Stories that animate us
Kamloops Art Gallery, Kamloops, BC - To Dec 28
Stories that animate us features the work of 13 artists—from those near and far, to those past and present. Central to the exhibition are works on paper inspired by experience either collective (oral histories, cultural knowledge systems) or of a personal nature (memories, imaginings, dreams not yet done with). While some stories align with generic categories like fairytales, fantasy and science fiction, others are process-oriented, focused more on methodology than on the narrative potential of the finished work.
The works of Old Masters such as Francisco de Goya and 1960s moderns David Hockney and Joyce Wieland can always be counted on to reward visitors with their uncanny contemporaneity, but among the exhibition’s pleasant surprises are the works of those born when Hockney’s and Wieland’s careers were ascending.
Winnipeg drawing collective Royal Art Lodge were 2000s art scene darlings when their conflations of Beatrix Potter and Henry Darger caught the attention of collectors and institutions alike. Only more recently has the work transcended its coy, stylistic influences to depict an otherworld finally our own, a world punctuated by grief and rage. And in her “feminist sci-fi narrative” The Floating Archipelago (animation, 6 min 20 sec, 2015), Marina Roy’s hypnotic stop-motion lyricism is as effective at moving the story forward as it is in animating its reader/reviewer.
Organized and circulated by the Vancouver Art Gallery under the Across the Province program, Stories that animate us is curated by Diana Freundl and Zoë Chan. Also included in the exhibition are artists Osvaldo Ramirez Castillo, Robert Davidson, Jérôme Havre, Ed Archie NoiseCat, Ed Pien, Cauleen Smith, Amanda Strong and Camille Turner.
