Contemporary Art

ALL THINGS ART: INTERVIEW WITH KAREN COOPER

Art is everywhere: salon style walls, stacked on the floor, floating on shelves, brimming in boxes and perched on the desk. It’s a tidy and carefully organized inventory of eye candy. It is the dream office, and it belongs to our Art Rental and Sales Consultant, Karen Cooper.

ORIGIN STORIES OF A FAMILY NATURE

By Cheryl L’Hirondelle

kinanāskomitinawaw – thank you to the lək̓ʷəŋən People, whose land the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is on and whose language and stories engage with this place more eloquently and accurately than these words and this short story can ever hope to. Regardless, thank you to the dedicated and caring AGGV staff and curator Jaimie Isaac for inviting me to share.

I DIDN’T KNOW I WAS AN ARTIST

By Tyrone Elliott

I’ve been Cedar weaving since I was 4. In my mind, there was a distinct disconnect between what I did and what artists did. I’ve come to learn that while not necessarily everything is art, most things, if not everything, can be made into art.

EXPLORING FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION WITH KEMI CRAIG

Over the last few months, local film and dance artist, Kemi Craig (also Victoria’s newly selected Artist in Residence, 2022/24) has been hosting the Blackspace Sci-Fi Club at the AGGV. This exciting in-person series has been unfolding in conjunction with Kemi’s AGGV project Blueprints for the Afrofuture, which has (so far) featured a variety of virtual offerings and one in-person evening of sound and music with Hidden Variable.

In the Present Moment: Memories and Another Milestone!

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.