The LAB 4.4: Ralph Stanbridge
Daumier and Dystopia (Drawn from History, Drawing from the Present)

Ralph Stanbridge Carriage (After Daumier), 1983-84 mixed media collection of the artist

November 25, 2004 to January 9, 2005

The French artist Honoré Daumier (1808 –1879), through his caricatures, paintings and sculptural works, presented his contemporaries with images of the folly and absurdities of the social issues of his time. As one of art’s earliest social realists, he was able to illuminate the economic disparities, injustices, and the marginalization of many members of nineteenth century French society.

Victoria artist Ralph Stanbridge’s interest in Daumier’s work, and in social commentary as a choice of subject matter, was established when he taught Modern Art History at Camosun College from 1977 to 1984. This, combined with his interest in appropriation of art historical images, led him to construct two large sculptural installations utilizing reproductions of Daumier’s work Third Class Carriage and Don Quixote. Stanbridge’s re-presentation of this work, Carriage (After Daumier) 1984–85, runs concurrently with The French Masters exhibition, which includes one of the original versions of Daumier’s Third Class Carriage, Stanbridge’s subject of study.

The exhibition includes a second work from Stanbridge's latest projects: a series of animated studies using computer assisted traditional animation processes, reflects on current art and political life, referencing editorial cartoons and illustrations that address the new folly and absurdities of the 21st century. Inspired by the early socio-political animation of the Zagreb School of the 60s and 70s, and encouraged by the work of contemporary artists, such as South African William Kentridge, Stanbridge investigates the current social injustices of an over-consuming and security obsessed world.

Sugimoto Hiroshi:
A Pilgrimage to Ancient Cities

Hiroshi Sugimoto, Kanzenon-Bosatsu washi-paper, metal-leaf, black-ink

September 17, 2004 to November 21, 2004

A Pilgrimage to Ancient Cities is a look into the visually captivating work of esteemed contemporary Japanese painter, Sugimoto Hiroshi – produced between 1998 and 2004. It features over 35 large format paintings on a variety of Japanese papers.

Sugimoto Hiroshi’s paintings capture the unique and rustic character of ancient architectural structures, such as bridges, ancient streets, shrines, temples and castles. He makes regular pilgrimages to sites of beauty across Japan, China, Cambodia and Italy, during which he captures scenes of grandeur with his brush, using subtle yet effective colours. His love of architecture and ancient ruins is well apparent in his breathtaking work.

Hiroshi Sugimoto (b. 1951) studied at the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music. He has painted large sliding doors and screens for a number of important historical Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines in Japan. His knowledge of ancient architecture and interiors provides him with the ability to make the proper aesthetic judgments in his designs for these well known monuments. He has held numerous major exhibitions in Japan. The Gallery is extremely pleased to welcome his work to Canada.

The LAB 4.3: John Luna
The Red Room

John Luna, The Red Room, 2004 installation

September 17, 2004 to November 14, 2004

John Luna examines the parameters of cultural institutions in The Red Room, a project which transforms the LAB space into a mock turn-of-the-century picture gallery. Luna’s gallery makes thematic allusions to the Art Gallery’s history inside the Gyppeswick mansion.

The salon-like setting reflects the imaginative revision of period restoration rather than an archival past, while the paintings invoke the “authenticity” of a studio process. Placing the paintings in this setting presents the notion – relevant to both the Art Gallery and Victoria itself – that the experience of historical revision hides a flip-side: the acknowledgement of loss or ruin.

The Red Room mingles the public and the domestic, the formal with the fugitive, and in doing so comments on the possibilities and limitations of paintings in creating, or reacting to, a sense of place.

Allyson Clay:
Imaginary Standard Distance

Allyson Clay, Untitled III, self portrait, 1995-97 cibachrome transparency, fluorescent lights, small framed c-print Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery.

September 11, 2004 to November 21, 2004

Allyson Clay’s Imaginary Standard Distance incorporates several bodies of work by this Vancouver based artist and includes a range of media from painting to video. The artworks explore the experience of a woman in the city and related issues of gender, identity, the politics of the gaze, lived architecture, and the boundaries between public and private space.

Clay started out as a painter and this exhibition takes off from the point in the late 1980s at which she moved away from painting and into more narrative and text-based works, a strategy to interject everyday experience into the heroic art tradition. Though Clay’s interests have gravitated towards photography and video, painting has continued to inform her practice.

