Western Canada's art magazine since 2002
24 October 2017 Vol 2 No 22 ISSN 2561-3316 © 2017
From the Editor
Portia Priegert
It’s a big week for the Saskatchewan arts community with the long-awaited opening of the Remai Modern, Saskatoon’s new public gallery, and its first show, Field Guide. It took me several tries to find a writer to tackle this story and as I start to write this note, I’m awaiting a report from a new-to-us writer, Sandee Moore. I met Sandee years ago when I was director of the Alternator Gallery for Contemporary Art, an artist-run centre in Kelowna, and she was in town as part of an artist residency program we had started by cobbling together a few small grants. It is good to reconnect and be reminded of those days.
One of my big discoveries back then, as a latecomer to the arts after a career in journalism, was how much of the art world seemed to defy budgetary logic. Things happened because there was a collective will to make them happen. Someone made some art. Other people pulled together to support them. And then the roles would reverse. Someone would pull out a couch for a visiting artist. Local winemakers would drop off free wine for openings. Students would show up to repaint the gallery or help install a show.
That tremendous collaborative effort happens everywhere, of course, but as we assign stories we try not only to cover major events – like the $84-million Remai Modern – but also to acknowledge the efforts of artists from smaller communities. One of Galleries West's goals is to write about shows in Western Canada that might be overlooked nationally, creating exposure and helping build a dialogue amongst arts communities too often contained in narrow regional silos.
That's one reason I was glad to write about Vancouver Island painter Sara Robichaud in this issue. She lives in Nanaimo (yup, the place with the great bars) and has an unusual creative process. Artists and their obsessions never cease to fascinate me and Sara was happy to share, even passing along an impromptu video that shows the installations she creates directly on the walls of her house, so I could understand how they inform her paintings.
This issue also includes Steven Ross Smith's story about Banff artist Allan Harding MacKay, Lissa Robinson's review of Mary Anne Barkhouse's show at Calgary's Esker Foundation, and Beverly Cramp’s story about Entangled, the Vancouver Art Gallery’s major survey of contemporary Canadian painting, a show that includes work by Galleries West consulting editor Jeffrey Spalding.
Looking ahead to November, we are working on stories about Tara Nicholson’s photographs of marijuana grow-ops; Calgary/Berlin artist Wil Murray’s newest paintings; and City on Edge, a show of news photographs that document a century of protests in Vancouver. Also in November, we’ll cover another major gallery opening: North Vancouver’s Polygon, which will be Western Canada’s largest independent photography gallery.
As always, please drop me an email if you have seen a great show that merits a closer look.
Until next time,
CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE: Beverly Cramp, Paul Gessell, Sandee Moore, Lissa Robinson, Steven Ross Smith
