Looking for one final visual arts hurrah before the semester begins? Don’t miss the ninth annual Integrate Arts Festival, running August 28-30 in more than 20 venues around Victoria. Once again, Integrate features students, alumni & instructors of the Department of Visual Arts; among this year’s 20 featured artists are Andrea Soos, Doug Jarvis, Rose Lemonade, Pete Kohut, Yoko Takashima and Ruby Arnold.
Formerly known as “Off the Grid Arts Festival,” Integrate was developed in 2007 and included an en masse art crawl to celebrate the city’s small galleries, artist-run centres and alternative arts venues. Since then, the festival has grown enormously and was re-branded in 2012 as the Integrate Arts Festival—yet it’s focused on providing a unique opportunity to circulate and experience an integrated landscape of the arts in Victoria.
Best of all, everything is free! All participating galleries, parties, events and performances are free during the festival crawl, although some public galleries will revert to admission fees or “by donation” on the festival’s second day.
Don’t miss Doug Jarvis in action at Integrate
All you have to do is pick up or download Integrate’s interactive map, which will guide you to a variety of exhibitions and events at participating galleries, publicly accessible studios, and various sites throughout the city. There’s even a hop on/hop off bus for Saturday evening’s art crawl so participants can easily circulate among the venues—don’t miss Visual Arts instructor Doug Jarvis’ ongoing performance in Limbic Media’s parking lot (#2-740 Discovery) from 6-9pm Saturday night—as well as a family-friendly bike tour for participants on Sunday afternoon.
UVic’s own Legacy Art Gallery is once again among the venues, this year offering an interactive printmaking activity during the art crawl, from 6 to 9pm Saturday at 630 Yates. Based on their current exhibition, unlimited edition, which attempts to construct an art historical framework examining how prints by Aboriginal and Inuit artists represented. Featuring work from the Kamloops Art Gallery, Carleton University Art Gallery and UVic’s Legacy, unlimited edition represent a drive to preserve, portray and popularize oral histories and address social inequities in the medium of printmaking.
Bridge Over Troubled Water (Thomas), 2015, Video stillI
Also on view at Saturday night’s art crawl is Bridge Over Troubled Water, an interactive video & sound installation by Visual Arts instructor and local media artist Yoko Takashima and alumni Ruby Arnold. Check it out from 6 to 9pmat MediaNet’s Flux Media Art Gallery, #110 -2750 Quadra.
Special events this year include the Opening Reception from 7-10pm Friday, August 28 in the the Bay Centre downtown, the Art Crawl itself and the After Party, running from 9:30pm-2am at the Copper Owl (1900 Douglas), which will feature a great range of musical acts and projections, plus performance art by Integrate alum Anna Shkuratoff and Sean Rea. Get all the details here.