In the 1950s, Mark Tobey, a Seattle artist with strong ties to Victoria, championed the work of Japanese-American artists, including Paul Horiuchi, also represented in AGGV’s collection. He later influenced major artists such as Jackson Pollock. As such, he’s a link between Buddhism and 20th Century abstract art.
In anticipation of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria’s building renewal project, our Collections team are faced with the mammoth task of preparing over 20,000 art pieces to be packed up. Allowing our visitors a peek behind the scenes, the LAB Gallery has been transformed into a staging area for the packing up…
As part of the rejuvenation plans for the Gallery to transition into The NEXT Gallery, BRAINSTORM is an interactive space for our community to express its hopes, dreams and desires for the AGGV moving forward.
Did you know that tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the world after water? Tea is believed to have been drunk in China since the Shang dynasty (1700-1027 BC) and may have begun as a medicinal tonic.
1. The famed blue and white wares of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) has its origins in the preceding Mongol-ruled Yuan dynasty (1279-1368) when Chinese potters were free from imperial obligation to experiment in new designs and methods of porcelain production.
For the exhibition Form As Meaning: First Nations Prints from the Pacific Northwest, the AGGV relied on an esteemed panel of four Indigenous curators who had chosen the works and created the didactic panels for the show. AGGV curators Michelle Jacques and Nicole Stanbridge explained how they invited Marcia Crosby, Lou-ann Neel, lessLIE and Alana […]
Party For Our People is a public event celebrating the artists featured in the exhibitions at the AGGV in May 2018, three diverse yet unified shows that touch on issues pertinent to British Columbia’s major resources – the ocean and the forests. Supernatural: Art, Technology and the Forest was newly opened on the day […]
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 […]
1.The Victoria Limners Society – also known as the Limners or the Limner Group – was a collective group of painters, ceramicists, sculptors and other visual artists based in Victoria, B.C. 2. The artists in the group started getting together in the 1960s, discussing their artworks and forming friendships. The Limners Society was officially incorporated in 1971 […]
The first exhibition tour of Form As Meaning: First Nations Prints from the Pacific Northwest was led by AGGV’s Michelle Jacques, Chief Curator and Nicole Stanbridge, Curator of Engagement. While Michelle and Nicole facilitated the tour and the organization of the exhibition, the works on display were selected by a panel of Indigenous guest co-curators: Marcia […]
1. Linear Perspective Linear perspective is a system of creating the illusion of depth and space on a flat surface. In drawings or paintings, all parallel lines converge into a single vanishing point in the picture’s horizon. The concept of linear perspective was first recorded by the Italian Renaissance philosopher artist Leon Battista Alberti in […]
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 […]
Each year, the AGGV rotates through about 14 exhibitions in its seven galleries. This keeps our Collections team very busy throughout the year. As each exhibition is staged and others are removed, the team goes through the artworks, checking for condition and helping to arrange them for display. The Gallery spaces are modified for the specific […]
