View a 3:31 minute video by the Edmonton Journal to hear the artist speak about the exhibition of AutoPark during the 2010 The Works Art & Design Festival in Edmonton, Alberta.  Watch the video.  Learn more about The Works Art & Design Festival.

A temporary installation of AutoPark will be on view in Grande Prairie at the Street Performers Festival July 23 – 25, 2010 and will continue through the summer and fall at the the Prairie Art Gallery/Montrose Cultural Centre location.

AutoPark located at the Prairie Art Gallery, Montrose Cultural Centre

The Prairie Art Gallery presents the theme of animals in art as enrichment for our children’s summer programs. All the artworks by Alberta artists are selected from our permanent collection, with the exception of the interactive mural display commissioned by local artist Tim Heimdal. An animal cave was the inspiration behind this interactive display, which is located in The Green Space, for all to enjoy.

The study of animals in art provides many challenges for artists, as they need to depict them as a still form. Some artists choose to portray them in their natural environment, whereas others capture them as symbolic icons as seen by Native artists. All of the works are a representational style of art in a variety of media.

The subject of animals captures our hearts and attention by looking at the lighter side of life, or perhaps a wilder side of life. The animals chosen in this exhibit are either domesticated or wild, but all are commonly found in our region. Tim Heimdal’s mural offers us a glimpse of animals in other lands for a more global perspective of living creatures. Tim Heimdal has a playful approach to animal anatomy by showing us an insiders perspective of they study of living creatures. This piece is titled ‘C.A.T. Scan’ which is a play on words for the x-ray imagery.

C.A.T. Scan, mural by Tim Heimdal in The Green Space at The Prairie Art Gallery

Canadians have an identity, one to be proud of.  HERS is a portrait exhibition and the paintings are all women and all artists.  In their honour, 32 large-scale portraits of contemporary, innovative Canadian women in the arts.  The artists’ goal is to depict each of these women expressing their passion in their respective art forms.

The moving sight of about 100 cribs and cradles lined up in orderly fashion in The Prairie Art Gallery will summon up memories of hospitals, orphanages, dormitories, schoolrooms, cemeteries—images that telescope the cycle of life: birth, life and death.

Le Jardin du sommeil (1998) is a remarkable installation by Canadian artist Spring Hurlbut.  It was acquired by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal in 2009, and is currently travelling to other galleries.  The work evokes both childhood and the loss of childhood.  It is made up of 140 antique, found, metal cribs and cradles, simply and soberly arranged in rows.  The discreet presence of a few ceramic funeral wreaths at the beginning of the journey through this “garden of sleep” introduces the idea of a memorial, a notion heightened by the walkways that wrap around it.

Spring Hurlbut was born in 1952 in Toronto, where she lives and works.  Since the late seventies, she has developed a painstaking, intimate art that employs strategies from architecture and museology to guide us through the labyrinth of the human psyche.  Variously reappropriating artifacts, colour illustrations and taxidermy specimens, the artist picks out objects that represent archetypes of the life cycle.  For Le Jardin du sommeil, Hurlbut, a passionate collector, sought out and found 140 different examples of metal cribs and cradles from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.  The geometric layout of the installation and the lining up of the motifs recall the structure of a garden, and the accumulation of objects, that of a cabinet of curiosities.  At once similar and unique, the beds symbolically express the individual yet universal nature of the human destiny.

This exhibition is part of the MOMENTUM series, a touring project from the Collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.  The MOMENTUM series has been made possible with the financial support of the Department of the Canadian Heritage through its Museums Assistance Program. 

Cette exposition s’inscrit dans le cadre de la série MOMENTUM, un projet de circulation de the Collection of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal.  La série MOMENTUM a été rendue possible grâce à l’appui financier du ministère du Patrimoine canadien par le biais du Programme d’aide aux musées.

Interpretive Guide to the Exhibition

Learn more about Le Jardin du sommeil and watch the interview with Spring Hurlbut.

This portrait exhibition earnestly captures the spirit and unique perspective of Peace Country elders whom the artist has had the pleasure of interviewing and photographing. To honour the many character’s individual life stories, every oil painting reveals a senior’s favourite colour, animal, vegetable, and inspirational quote, as well as how many children he or she has. It was once said, “The best classroom in the world is at the feet of an elderly person.” Enfield’s intent is to help pass this wisdom along.

Sport and art are both forms of expression that can be shared between cultures and can link different countries together, such as the Olympics and the Arctic Winter Games. Sports inspire passion, discipline, perseverance, skill and talent, as does art.

