RAMBLE ON ARTWORK FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA OKANAGAN PUBLIC ART COLLECTION
UBC OKANAGAN PUBLIC ART COLLECTION RAMBLE ON Curated by Dr. Stacey Koosel
Vernon Public Art Gallery January 13 - March 9, 2022
Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3 www.vernonpublicartgallery.com 250.545.3173
Catalogue of an exhibition held at the Vernon Public Art Gallery 3228 - 31st Avenue, Vernon, British Columbia, V1T 2H3, Canada January 13 - March 9, 2022 Production: Vernon Public Art Gallery Editor: Lubos Culen Layout and graphic design: Vernon Public Art Gallery Copy editing: Kelsie Balehowsky Front cover: Reinvention, 2005, plywood, diameter 24 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections Printing: Get Colour Copies, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada ISBN 978-1-927407-65-3 Copyright © 2022 Vernon Public Art Gallery All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permitted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the Vernon Public Art Gallery. Requests for permission to use these images should be addressed in writing to the Vernon Public Art Gallery, 3228 31st Avenue, Vernon BC, V1T 2H3, Canada. Telephone: 250.545.3173 Facsimile: 250.545.9096 Website: www.vernonpublicartgallery.com The Vernon Public Art Gallery is a registered not-for-profit society. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Greater Vernon Advisory Committee/RDNO, the Province of BC’s Gaming Policy and Enforcement Branch, British Columbia Arts Council, the Government of Canada, corporate donors, sponsors, general donations and memberships. Charitable Organization # 108113358RR.
This exhibition is sponsored in part by:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
7
Executive Director’s Foreword · Dauna Kennedy
9
Ramble On: Introduction · Lubos Culen
11
Curator’s Statement · Stacey Koosel
16
Perception, Pattern, and Artistic Praxis · Gary Pearson
21
Images of Works In the Exhibition
5
Ida Shōichi: Descended Blue N. 1 (detail), 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR’S FOREWORD
It is a pleasure to present works from the permanent collection of the University of British Columbia Okanagan Art Gallery curated by Dr. Stacey Koosel, the gallery’s curator. The content within these pages we hope will help to enlighten your insights into the history of the collection and its vast scope of diverse artworks. This catalogue contains remarkable essays by Dr. Koosel and Gary Pearson – Professor Emeritus at the University of British Columbia Okanagan – providing insight into the historical and contemporary aspects of the collection. I would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Province of British Columbia, the Regional District of the North Okanagan, and the BC Arts Council, whose funding enables us to produce exhibitions such as this for the North Okanagan region and interested parties across Canada. Together with our Curator Lubos Culen, we hope you enjoy this publication and exhibition. Regards, Dauna Kennedy Executive Director Vernon Public Art Gallery
7
David Wilson: Sylix Territory Study, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 35 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
RAMBLE ON: INTRODUCTION
The UBC Okanagan Art Gallery is a university gallery managed by the Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS) at the Kelowna campus. It is committed to “a research mandate realized through: research-creation, exhibitions, performance, publications, permanent collection and acquisitions, curatorial studies and community-engaged programs, in the field of creative and critical studies.”1 Besides managing the FINA Gallery located in the Creative and Critical Studies building, the UBC Okanagan Art Gallery oversees the management of the Public Art Collection since 2019 and it will play a vital role in the programming of the art gallery planned for the UBC Okanagan’s new building in downtown Kelowna planned to open in 2024. Currently, the Public Art Collection contains over 750 works which include paintings, prints, sculptures, drawings, installation art, digital art, videos and outdoor sculptures. The University of British Columbia Okanagan’s Public Art collection is one of the largest public art collection in the region.2 While a large number of artworks in the collection include works by former students and alumni, the Public Art Collection houses a great number of