By Audrey Wang, AGGV Volunteer
The centenarian and beloved BC-based artist and philanthropist, Gordon Appelbe Smith, worked prolifically up until he turned 100. The AGGV is fortunate to have many of Smith’s artworks that document his West Coast aesthetic. This body of works also serves as a profound testament to the art movements of the 20th century in Western Canada.
The Massey Sales Gallery is proud to present Miles Lowry Breathing Spaces, a solo show and sale of the renown Victoria-based artist’s new work which he created on a recent trip to his beloved Ireland.
At the Art Gallery, we have a flower count from our vast art collection. How many varieties can you name in the artworks in this article? Take our quiz and scroll down to the end for the answers!
Tanabe devoted much of his time advocating for recognition of artists’ contributions to Canadian life. His tireless canvassing and campaigning came to fruition in 2000 with the setting up of several awards and himself winning the Governor General’s Award in 2003.
Art conservation and restoration terms are revealed in this installment of Art Terms. But first, you may question what the difference is between conservation and restoration.
Calling all you birders! Not only can birdwatching be done through binoculars or telescopes, by listening for bird sounds or watching public webcams, but it can also be done through browsing the AGGV collection with a naked eye. Can you guess what kind of birds are depicted below?
Abstraction in art is a visual language that uses line, colour, form and composition that are non-representational or independent to a certain degree of any reference to the world.
Sandhu Singh has been a long-time friend of the Art Rental and Sales Program at the AGGV, and this collaboration was celebrated at the opening of his exhibition at the Massey Sales Gallery in early April.
Widely considered to be some of the most important Canadian artists in the early 20th century, the Group was an organization of self-proclaimed modern artists, pioneers to a new Canadian art movement that rallied against the conservatism of the time.
Emily Carr’s works compare and contrast with the works of David Milne, Lawren Harris, A.Y. Jackson, Vera Weatherbie and many others, giving the viewer a chance to come to terms with the meanings behind the paintings and the artists’ take on exploring the varied landscapes of Canada.
David Milne is known for his precision in technique and composition, choosing simple, uncomplicated objects for his still-life works and carefully planning his landscapes to ensure a pure aestheticism.
So many of us have great stories of falling in love with art. Within those happy stories are also stories of not feeling good enough, of facing insecurities and fears and doing the inner work in order to be their best creative self. It’s so amazing to share these stories. I believe that we grow through sharing our stories. We have much more in common with each other than we had realized! – Karen Cooper, AGGV Art Rental & Sales Consultant
Fort Street might just be our new favourite street, and we are attached to it in more ways than meets Moss (ha!). If you missed the joke, Fort Street runs perpendicular to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s physical address, 1040 Moss Street. It has been the entrance to the annual TD Art Gallery Paint-In […]
Featured image: Sophie Pemberton (Canadian, 1869-1959) | Colonel Schletter | 1910 | Oil on panel | Gift of Miss Angela Beanlands The “selfie” is a social phenomenon made popular by social media platforms such as Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram, helped along by the front-facing camera, a concept introduced by Sony Ericsson in 2003. Selfies, while […]
1. Allover Composition An allover picture refers to a two-dimensional work that lacks a dominant focal point and where the canvas is covered entirely with a composition that is treated uniformly. The term “allover picture” was first used by art critic Clement Greenberg in his 1948 essay “The Crisis of the Easel Picture”, in reference to “decentralized” […]
The exhibition Point of Contact: On Place and the Westcoast Imaginary centers on a pertinent part of Vancouver Island’s modern history, the story of Captain James Cook’s arrival in 1778 and his role in opening up trade at a place the colonists named Nootka. On a more personal level, the exhibition was put together by the AGGV’s […]
Beyond the Edges, which opened in October, shines the spotlight on the order and purity of geometric lines and the media employed to produce them. This exhibition not only re-interprets the theories espoused by American art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), but it questions dominant modernist art theories about abstraction, and in particular, geometric abstraction. By […]
