While the spotlight often shines on our full-time teaching faculty, it’s nice to see our sessional instructors get a well-deserved moment in the sun. Kudos then to UVic’s Legacy Art Gallery for stepping up with a new series of exhibits focused specifically on the creative practices of our sessional instructors in the Department of Visual Arts—titled, appropriately enough, In Session.
Tara Nicholson, “Tabletennis Berlin”
In Session – One celebrates four UVic sessional artists who work with photography, video and digital media arts—Megan Dickie, Laura Dutton, d. bradley muir and Tara Nicholson. “Sessional instructors enliven art departments across the country with their professional experience,” says Visual Arts chair Paul Walde. “They enable us to expose our students to a much wider array of professional practitioners than would be possible if teaching duties were left to full-time faculty alone. Often students do not realize that many of their favourite instructors are in fact successful professional artists who leave their busy studios to come and teach a few times a week. Their contribution in this role cannot be overstated. It should be obvious to anyone seeing this exhibition that the artists represented are some of the finest practicing in Victoria today.”
Megan Dickie, “The Gleamer”
Running January 17 to March 28 at UVic’s free downtown public art gallery at the corner of Broad and Yates, In Session – One will explore the significance and power of photo-based art in an age where social media and advertising threaten to inundate us with visual overload. The exhibit will also investigate such themes as the relationship between the photographic image and its physicality as an object, light as a material presence, and the relationship between time, space and memory in digital media arts.
Laura Dutton, “Horizons”
“More than 35 years ago renowned writer and political activist Susan Sontag bemoaned the ubiquity of photography: ‘Taking photographs has set up a chronic voyeuristic relation to the world which levels the meaning of all events’,” says Legacy Art Galleries director and exhibit curator Mary Jo Hughes. “What would she have thought of the estimated 55 million images that are uploaded daily on Tumblr, Facebook, Snapchat and other social media sites? Given the popularity of smart phones and the addiction to image sharing amongst the 18 to 39 demographic, the number of images young people see daily is staggering. And yet photography-based and digital media persist and continue to be engaging and relevant as art forms.”
d. bradley muir, The Supernova Scene
Each of the four artists, says Hughes, were chosen to reflect these concerns. “In Session – One looks at how their work rises above the visual overload of popular culture,” says Hughes. “Their varied practices demonstrate the vast possibilities of these genres to achieve subtlety, nuance, and inspiration. These professional artists teach many of the students enrolled in degree programs [and] their sensitive and rigorous teachings guide the next generation of artists to emerge from our city.”
Walde agrees. “[These are] four excellent artists who also happen to be excellent teachers,” he says. “This combination of talents is rare, and as such they represent true assets to the department. We are very fortunate to be able to hire professional artists from within the community to teach on a part-time basis.”
In Session – One is the first of a new ongoing series of exhibitions featuring the artists who work as sessional instructors in UVic’s Department of Visual Arts.
In Session – One opens with a reception from 2-4pm Saturday, January 17 and runs 10am-4pm Wednesdays to Saturdays to March 28, 2015, at Legacy Art Gallery Downtown, 630 Yates St. Admission is always free.
Realities Follies at Open Space (photo: Todd Lambeth)
Curiously, a totally separate local gallery is looking at similar themes in an exhibit which features three alumni of the Visual Arts department.
Realities Follies, running to February 21 at Open Space, is co-curated by Visual Arts professor Lynda Gammon and Wendy Welch, executive director of the Vancouver Island School of Art. Featuring the work of Visual Arts alumni Todd Lambeth, Neil McClelland, and Jeroen Witvliet, as well as local painters Jeremy Herndl and Rick Leong,this survey examines the impact of living in an image-driven world.
“Selfies on Facebook, instant sharing on Instagram and photo albums on Flickr all demonstrate our intense desire to re-present our world,” note the curators. “Through the practice of painting, the artists in this exhibition, each in their own way, are re-presenting and interrogating the meaning of representation, and in turn, questioning our ways of perceiving reality.”
Each artist takes a separate approach to the exhibit’s central concept: Neil McClelland explores and creates relationships between the art historical tradition of the bather and the image-sharing of #beachday photos, while Todd Lambeth challenges prevailing notions of still life by painting images of the backsides of his previously painted canvases and Jeroen Witvliet is inspired by media images of stadiums and other social/cultural architectural icons. Meanwhile, Rick Leong translates the visual language of Asian landscapes to contemporary European formats and Jeremy Herndl employs the historical technique of plein air painting to depict the contemporary urban landscape.
The artists & curators will hold a panel discussion at 2pm Saturday, January 17. Realities Follies runs to Saturday, February 21, 2015, at Open Space, 510 Fort.