works produced by established and senior Canadian and Okanagan based artists, to name a few: Ann Kipling, Carl Beam, Gary Pearson, Murray Johnson, Byron Johnston, Julie Oakes, Bryan Ryley, David Blackwood, David Wilson and Tania Willard. The Vernon Public Art Gallery is pleased to include a selection of works from the UBC Okanagan Public Art Collection in the exhibition titled Ramble On. The UBC Okanagan Public Art Collection’s curator Stacey Koosel decided on the title which inherently expresses a forceful progression of activity, perhaps a metaphor for the future of the collection and its constant growth. The exhibition contains paintings, free-standing and wall mounted sculptures, prints, digital image and video. We welcome the opportunity to present to our viewers the works from the collection that were created between years 1968 and 2021. Lubos Culen Curator Vernon Public Art Gallery Endnotes: 1 https://gallery.ok.ubc.ca/about/, accessed November 3, 2021 2 https://gallery.ok.ubc.ca/public-art-collection/, accessed November 3, 2021
9
Tania Willard: Gut Instincts (detail), 2018, digital print, 24 x 32 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
RAMBLE ON by Stacey Koosel Ramble On is an exhibition of artworks from UBC Okanagan Gallery’s Public Art Collection, a rambling tour, which introduces some of our newest acquisitions including works by Judith Schwarz, Sheldon Louis, Tania Willard and Neil Cadger. The exhibition was inspired by UBC Okanagan alumnus Clinton McDougall’s wooden sculpture of a car tire entitled Reinvention (2005). The tread on the tire forms a pattern based on the utilitarian principle of adding grip or traction to move forward. The idea of using patterns, repetition or grids to gain traction or derive meaning is a universal principle. From the longitude and latitude of cartography, to charting information in graphs, to ideas of the matrix (with or without Keanu) – there is something about hypnotic repetition and persuasive grids that artists utilize to communicate complex ideas with clarity, impact and irreverence. Marshall McLuhan was a 1960s philosophy of media guru, perhaps the last time an academic deeply infiltrated pop culture, his ‘15 minutes of fame’ sound bite was borrowed and misattributed to Andy Warhol, he met with politicians and pop stars to help them navigate the new electronic media era, talking about the body electric. McLuhan prophesied many futuristic ideas: the global village, the information superhighway, the narcissism / numbness of the screen, and the concept of information overload. The idea of information overload is that when our senses become overwhelmed, we resort to pattern recognition. What unites the works selected for this exhibition is the incorporation of patterns in various forms whether they are in the depiction of baskets, videos of repeating human forms, series of screen prints or use of colour and form in repetitive patterns, to literal grids as is the case in Judith Shwarz’s artworks. Shwarz’s laser cut steel and birch plywood sculptures, Grid and Grid II (1996) are an X and O - primary shapes, the beginning of handwriting, symbolic of nature and culture.1 A spatial play, one is a cross and one is a circular movement, both are elongated to contribute to the sense of dimensionality. Shwarz explained that early on in her practice she was influenced by influential minimalist and conceptual artist Sol Lewit, to make works that were abstract, not narrative or representational. Grid and Grid II communicate the relationship between culture and nature, the tension between the industrial grid represented by the steel grid element of the work and the natural warm grain of the wood, the wood grain itself being a system. There is a conflict between what you see and what is there in reality, the pair present conflicting perception. The illusion is the multi-dimensionality of the piece, the laser cut steel is just from one sheet, as is the birch plywood, the flat pieces can appear multidimensional and cause a glitch between what you are seeing and what the body is experiencing - it invites the viewer to stand inside that conflict. Even though Grid and Grid II are conceptual and intellectual, the tactile, warmth of the wood versus the dark coolness of the steel gives the work a tactility. The works of Judith Shwarz have secured a prominent position in the history of Canadian Art.2
11
