by art exhibits in Kamloops
Andrea Mantegna: Battle of the Sea Gods (left side)
c.1485-1488
Engraving on laid paper 28 x 42.7 cm.
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
On our recent visit to Kamloops, our daughter took us to see several art exhibitions. The major ones were in the Kamloops Art Gallery:
– Beautiful Monsters: Beasts and Fantastic Creatures in Early European Prints and Picasso’s Beasts, both on loan from the National Gallery of Canada
– unlimited edition, prints by Indigenous artists in the Kamloops Art Gallery’s permanent collection
– Andrea Kastner’s The Waste Land
All were fascinating and beautiful exhibits. The large selection of Early European engravings, etching and woodcuts by many well-known artists was an impressive collection requiring close study of their dense and highly detailed work. The Picasso etchings were a selection from his Vollard Suite, some familiar and some new to me and all marvellous work, of course. The KAG’s collection of prints by well-known Indigenous artists was wonderful to see all together. Such a variety of periods and styles of printmaking in these three exhibitions – food for a printmaker’s soul, also much enjoyed by our daughter and my husband.
Kastner’s large contemporary paintings are very beautiful, yet horrible in their look at our industrial and household “waste lands”.
Please read more about these exhibits at the Kamloops Art Gallery website. They provided a lovely booklet to take home, from where I captured the above image. No photos were allowed.
Other exhibits we visited were at The Old Courthouse Cultural Centre which houses the Kamloops Courthouse Gallery, The Kamloops Arts Council, a gift shop, and the Arnica Artist Run Center gallery. The latter space had another print exhibition organized by the Kamloops Printmakers, an International Print Exchange (more details here).
One more interesting print exhibition that we saw was at the Thompson Rivers University – work by the first and second year printmaking students and some guests. We were pleased to meet the artist-instructor and share stories about techniques, educational experiences and more. What a weekend of art shows, thanks to our daughter for organizing this tour!
I’ll write a bit about the university in another post as this is too long already.
March 30, 2014 in Art Exhibitions, Canada and BC by Marja-Leena
It really does sound as though you had a great time and for good reason too. I just investigated some online images by Andrea Kastner and found them to be as amazing and disturbing as you describe.
I never would have imagined Kamloops as a major cultural centre but I’m behind the times in most things these days.
Susan, yes, we had a great time. We’ve never spent much time in the city as our family lives in the country east of it. This is the first time we visited the art galleries and we were pleasantly surprised. I’ve always thought of the area as mostly ranch country and a transportation hub with the trains running through as well as being at the intersection of several highways. The community slowly started with the fur traders in 1811, then the gold rush and so forth. It now has a fabulous university. Check it out in wikipedia if you like, though I sense that you are somewhat familiar with the place.
I’m glad you found Andrea Kastner’s work of such interest.
After Joe’s do, I was transporting Lucy back from Tunbridge Wells to the Eurostar station at Ashford (in Kent). To pass the time we discussed how your hyphenated first name was pronounced. To pass even more time we moved to your surname. I’d have worked this into my session at the microphone but I was limited to eight minutes, having previously cut the text down from twelve minutes. That’s one-third of it ditched! But I am a retired professional. There in spirit, you could day.
Robbie, I am touched that you and Lucy were thinking of me and my to-you-strange name. As you know the first name is Finnish and the last is German. The English-speaking world pronounces them differently from the natives but how to describe it here is beyond my linguistic skills. We should have thought of that when we met back in ’09.
And how was the celebration of Joe’s life? My thoughts were there that day.
Wow, lots of interesting and diverse input! Nowadays, I do enjoy the diverse offerings of smaller places rather than the huge blockbusters – which I now avoid.
Olga, it was indeed diverse – from a National Gallery collection right down to student work. I too like smaller galleries and the smaller doses of art viewing there.
I’ve been in two art exhibition in a week. A lot to think about. Watching pictures, I managed to take my camera after a bellowing session and the little girlie at the desk started to look a bit frightened. I wasn’t even very serious.
My main point was that there might be people wanting to come see the exhibition if I write about it in my blog. So now I’m still thinking. As you remember, Marja-Leena, this is a very small city and most of the newspapers do as little as possible in mentioning art at all.
Well, thinking does always good. I don’t like a hassle that someone asks me after an exhibition my immediate opinion. I can’t do that. I never could. And if I took to like something awfully much or disliking something equally deeply I might be complete wrong.
No, I’m not thinking of critique. I rather think the many ways that art is against all odds attached to our everyday life. And that is the main point.
Ripsa, Vaasa does have galleries, include public, (for which I’m grateful since having an exhibition there!). It really is too bad that your newspapers don’t write about them, at least to have a calendar of the exhibitions. It is so important to support the galleries by visiting, and we know how important it is to have art, to look at it, and to cultivate some kind of appreciation. With that comes ability to view work with pleasure as well as dislike, nothing wrong with the latter for I do find I don’t like everything though I try not to be negative when I write here (that comes from once being both an art student and an art teacher). I agree about writing about it on your blog though photos are helpful though not always allowed, even when not using flash. If you can find links online to the shows and the artist, that is helpful too.
Small towns often struggle to have galleries if they don’t have wealthy patrons who donate money and work. Kamloops has benefited from that, I think, as do of course larger cities. Also there are enough artists there who have formed groups to promote art in general as well as their own work. Volunteers are so very important.
Oh, that sounds wonderful–I’m listening to Ruskin and itching to go to a show. Guess I’ll have to be content with whatever is on at the Fenimore Museum…
Marly, I appreciate so much that you like and support the visual arts as well as the literary! Does your museum show visual art or do you have to another town to see it?