The works in the exhibition are intended to act as a dialogue over time, revealing concerns that have remained consistent in the artist’s work. The title

Imaginary Standard Distance is taken from a phrase in E.H. Gombrich’s book Art and Illusion, from a section dealing with formal perspective and the tendency to see the world according to what we know. It is used here for its poetic associations and potential to encourage the imagination in relation to standard assumptions about meaning, particularly as they relate to social space, gender, and the history of imaging. The strategy is to create open narratives that make room for idiosyncrasies and encourage personal associations.

Clay negotiates the margins between seduction and intervention, curiosity and voyeurism, avoiding sensation while focussing on the subjective gaze, implicating the viewer within the view. Elements of the work can be seen in the context of the current acceptance and ever-popularization of surveillance culture in relation to private space.

While these works address issues pertinent to the times, they do not propose simple answers. Their intent is to maintain the discursive potential of interpersonal exchange as part of their aesthetic.

Allyson Clay lives and works in Vancouver where she is Associate Professor of Visual Art at Simon Fraser University. She graduated from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and received her MFA from the University of British Columbia in 1985. She has been exhibiting since that time. Her work has been shown in exhibitions in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Taiwan.

Karen Henry
Exhibition Curator

Herbert Siebner:
A Celebration

Herbert Siebner Sun Faces, 1966 oil impasto on masonite AGGV: Anonymous gift

September 10, 2004 to November 28, 2004

Last year, the Art Gallery was busy organizing a retrospective exhibition to be entitled Herbert

Siebner: 50 Years in Canada. Sadly, Herbert Siebner passed away August 3, 2003 as we were completing arrangements for the exhibition. A year later, the Art Gallery is proud to present this exhibition celebrating the life and career of this outstanding painter and printmaker. Beginning with works produced in Europe in the late 1940s and continuing to his most recent work, this exhibition will allow visitors to become reacquainted with, or introduced to, the work of this important Victoria based artist. Throughout his career, Siebner demonstrated a keen interest in expressionism through his prints and his paintings. These works feature bold gesture and rich colour as integral components. Myth, poetry, sensuality and sex are all key elements of his art. This variety of interests is reflected in the multiple ways in which Siebner created art and manipulated the surface of his paintings and works on paper. A selection of works from each of his five decades in Victoria will form a testimonial to Siebner’s contribution to the visual arts – in our community and in Canada.

The LAB 4.2: Farheen HaQ
Breathing Space

Farheen HaQ, Breathing Space, 2004 installation view

July 30, 2004 to September 6, 2004

Farheen HaQ explores the notion of religious freedom of expression within a secular society through a video and photo installation which examines the spiritual and sacred in public spaces.

HaQ performs simple actions that are either religious or culturally coded, introducing subtle changes that push the gesture beyond its normal expression. Within the video projection, HaQ focuses attention on the reconsideration of a simple gesture by slowing down and repeating movements to emphasize and recontextualize their inscribed meaning. Through a series of photoworks, HaQ uses the cityscape as a site and/or backdrop for her gestural interpretations.

HaQ’s work is at once a reclaiming of her own cultural practices as a Muslim woman and an investigation into how private gestures can dramatically change the anonymity and controlled nature of public space.

The New Print Movement of Japan

Shinsui Ito, Girl with a Fan, 20th C woodcut on paper AGGV 91.52.36 Senora Ryan Estate photo credit: Bob Matheson

June 25, 2004 to September 12, 2004

Traditional ukiyo-e woodblock printing was all but dead in Japan by the early 20th century, and artists were anxious to find a replacement. Their efforts resulted in the shin hanga or New Print Movement. These artists wanted to build on the foundations of the ukiyo-e school using new designs and subjects appropriate to the modern age. They preserved the traditions of working in teams that included the artist, an engraver, a printer and sometimes a publisher.