Ida Shōichi (1941–2006) was a Kyoto based internationally recognized artist who is considered one of the most important printmakers in the development of Japanese contemporary prints in the late sixties and early seventies.3 Shōichi’s Surface is the Between - Between Vertical and Horizon is a series of 5 etching, aquatint, and drypoint with chine collé prints entitled Descended Blue No. 1 – 5 (1982). The minimalist, abstract series of five prints repeat a blue square figure with variations, careful inspection of the prints reveal the intricate inlay of metallic stripes on some iterations. Since the mid-1960s, Shōichi focused on a unifying concept of his practice he called The Surface Is the Between which he explained in a 1983 interview as: “The reason prints fascinate me is that each of the printing processes has this element: there’s always a vertical force and a horizontal force, and between them the print is made. There’s the force of the press, coming down on a horizontal thing, and at that instant of contact. With screen-prints, for example, you come down with a squeegee on the horizontal screen, and the ink comes down through the holes. That interaction of forces creates something, which is the work, and the work is the document of the process. With woodblocks, you bring the baren down on the block, and in between you have the paper. The result is the document of the impact.”4w For Shōichi, the concept of The Surface Is the Between was both spatial and temporal, and the vertical and horizontal lines were graphic representations of the printing process.5 Neil Cadger’s The Collective Body (2021) is a transdisciplinarity audio/video project that explores the ‘skin hunger’ and isolation of social distancing in the Covid-19 era, made in collaboration with fifty artists, dancers and musicians. The Collective Body explores the constraints and freedoms of digital connections, and can be seen as a meditation on disembodied spaces. The project was rhizome-like, it invited dancers to record themselves separately in their own space, the video was then sent to musicians, who used the dance footage as inspiration for their own soundscape. The new audio recordings were then sent to other dancers, who used the sounds as inspiration for their own movement. The recordings were gathered and merged together at random, resulting in a collage of diverse bodies and movements. The soundtrack to the video was composed by Andew Stauffer, who collected the audio recordings of all the musicians and composed them into larger scale compositions to accompany the visuals.6 Neil Cadger edited the visuals, and Andrew Stauffer edited the sound files, which sought to recreate the transdisciplinarity creative collaboration between dance and music. Tania Willard, is an artist, curator and associate professor at UBC Okanagan, of Secwépemc and settler heritage whose research intersects with land-based art practices. Willard’s Gut Instincts (2018), a bright, eye-catching neon digital print of traditional entrail design Indigenous basketry, is an affirmation of women’s intuition, instinct and ancestral voices. Gut Instincts is based on digitally altered museum photography of cedar-root basket collected as part of the North Pacific Jesup Expedition (1897–1902) from Stl’atl’imx territories. Willard has described the basket as a “universe of knowledge” related to hunting, seasonality,
and land that articulates the deep reciprocity of the Secwépemc people with their territories and the otherthan-human worlds that share them.7 A large-scale outdoor installation version of Gut Instincts was shown as part of an exhibition at the Kelowna Art Gallery, curated by Jaime Issac in 2018 entitled Woven Together. The baskets depicted were made by Indigenous women whose names were not recorded, which speak to the colonial disappearances and dispossession of Indigenous women, communities, and lands.8 The exploration of materiality in Willard’s basketry textures and patterns continues in Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Untitled Portrait #1, (2018) in which a figure is represented as a part of the fabric of the same background. Ahmadzadegan is an artist and alumnus of UBC Okanagan with an active voice in the Okanagan artistic community. The Laundry Room Collective is an artist collective created by Ahmadzadegan and fellow UBC Okanagan alumnus and artist Brooklyn Bellmond, with the mission to foster arts, creativity, culture, and community. Ahmadzadegan’s