EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD
On behalf of the Board of Directors and the Vernon Public Art Gallery staff, I am pleased to welcome the exhibition by Edmonton based artist and educator (University of Alberta) Tamy Salzl titled Beautiful Parasites as our opening exhibition for 2024. Salzl is an internationally exhibiting artist with a focus on multimedia works that include painting, drawing, sculpture, video, and film. This particular exhibition focuses on storytelling from an ecological perspective with narratives from different cultures and historical events. I’d like to thank our guest writer for this publication, Agnieszka Matejko. A freelance writer Matejko regularly writes for Galleries West while also maintaining her own artistic practice focusing on youth and children as well as collaborative public art projects. Word on the Street is an example of one of her installations where poetry by inner-city residents was sandblasted onto sidewalks in the McCauley neighbourhood of Edmonton. Thank you to Lubos Culen, Curator for the VPAG and the rest of the gallery team for working together to enrich the lives of our gallery visitors through critical programming that expands visual literacy within our community. Thanks to our funders such as the Province of BC, BC Arts Council and the Regional District of the North Okanagan, we are able to exhibit work such as this for the people of the North Okanagan. Our donors, members and sponsors also contribute to the success of our programming and we are grateful for their support. See you at the VPAG, Dauna Kennedy Executive Director Vernon Public Art Gallery
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