In 2019, the AGGV welcomed Heng Wu as the new Curator of Asian Art. We catch up with her three years on to get an update on her role and the evolution of the Gallery’s diverse collection of Asian art.
By Karen Cooper, Art Rental & Sales Consultant
With September bringing the winds of change, we start to feel something in the air. The sky is somehow bluer, the leaves begin to turn, and the breeze becomes a bit cooler. For many of us, these sensations evoke all those memories from the first day of school: anticipation, nervousness, excitement, longing, and possibility.
Hamilton based artist Bryce Kanbara is not only the guest curator for AGGV’s upcoming exhibition Start Here: Kiyooka, Nakamura, Takashima, Tanabe, but also the recipient of a 2021 Outstanding Contribution Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (upcoming exhibition presented by the AGGV in collaboration with the Canada Council for the Arts). In anticipation of these two fall shows, the artist has agreed to share with us a little bit more about his work in an e-interview.
By Nabidu Taylor
Trigger Warning: Residential Schools, MMIGW&2S, graphic descriptions.
The Holding Ground exhibition at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (July 17 – Oct 17 2021) was an opportunity for Indigenous women and 2S people to come together as a collective to contribute our own personal perspectives on Indigenous resistance and current issues we are faced with today. I am very grateful for the group of beautiful, powerful and gentle individuals, I had the absolute pleasure and honour of collaborating with on this exhibition.
By Mel Granley, Guest Curator
A few months ago, in the historic Spencer Mansion where AGGV employees work, I set up my laptop and logged onto a Zoom call to record a #WIP Podcast episode between three artists from the exhibition Reverberations: Emily Geen, Estraven Lupino-Smith, and James Summer. For the next hour and a half, although we were each in our own rooms looking into a screen, we came together and had a vibrant and endearing conversation about how relationships influenced the show, our shared experiences as emerging art practitioners, and ideas of institutional memory.
Did you purchase a piece of artwork at the recent TD Art Gallery Paint-In? Or perhaps you have framed canvases sitting on the floor of your home waiting to be hung. We have a few good tips for hanging your favourite art pieces!
By John Manson, Gallery Shop Coordinator
We are thrilled to present a Q&A with BC-born jewelry artist and fashion designer Warren Steven Scott (Nlaka’pamux Nation and Toronto, ON).
By Dr. Laurie Dalton.
In exhibitions, press, and films about the artist, there has long been an emphasis on the fact that Maud Lewis never travelled far from the Yarmouth-Digby-Marshalltown corridor in western Nova Scotia. That she was a happy-go-lucky folk painter, not artistically trained, and one that merely painted “happy little pictures” for passers-by and tourists. This does not give much room for looking at her paintings as objects of art, and as being part of the wider economic, social, and visual culture of the time – which is the focus of the book.
By Marina DiMaio, Digital & Print Assets Coordinator.
Back in 2018, pretty much fresh out of grad school, I found myself at the beginning of my very first job at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria. Through my own multidisciplinary art making, I’ve always been interested in contemplative practices, and the idea of creative process as spiritual practice. So, with the support of an Early Career Development Grant from the BC Arts Council, I had the incredible opportunity to extend and deepen the artistic research that I began exploring as an MFA student at UVic by contributing as a curatorial assistant at the AGGV to a multiphase project, by curator Haema Sivanesan, considering Buddhism as an artistic methodology.
By Mel Granley, Guest Curator at the AGGV.
June is recognized as National Indigenous History Month. National Indigenous Peoples Day is a holiday celebrated in Canada every year on the 21st of June. This holiday was officially established in 1996 and is intended to “recognize the history, heritage and diversity of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples in Canada” according to Canada.ca. I ask myself, what does this day mean to me? I am a Métis and Ukrainian person living in Canada, and this day brings mixed feelings of pride and concern.