practice has explored themes of identity in socio-political inquiry. Untitled Portrait #1 by Ahmadzadegan can be seen as a unification of humans and their environment, the figure and ground merged into one and the tension that arises therein. Sheldon Pierre Louis is a member of the syilx Nation, an Okanagan Indian Band Councillor, and a community leader whose work is influenced by his ancestral roots. Louis’s cax̌alqs (red dress) (2021) exhibited for the first time since it was commissioned by the Okanagan School of Education and donated to the Public Art Collection is a celebration of the strength and resilience of Indigenous women. Louis’s painting portrays a powerful Indigenous female figure, in support and to address the issue of MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit). The patterns that repeat in the painting have significance, for example the elk teeth on the red dress symbolize her importance and worth in traditional Indigenous society. Louis’s impact on the Okanagan cultural community is widespread as his outdoor murals, paintings and community service communicate a unique voice that articulates a vision for an Indigenous inclusive future. A collection of three paintings by syilx artist David Wilson: Spirit Horse and Rider (2013), Sylix Territory Study (2016) and Northern Lights (2012) portray a visual language that uses repeating symbolic imagery, pictographs, and circular forms with Coast Salish influences to communicate a modern take on a traditional narrative. As a young artist Wilson wanted to know what Indigenous art from his community looked like, he explored the Vernon Museum’s archives and found roots of his Interior Salish culture in centuries-old pictographs documented in anthropology books.9 The stars in the horizon of Spirit Horse and Rider, Sylix Territory Study and Northern Lights, when examined up close reveal a multi-dimensionality and spirituality that may not be appreciated on first glance. Wilson’s works draw on the symbols and stories of Okanagan First Nations cultural heritage with vibrant acrylic colours and surrealist, symbolic imagery that reverberates. Takesada Matsutani’s organic abstractions function as in-depth investigations into materiality and form. From 1963 until 1972 Matsutani was a key member of the influential, avant garde, post war, Japanese art collective, the Gutai Art Association (1955–1972). Matsutani famously experimented with vinyl glue, a new commodity in Japan at the time, using his own breath to manipulate the substance, creating sensuous
13
forms reminiscent of human bodies.10 A print version of the vinyl glue sculptures is most literally depicted in Object-D (1972), while the other prints in the collection L’angle (1968), La Proliferation I (1968), Unknown (1973), Chimney - A (1973) rift off the abstract drips and folds to hard-edge forms referencing Japanese philosophy and calligraphy. L’angle (1968) depicts abstractions of drafting and cartography tools in almost monotone psychadelic fashion, the hard angles of reason giving way to playful forms floating their way off the paper. The map making theme of Matsutani’s L’angle brings us back to the central or unifying theme to this group exhibition, Ramble On, finding meaning through patterns, repetitions, rhythms and grids. Through a variety of artistic mediums - sculptures, paintings, prints and video artworks by a diverse roster of artists - alumni, faculty, local, Indigenous, international, figurative, abstract, emerging and established. Through the darkest depths of information overload and useless self-important distractions on the lonely road back home, we find a path to ramble on. Here’s hoping you can enjoy the journey. Author Bio Dr. Stacey Koosel (she/her) is of Indigenous (Métis) and European heritage, and works as the Curator of UBC Okanagan Art Gallery. Besides the management of the Public Art Collection, she also leads artist residencies, exhibitions and publications at the gallery, and the development of our new downtown gallery. She lectures on art history and curation studies in the Art History and Visual Culture program at UBC Okanagan, and is passionate about art history and contemporary art, with a focus on decolonization practices, Indigenous art and art publishing. Endnotes:
1 2 3
4
5 6
7
8 9
10
