MacKenzie Art Gallery Presents Superscreen

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Kelly Clark, Door sign for the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop, circa 1968

paint on card (University of Regina Archives and Special Collections [2009-32]. photo by Trevor Hopkin)

The MacKenzie Art Gallery presents Superscreen: The Making of an Artist-Run Counterculture and the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop, in partnership with the School of Art Gallery at the University of Manitoba.

Superscreen, on view until May 20, looks at the activities, social environment and legacy of arguably the Prairies’ first artist-run centre, the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop, operated in Winnipeg by artist and provocateur Bill Lobchuk from 1968 to 1987. 

“Politics, Indigenous pride and critical regionalism – these were important issues for the artists who were working in and around the Prairies, and are just as important today, 50 years later,” says Anthony Kiendl, the MacKenzie's CEO.

“The reach of these artists working at that time was ultimately national and even international. We have not previously articulated the scene with enough clarity or critical distance, which it truly deserves. This exhibition begins to create a compelling narrative arc that will situate the vitality of prairie artists in the 1970s among the significant and notable eras and places in Canadian art history.”

Curated by Alex King and Timothy Long, the exhibition includes works in a range of media by artists such as Don Proch, General Idea, Judith Huntress Allsopp, Karen Belisle, E.J. Howorth, Tony Tascona, Joe Fafard, Gordon Bonnell, Christopher Finn, Richard Hrabec, Louis Bako, Lenard Anthony and Gordon Lebredt.

It will travel to the University of Manitoba School of Art Gallery in the fall of 2019.

Source: MacKenzie Art Gallery