in the Camera Obscura in Abandoned Landscape Series.

Colin Smith, Satellite Motel, 2009, archival metallic lightjet print, 2012.027.001

Colin Smith’s journey into photography began during a motorcycle trip from Calgary to Santiago in 1997. The influence of the road is apparent in Satellite Motel: one photograph in the Rooms With a View Series that was taken in hotel rooms across Western Canada. For anyone who has travelled through Medicine Hat on the trans Canada highway, the sign in Satellite Motel may look familiar. It is one of a handful of old motel signs that still remain on the outskirts of the city. Typical to Smith’s style, the image is constructed using a camera obscura. 

Greg Payce, Vase to Vase, 1995, earthenware with terra sigillata, 2011.058.004.A-C

Greg Payce, Pairadocs, 1996, earthenware with terra sigillata, 2011.058-006.A-C

Greg Payce’s work is an exploration of binary relationships—shape and form, background and foreground, reality and illusion. In Pairadocs and Vase to Vase the result of this exploration creates compelling optical illusions that formalize in the negative spaces between the vases. These vases are arranged in a manner reminiscent of a garniture (a traditional arrangement of two to five vases on a mantelpiece) and yet their skillfully articulated profiles reveal unexpected subjects – a pair of Doc Marten shoes and two faces. Furthermore, the artist adds a layer of humour to each work through the clever wordplay in his titles; Pairadocs rather than paradox and Vase to Vase recalling the term face to face.

Greg Payce, Kiss Detail, 2001, digital photograph on vinyl, 2011.058.009

Kiss Detail documents a portion of the artist’s three-dimensional work through the use of photography. Unlike Pairadocs and Vase to Vase, the whole of the ceramic work is not visible and the shape created by the negative space is quite ambiguous. Instead the figurative component in this work is connected to the vessel itself. The modulation of the edge on each piece reveals a generic depiction of two figures, one male and one female ready for an embrace.

Greg Payce, David, 2006, porcelain, 2007.023.001.AB

Greg Payce, Gemini, 2006, porcelain, 2007.023.002.ABC

In David and Gemini the illusionary figures are strikingly similar and nondescript. They appear as idealized depictions of the male figure but not specific to any male in particular. This effect allows the work to be open to interpretation. The artist isn’t trying to convey a specific meaning, but his titles are suggestive of biblical and astrological subjects. David may be a reference to the hero who slayed Goliath and whose idealized figure has been immortalized in stone by many artists including Donatello, Bernini and perhaps most famously, Michelangelo. Also, Gemini with its two identical figures, is likely a reference to the constellation of the same name, which fittingly means twins in Latin.

Greg Payce, Pantheon Verismilus, 2007, digital image laminated with plastic lenticular lens on laminate Dibond, 2011.058.010.A-E

In this work, Payce alters our experience of ceramic objects by moving away from an emphasis on the handmade, tactile quality of the medium towards a fascinating optical effect using lenticular photography; a technology that gives printed images the illusion of depth. Pantheon Verismilus, which depicts 40 vessels with implied male and female forms, is the artist’s first large scale image using this method. When viewed in person, it has a holographic-like appearance, an effect that is created by interlacing multiple images of an object from different vantage points. After the image is printed, plastic lenses are laminated to the surface and reflect portions of the image depending on the viewer’s perspective. As the viewer shifts in relation to the photograph, the image is in flux, appearing three-dimensional. By using this technology, the artist is able to work on a monumental scale in a way that would not be practical in ceramics. The vessels take on an almost human scale, which in the words of the artist “heighten the physical and visceral relationship to the viewer’s own body scale.”[2]

Michael Campbell, Remote Transponder I (Granite Staircase), 2003, backlit digital photograph printed on transparent film, painted wood box, fluorescent light bulb, 2004.003.001

Michael Campbell’s installation Remote Transponder I (Granite Staircase) creates a fictitious narrative by combining a remote landscape with an object displaced from its original function. In this case, the unlikely element is the granite staircase, which leads the viewer’s gaze downward, suggesting another space beneath the undergrowth. Unlike the Sentinel series, this work has an added sculptural component to its construction. The imagery is printed as a transparency and backlit within a painted wooden box.

Michael Campbell, Sentinel – Display, 2004, digital photograph on paper, 2007.031.001

Michael Campbell, Sentinel – Entry, 2004, digital photograph on paper, 2007.031.002

A sentinel is a person or thing that stands guard, controlling access to a particular place. In Michael Campbell’s Sentinel – Entry and Sentinel – Display, the objects grab our attention but their functions seem meaningless in the desolate landscapes. Exactly whose access do these objects control and for what purpose? Both photographs are a part of the artist’s Sentinel project, a series of digitally constructed works that fuse landscapes captured in the Crowsnest Pass, Alberta, with objects photographed in airports around the world.

Dan Hudson, River, 2011, HD video, gold-leaf wood frame, 2013.010.001

Set within the static gilded frame of Dan Hudson’s River installation is a mesmerizing and meticulously crafted moving image. It has the feel of a real-time video recording and yet the rapid shift of the changing seasons in the uninhabited landscape challenges that perception. In addition to the video footage, the artist includes an audio component from a busy city—we hear people talking, laughing, and arguing. The two components seem at odds but are fundamentally connected: the artist gathered both over the course of a year from different ends of the same river.