Christopher Youngs, Judith Shwarz Transcriptions, Freedman Gallery, Albright College, Reading PA, 2000. Ron Moppett. Fictive Sace, Judith Schwarz / Arlene Stamp. Illingworth Kerr Gallery, Alberta College of Art, 1995. Shoichi IDA, Prints. MoMak, The National Museum of Modern Art, Kyoto. https://www.momak.go.jp/English/exhibitionArchive/2012/391.html Ida, Shôichi and Brody, Leslie. “Shoichi Ida: An Interview”: The Print Collector’s Newsletter, March-April 1984, vol. 15, no. 1, pp. 7-8. (The interview, in English and Japanese, took place on December 24, 1983, at the Ueda Gallery, Tokyo.) John Fiorillo. Viewing Japanese Print, 2020. https://www.viewingjapaneseprints.net/texts/kindai_hanga/ida_shoichi.html Andrew Stauffer and Neil Cadger share more about the Collective Body. CKUA radio interview, October 19, 2021. https://ckua.com/listen/on-art-the-collective-body/ Tania Willard. Gut Instincts. Shimmering Horizons. Or Gallery, 2021. https://shimmeringhorizons.orgalleryprojects.org/tania-willard/ Tania Willard’s Gut Instincts. The Kelowna Art Gallery, 2018. https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts David Wylie. In Studio with artist David Wilson Sookinakin. pqbnews, 2021. https://www.pqbnews.com/life/in-studio-with-artist-david-wilson-sookinakin/ Michael Irwin. Takesada Matsutani. Ocula, 2021.https://ocula.com/artists/takesada-matsutani/
14
15
PERCEPTION, PATTERN, AND ARTISTIC PRAXIS by Gary Pearson Perception is a pattern seeking process reliant on repetition and analogous shapes, sounds, or other external stimuli or sensations. It’s an organizational process whereby elements in a visual field for example, will be collated towards some kind of organizing principle, so the information or environment may be more readily interpreted and understood. Interestingly, when we are confronted with an overabundance of pattern type repetition we are inclined to seek breaks in the pattern formation, thus interrupting or forestalling a perceptual overload. This correlation of interdependence between pattern formation and formation breaks, in the perceptual process, also underlies compositional development in the fine arts. In visual arts, music, dance, theatre, we’re often made aware of the deployment of theme and variation in compositional structure, and usually combined with a counter-theme or counter-subject to promote the role of harmony and discord in the pursuit of compositional complexity. In this latter case artistic license also allows individual personalities, subjectivity, and aesthetics, to affect the role sensory information plays, and the desired outcomes, in influencing the construction of work designed around pattern formation and thematic compositional structures. The exhibition Ramble On is curated by Dr. Stacey Koosel, curator of the UBC Okanagan Campus Gallery, from art work holdings in the University Public Art Collection. Dr. Koosel has stated that her selection, drawn from over 750 art works in the collection, was guided by the concept of finding meaning through patterns, repetitions, and grids. The collection, originally founded by Okanagan College in 1963, is an eclectic body of art work of various disciplines, media, and styles, many acquired by donation, others, and this has perhaps been the most consistent mechanism of acquisition policy, by annual internal purchase awards determined by a faculty jury, for outstanding work from graduating students; diploma graduates during Okanagan College’s mandate, followed by BFA graduates from Okanagan University College, and later UBC Okanagan Campus BFA and MFA graduates. There is a lot of exceptional work in the university collection, including that by prominent artists such as Alan Wood, Jack Shadbolt, David Blackwood, Carl Beam and, to my surprise; there are three William Hogarth (1897 – 1764) prints, two prints by the renowned Swedish artist Anders Zorn (1860 – 1920), prints by Inuit artists, and an astonishing number of Alistair Bell prints, mostly woodcuts and engravings depicting birds, animals, boat and marina scenes, all generously gifted to the university by the artist’s son Alan Bell. Within such a diverse, wide-ranging collection Dr. Koosel identified a thematic paradigm to anchor a conceptually cohesive curatorial thesis and presentation. Even within the parameters of patterns, repetitions, and grids, the audience of Ramble On, hosted by the Vernon Public Art Gallery, will find distinctly different yet equally inventive approaches to the artistic application of repetition and pattern formation among the artists presented.
