The View From Here Opening Reception
The View From Here
Curated by Jennie Kraehling
On from March 30 – June 16, 2023, at McIntosh Gallery
The View From Here brings together artworks from the McIntosh Gallery permanent collection that evoke a particular perspective, moment in time, landscape, or space. Whether painting, photograph, sculpture, projection or video, each artwork becomes a window through which the artist transports you to a specific place, focusing your attention on their particular way of looking to create a unique narrative that provides valuable insight into their creative process.
Michael Snow’s Condensation (A Cove Story), a 10-minute DVD projection using time lapse photography, was the spark that initiated guest curator Jennie Kraehling's thematic connections across the collection. What began as a search for portraiture and still life paintings quickly became an obsessive collecting of artworks inspired by Michael Snow’s meditation on a specific place. Kraehling sought to find the portrait in each landscape, the life stilled in each view from “here”, both literally and metaphorically.
“Here,” in Snow’s case, refers to both the temporal and meteorological conditions recorded at his cabin off the west coast of Newfoundland. The work is a compressed, condensed recording of an evolving series of weather-events and the resulting shifts of light and colour. The concept of capturing evolutions in the changing of seasons and time are also present in Roly Fenwick’s four seasonal canvases The Road to Big Bay - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and in Bernice Vincent’s In July the Sun Sets Thirty-One Times, a painting configured like a page from a calendar.
Themes of simple moments from everyday life also emerge, often represented by the image of a window. William Kurelek’s intimate painting, On the West Outside Wall, is a still life of a hanging bucket, the handle of a tool, and a sliver of a paned window. With three shapes painted in just three colours, Kurelek provides us with a glimpse of daily life, a simple, still, quiet moment, a window back in time.
The View From Here not only highlights the breadth of the McIntosh Gallery collection but also honours its strong regional focus.
Join us at the public opening reception of The View From Here on Sunday, April 2 from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. All are welcome to attend this free event. Exhibition curator Jennie Kraehling and Sheri Cole, Director of Legacy Giving at Western University, will provide opening remarks at 2:30 p.m.
Please note that parking in attended lots at Western University is complimentary on weekends except when special event rates apply. Refer to Western University's Parking Services website for more information. We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.
The Flora J. Tripp Memorial Fund was established in 2017 through the Flora and Ian Tripp Endowment Fund in honour of Maurice C. Stubbs for his many contributions to the visual arts community as an artist and McIntosh Gallery’s first permanent curator (1969 to 1989).
Based on funding available, McIntosh Gallery administers two programs: a Collections Management Internship designed for university students to learn about the operations of a public gallery and its responsibilities to research, conserve, document and interpret a collection held in the public trust; and a Curator in Residence Program for curators to research the McIntosh Gallery collection of contemporary Canadian art and to organize exhibitions and publications based on this research.