The selection of work chosen represent a variety of artistic style and media from drawing to painting, printmaking and photography to sculpture. The selection of sports also varies in form and skill from football to volleyball, skiing to skating, hockey to golf, as well as the track and field sports. To complete the range of sport genres and to complement the Arctic Winter Games an interactive mural was commissioned by local mural painter Tim Heimdal. Tim focused on the Inuit game ‘The Blanket Toss’ in which he captured the northern setting, the culture, and the sense of community as each member takes turns participating in the sport. The mood is delightful and playful which captures the essence of what sports and art should bring to us all.

This exhibition will become one of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts’ Travelling Exhibitions program in the fall of 2010.

Exhibition Opening: January 8, 2010 at 7:00 pm

Montreal artist Jean Pierre Gauthier has been active on the contemporary art scene since the mid-1990s, when he quickly gained recognition for the inventiveness of his work. The kinetic installations that have emerged from his exploration of the acoustic and metaphorical potential of the found object combine humour and poetry in a rigorous investigative approach. With an ingenuity seldom seen, they bring together the notions of order and chaos, permanence and fragility, performance and gratuitousness.

This exhibition is organized and circulated by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, with financial support from the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Visit Jean-Pierre Gauthier’s website.

View our Interpretive Guide for the exhibition.

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 3 at 7:00pm

Qamanittuaq is a comprehensive exhibition of drawings by Inuit artists from Baker Lake, Nunavut, Canada. This touring exhibit has been organized by the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre in Guelph, Ontario. The exhibition focuses on 80 drawings selected from the Centre’s collection of Baker Lake drawings. These drawing illustrate the highly individual approaches of the Inuit artists and the rich heritage of shamanistic and traditional spirit imagery from which they draw their inspiration.

Opening Reception: Friday, September 18, 2009 at 7:00 pm

In its most simplified definition, the boundary layer is the thin plane at the surface of the Earth where land meets sky. Though we may temporarily escape it in skyscrapers and planes, boats and submarines, this is the only space in the vastness of the universe that we naturally inhabit and to which we must always return. Yet it seems that we take this crucial space for granted, mistreat and neglect it, not considering carefully enough what we add to or take from it or paying close enough attention to its care.

The exhibition “The Boundary Layer” is not about the natural aspects of the Earth, but rather the civilization we have constructed for ourselves, its various pasts and possible futures. In the work of Lara Almarcegui, Rosa Barba, Patrick Bernatchez, Chris Marker, Heather & Ivan Morison and T&T, science-fiction strategies, non-linear time and post-apocalyptic themes recur. A parallel look at the possibilities and perceptions of a world long gone is found in “Everyday Nameless Spectacle,” a selection of historical photographs inspired by Chris Marker’s “La Jetée.” Like the time-traveling protagonist of “La Jetée,” time for these artists ebbs and flows, the past, present and future becoming indistinct and interchangeable.

Whether looking at our existing world or imagining another one, these artists draw attention to our built environment and the way we have constructed our lives within it. Concerned with everything being bigger, newer, and more impressive, we sometimes fail to notice the value of what is already here, the small details that we miss, things left to decay or be destroyed that might be worth saving.

 The Boundary Layer has art work exhibited in 3 SEPARATE LOCATIONS:

 1.     On view in front of the historic Grande Prairie High School (previous location of The Prairie Art Gallery) at 10209 – 99 Street.

          T&T (Tony Romano & Tyler Brett)  Untitled, 2009. Sculpture

2.      10112-102 Avenue in Community Village (previous Salvation Army Thrift Store.)

          ***OPEN to the public:  Tuesday – Saturday from 11:00 am – 3:00 pm***

            Lara Almarcegui Ruins in the Netherlands, 2008. 26 framed photographs, guide books

            Rosa Barba  They Shine, 2007. 35 mm film

            Patrick Bernatchez  I Feel Cold Today, 2007. 16 mm film transferred to digital video

            Chris Marker  La Jetee, 1962. 28 min film (screened on October 27)

             Heather & Ivan Morison  Starmaker, 2005. Slide projection transferred to HD digital

 3.      The Prairie Art Gallery – Teresa Sargent Hall in the Montrose Cultural Centre

                 Everyday Nameless Spectacle: Photographs from the Glenbow Archives, Library & Archives Canada, and the Library of Congress.

 
For more information visit www.theboundarylayer.ca

Photo: courtesy Glenbow Archives

Exhibition location: Teresa Sargent Hall, in the Montrose Cultural Centre

“Voices from the Earth” is a multi-media, moveable public art installation that develops the theme of hope for the world’s threatened environment.