16
The Public Art Collection, as previously mentioned, has grown in large part through purchase awards of work by visual arts graduates. Included in this exhibition is recent UBC Okanagan graduate Moozhan Ahmadzadegan (BFA 2019), a second generation Canadian of Iranian/Persian ancestry. His Untitled Portrait #1, 2018, mixed media, employs a visually textured pattern of folds, creases, and lines orchestrated to depict a fully enshrouded, chromatic silhouetted figure superimposed on an abstract, achromatic, low-relief, sculpturally rendered two-dimensional pictorial ground. It’s a haunting image of anonymity, isolation, and concealment. The draped figure, by all outward appearances a garmented cross between The Mummy (original 1932 film), Rene Magritte’s The Lovers, and The Lovers II, (both 1928), and an Afghan burka, is intentionally swathed in a theatrically exaggerated anti-fashion statement for metaphorical and narrativizing ends. On a formal level Ahmadzadegan has created a visual typological network of repetitive graphic elements that form a group based on a common characteristic or identity. This has been essential to the artists compositional development and the introduction of harmony (graphic typology), and contrast through the juxtaposition of chromatic and achromatic areas. The graphic typological approach was essential to creating the expressive center, not only in the graphic and pictorial sense, but also to anchor the narrative, for symbolic import, and for ontological expression and meaning. Okanagan artists are well represented in Ramble On. Three paintings by David Wilson Sookinakin are included, the most recent from 2016. His is a symbolic narrative painting frequently drawing upon Okanagan Nation/ Interior Salish cosmology for the subject matter. Sookinakin deploys undulating linear graphic elements, flat color planes, radial designs, pictographic inspired images, and repetitive dot or pointillist patterns. Pattern and repetition in the abstraction of the natural world is clearly an important stylistic trait of this artist, as it may be found in the stylization of tree branches and foliage, plants, cloud formations, the contours of hillsides, currents of water, birds wings, costume regalia, or used as a purely abstract pictorial field, as seen in the many central circle compositions from 2007 (not in the exhibition). The circle is a shape that is central to native cosmology, so that may also help explain the artists attachment to the spiral, radial symmetry, and organic pattern formations. David Wilson Sookinakin is a storytelling artist, whose narrative paintings are grounded in his own First Nations ethnicity and artistic ancestry, his lively imagination, and the knowledge that pattern and repetition, if handled skillfully and inventively in art, can breathe new life into ancient traditions, spirituality, mythologies and, contemporary cultural experience. While pattern and repetition are only a part of this artists repertoire they are used as a formal system of theme and variations to create a complex compositional structure that advantages the interdependence of harmony and contrast. The exhibition also features a digital print by Tania Willard, of the Secwépemc Nation. Willard is nationally recognized artist, writer, curator, and activist. She received an MFA in 2018 from UBC Okanagan Campus, where she is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies. The photographic
17
print, titled Gut Instincts, 2018, is a scaled down version of the digital mural on textile component of a site-specific outdoor installation she produced at the Kelowna Art Gallery, for the group exhibition Woven Together, guest curated by Jaimie Isaac in 2018. The pattern design decorating the baskets is derived from a design on a cedar-root basket collected as part of the North Pacific Jesup Expedition (1897 – 1902) from Stl’atl’imx territories. In this work the artist endeavors to resurrect or reinstate Indigenous authorship of a culturally specific design hitherto assigned to author anonymity as prescribed by the colonial practice of the anthropological framing of Indigenous art. 1 The design is unique to the Stl’atl’imx First Nations and, as Tania Willard, in expressing her interpretation writes, ‘I see, in this design, a deep reciprocity with Indigenous lands and sacred acts of interrelationship with animal and other non-human worlds.’2 Sheldon Louis, an Okanagan/Sylix Nation artist is represented by a painting titled cax̌alqs (red dress), from 2021. This very recent acquisition was made possible by a commission sponsored by the Okanagan School of Education, at UBC Okanagan. The artist states that, ‘The red dress is a symbol for the missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit (MMIWG2S) movement.’3 The dominant motif in this 48” x 48” canvas is the central circle internal to which is the mask wearing Indigenous woman raising her left arm with a clenched fist extending beyond the circular framing device. Sheldon Louis has a history of backdropping his portrait paintings with an all-over pattern formation and this painting is no exception. Here he uses an ornately abstracted flower design in an Indian Red color on a saturated red ground. Another surprising and impressive holding of the Public Art Collection are prints from the Japanese artist Shōichi Ida. Quite famous for his paper works and prints Ida’s work is in major public museums worldwide, including the MoMA in New York. Five prints dated 1982 are included in this exhibition, each from a portfolio of five etching, aquatint, and drypoints with chine collé, which incidentally, are also held in the MoMA permanent collection. Decidedly minimalist in principal they are anything but when viewed in close examination. Reliant on an exacting system of parallel line repetitions on a richly colored monochrome ground, they also possess an absorbing amount of information on the printing process itself; laying bare such material incidences as color bleeds beyond the principle image, and registration marks for positioning the printing plate. These prints are aesthetically and intellectually rewarding on so many levels, and not the least of which is demonstrating that a reductive, minimalist conceptual model does not preclude the use of a discordant, even messy production methodology. Another treat for the exhibition audience is the inclusion of Takesada Matsutani, an internationally exhibited artist who was a member of the Gutai Art Association, or “Gutai Group”, centered in Japan in the 60’s and 70’s. They were key players in the international avant-garde of this era, and Matsutani was among the more experimental of the collective. Born in 1937 and still artistically active, UBC Okanagan is fortunate to own these definitive early works by this artist, most likely produced in Paris, in the late-60’s and early 70’s. The Ramble On audience can enjoy studying the imaginative “machine aesthetic” engravings, and the extraordinarily enigmatic Object – D, from 1972. This particular piece, and Unknown, 1973, were probably influenced by the artists study of blood samples under a microscope during the 60’s, and his subsequent experiments with the viscosity and malleability of vinyl glue.