The shin hanga movement developed between 1911 and 1920, partly as a result of European interest in ukiyo-e prints. Japanese art circles had a low opinion of ukiyo-e until they discovered the enormous impact of Japanese prints on European Impressionist and Post-Impressionist painting. Their new prints brought about the neo-ukiyo-e style or shin hanga. These prints incorporate classic ukiyo-e subjects including lovely women, kabuki actors and landscapes. Once considered popular commercial products, these prints are now highly collectable and often surpass the value of ukiyo-e prints. This exhibition will include prints by artistic giants like Hiroshi Yoshida, Kawase Hasui, Tsuchiya Koitsu, Hashiguchi Goyo, Ito Shinsui as well as foreigners living in Japan using the same techniques.

Opium:
The Heavenly Demon

Charles Frédéric Le Pavot Blanc from Portefeuille des enfants, France, 1795

June 25, 2004 to September 12, 2004

Opium – potent and evocative – it holds a near-mythical place in the drug pantheon with connotations of mystery, languor and sinister beauty. For millennia opium has been used medicinally by many cultures around the world. In the West, opium was self-administered until the early 20th century. Trade in opium was legal, as long as duties and taxes were paid, but this changed with concern over the suffering caused by growing addiction in the United States, Europe and China. With changing pharmaceutical laws in the early 20th century, the availability of opium dried up and prices skyrocketed. A previously legal and affordable purchase became an illicit and expensive transaction. Smuggling increased and a whole new criminal class was born. Politicians and the media exploited this situation, demonizing and sensationalizing the addict, the pusher and the drug. On tour from the Vancouver Museum, this exhibition traces opium from ancient cultures to the shores of North America, revealing both the miraculous and devastating effects of opium and its derivatives. The exhibition includes paraphernalia related to opium smoking such as pipes, lamps, containers, an opium bed, movie posters and films which dealt with opium in the west and more.

World Tea Party:
Victoria

Copeland Spode Golfer's Teapot c. 1890 AGGV 82.78.1 a,b anonymous gift

June 25, 2004 to August 29, 2004

Since 1993, the World Tea Party has been a continually evolving international celebration of the art and culture of the world's most-loved beverage –tea! Victoria launches its own World Tea Party with an exhibition, tea tastings, lectures and other special events. At the centre of the World Tea Party is an exhibition about tea and the rituals of tea from around the world. Drawing on the collections of the Art Gallery, the Maltwood Museum, the BC Archives, as well as private collections, the exhibition includes historical and contemporary teawares in porcelain, stoneware, silver, pewter and glass from many different cultures and times – ranging from 10th century Song dynasty in China to present-day British Columbian pottery. Among surroundings of art, tables and curio cabinets, the exhibition recreates different cultural approaches to the ritual of tea, from the centuries-old Japanese chanoyu tea ceremony and the lesser known Japanese sencha (leaf tea) ceremony, to the 18th century English tea salon and an early 20th century Victoria setting. Look for other related events in the community over the summer, including at Craigdarroch Castle and Emily Carr House.

World Tea Party - Victoria is a joint project of the Community-University Research Alliance Program (CURA) at the University of Victoria and the World Tea Party Society (Vancouver), funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Tea Salon
Tuesday to Friday, 2-4:00pm
July 13-July 30, 2004
Join us for a 'spot' of tea in the historic Spencer Mansion on Tuesdays through Fridays in July. These special tea tastings offer a selection from around the world. Stop by after attending one of the special events listed below.

Presenting Sponsor:
Celestial Seasonings

Interface: The New Victoria Open

d. bradley muir, Midnight Haze C-print

June 25, 2004 to September 5, 2004

Interface explores how artists working in various media on Vancouver Island and in the Gulf Islands respond to and incorporate the diverse meanings of the term ‘interface’ into their current art practice. While initially inspired by last year's provincial forest fires, the theme of 'interface' allows a diversity of ideas to be presented. As described in the call for proposals, this includes (but is not limited to) the past, present and future consequences of a quickly eroding urban/rural boundary; the common ground or meeting place between different entities be they physical, emotional or spiritual; and a system or language that is constructed in order to communicate with another system outside of itself be it animal, human or machine. It has been exciting and fun to meet and communicate, to "interface" as it were, with some of the 120 artists who submitted proposals to this exhibition. While I have been impressed by the depth and range of work I have seen I was not surprised. I expected to be presented with a range of art that was challenging, informed and competent and that is what I saw.

Linda Sawchyn, Kelowna Art Gallery

N.B. Fifteen artists will be featured, of which 25 have currently been short-listed from over 120 submissions.