18
It is with some regret that I bring this short essay to a close without having addressed every artist, but realistically the essay is only intended to scratch the surface of the importance and meaning of some of the work presented. In doing so, to encourage the audience to give the art work just that extra bit of time, and beyond that to perhaps undertake research on their own: of individual works, of a certain artist, and/or to further investigate the role of perception, pattern, and artistic praxis in the formation of meaning. Author Bio Gary Pearson is an artist and Associate Professor Emeritus in Fine Arts in the Department of Creative and Critical Studies at UBC Okanagan, in Kelowna, BC. He is also a freelance exhibition curator, art writer, and author of the book The Creative Voice: Life and Art in the Okanagan, published by Caitlin Press, in 1998. His exhibition reviews and essays have been published in Canadian Art, Border Crossings, and Sculpture magazine, among other publications. He has also written numerous exhibition catalogue essays and art and research conference papers. Gary Pearson’s personal exhibition history includes solo and group exhibitions in Canada, the US, Australia, and Europe. He is represented by Gallery Jones, in Vancouver. For more on the historical background and usage of this design, including a statement by Tania Willard, see: 1 https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts/ and https://shimmeringhorizons. orgalleryprojects.org/tania-willard/ 2 https://kelownaartgallery.com/tania-willard-gut-instincts/ 3 https://thediscourse.ca/okanagan/syilx-artist-sheldon-louis-creates-painting-for-ubc-okanagan
19
Ida Shōichi: Descended Blue N. 5 (detail), 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
RAMBLE ON
Images of artwork selected from the UBC Okanagan Public Art Collection included in the exhibition at the Vernon Public Art Gallery January 13 - March 9, 2022
21
MOOZHAN AHMADZADEGAN
Moozhan Ahmadzadegan (b. 1994 )is an emerging artist based on the unceded and traditional territory of the Syilx people, also known as the Okanagan. He received a BFA from the University of British Columbia Okanagan with a Major in Visual Arts and a Minor in Art History and Visual Culture in 2019. In addition to his art practice, he is experienced in art administration and community engaged projects. He is a co-founder of the Laundry Room Collective, an artist-run collective that works to provide accessible arts and culture programming, support emerging artists, and foster diversity and inclusion to meaningfully contribute to the community.
22
Untitled Portrait #1, 2018, ink on bed sheets, 60 x 48 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
NEIL CADGER
Neil Cadger (b. 1957) is a performing artist, teacher, and curator of the Living Things International Arts Festival in Kelowna. A graduate of the renowned l’école Jacques Lecoq in Paris, he is committed to an exploration of live, interdisciplinary performance that challenges habitual modes of perception. Puppets, animated objects and masks figure in most of his work.
24
The Collective Body (capture, detail), 2021, 8 channel video, 57 minutes
SHELDON LOUIS
Sheldon Pierre Louis (b. 1979) is a multi disciplinary Syilx Artist. Sheldon’s ancestral roots have influenced his works in painting, drawing, carving, and sculpting. Over the years Sheldon has tutored, taught, and mentored youth from his own and surrounding communities, the inspiration that is developed is on both sides, the youth and the artist. Sheldon has now grown into not just an artistic leader but also a community leader.
28
cax̌alqs (red dress), 2021, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 48 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
TAKESADA MATSUTANI
Takesada Matsutani (b. 1937) is a Japanese painter, printmaker and installation artist. A member of the second generation of avant-garde Gutai artists, Matsutani is known for his iconic use of vinyl adhesive and graphite pencil, from bulbous sensual forms to monumental canvases of pencilled streams. His works can be found in the collections of the Centre Pompidou and the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) in Paris, the National Museum of Art in Tokyo, and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London, among others. Matsutani lives and works between Paris, France and Nishinomiya, Japan.
30
Unknown, 1973, screen-print, 30.6 x 22.4 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Object - D, 1972, screen-print, 30 x 22 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
L’angle, 1968, etching and aquatint, 29.9 x 26.1 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Chimney - A, 1973, etching, aquatint and screen-print, 30.6 x 22.4 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
La Proliferation - 1, 1969, etching and aquatint, 29.9 x 26.1 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
CLINTON McDOUGALL
Clinton McDougall (b. 1981) after graduating from the University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies in 2005, he went on to found two successful businesses, Bestie - a currywurst restaurant in Vancouver’s Chinatown that was nominated for an International Restaurant Design Award and Sunday Cider, an award winning orchard based cidery in Gibsons BC. He still makes art in his country wood shop.
Reinvention, 2005, plywood, diameter 24 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
JUDITH SHWARZ
Judith Shwarz (b. 1944 ) is a nationally-recognized artist whose work is found in public and private collections across Canada. Professor Emeritus Schwarz has served as Chair of York University’s Department of Visual Art & Art History and as Graduate Program Director of the MFA Program in Visual Art. Judith Schwarz has created several large-scale public commissions in Toronto and Vancouver that stress integration between art and the environment.
Grid I, 1996, birch plywood and laser cut steel, 32 x 98 inches
Grid II, 1996, birch plywood and laser cut steel, 32 x 98 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Grid I (detail), 1996, birch plywood and laser cut steel, 32 x 98 inches
IDA SHŌICHI
Ida Shōichi (1941 - 2006) Born in Kyoto, Ida worked with a wide variety of media and specialized in collages and prints. His prints employed a wide variety of techniques including silkscreen, lithography, etching and traditional woodblock. An internationally recognized artist, represented in major museums, his work successfully synthesized Eastern philosophy with international art currents. Prints by Ida Shôichi can be found in many collections, including the British Museum, London; Museum of Modern Art, New York and the National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian, Washington, DC.
Descended Blue N. 1, 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Descended Blue N. 2, 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Descended Blue N. 3, 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Descended Blue N. 4 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Descended Blue N. 5, 1982, etching, aquatint, dry needle and Chine collé, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
TANIA WILLARD
Tania Willard (b. 1977) Secwepemc Nation, works within the shifting ideas of contemporary and traditional as it relates to cultural arts and production. Often working with bodies of knowledge and skills that are conceptually linked to her interest in intersections between Aboriginal and other cultures. Willard has worked as a curator in residence with grunt gallery and Kamloops Art Gallery.
Gut Instincts, 2018, digital print, 24 x 32 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
DAVID WILSON
David Wilson (b. 1960) was born and raised in the Vernon area and is a member of the Okanagan Indian Band. He learned Native art forms from Coastal Salish and Haida Artists in Vancouver, and eventually drew inspiration from his connection to the Okanagan Nation. Exploring traditional narratives and using pictographs based on those found on sites in the Okanagan region, he reinterprets the stories of his people.
Northern Lights, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 54 x 72 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Sylix Territory Study, 2016, acrylic on canvas, 24 x 35 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
Spirit Horse and Rider, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches, photo: Yuri Akuney - Digital Perfections
VERNON PUBLIC ART GALLERY VERNON, BRITISH COLUMBIA CANADA www.vernonpublicartgallery.com
