Photos from Clint Enns artist talk

Thanks to all who came out for Clint Enns' talk today! For those who didn't make it, here's a tiny peek at what you missed; check out this link on facebook for more snapshots: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=251369&id=23472162878. Don't forget to take in the many send+receive events still happening in the city this weekend and keep in mind that Clint's show is up in 1C03 until Dec. 11.

Public artist talk with Clint Enns tomorrow

Just a reminder that Clint Enns will deliver a FREE public artist talk tomorrow (Friday, November 26) at 12:30 p.m. in Gallery 1C03 about his current installation Prepare to Qualify, now showing in 1C03 as part of send+receive: festival of sound.

Also, check out Sandee Moore's review of Prepare to Qualify in today's Uptown magazine.

send+receive: a festival of sound in partnership with Gallery 1C03 presents

Prepare to Qualify

An installation by Clint Enns

November 23 - December 11, 2010

at Gallery 1C03

Public artist’s talk: Friday, November 26 at 12:30 p.m. in the Gallery

A circuit bent Atari filled with self-doubt struggles to qualify as "good" or "valid" art.

Clint Enns is a video artist and filmmaker from Winnipeg, Manitoba, whose work primarily deals with moving images created with broken and/or outdated technologies. His work has shown both nationally and internationally in installations, festival screenings, alternative spaces and micro-cinemas. He has recently completed a master's degree in mathematics at the University of Manitoba, and his interests include model theory of rings and modules, structuralist film, destructuralist video, and mathematics in art.

send + receive is an international festival in Winnipeg that advances the discipline of sound art, and is one of the few annual media arts festivals in North America focusing exclusively on sound-based work. It has become an invaluable opportunity for showcasing the innovative work of Manitoban, Canadian and international artists. send + receive addresses the need for a critical and intimate platform for audio based art. With feedback from the public, collaborating arts groups, and artists, send + receive meets the creative and technical needs of professional artists. This year’s festival will be presented at various venues across Winnipeg from November 23 – 28, 2010.

For more information about the festival, check out http://www.sendandreceive.org/

The Garden screens tonight at E-G Hall on campus

Together as part of the international documentary screening network Cinema Politica, Gallery 1C03 and The University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) are pleased to present the film The Garden at Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall tonight at 7 p.m.

The fourteen-acre community garden at 41st and Alameda in South Central Los Angeles is the largest of its kind in the United States. Started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992, the South Central Farmers have since created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community.

But now, bulldozers are poised to level their 14-acre oasis.

Directed by Scott Hamilton Kennedy (USA, 2008), The Garden follows the plight of the farmers, from the tilled soil of this urban farm to the polished marble of City Hall. Mostly immigrants from Latin America, from countries where they feared for their lives if they were to speak out, we watch them organize, fight back, and demand answers: Why was the land sold to a wealthy developer for millions less than fair-market value? Why was the transaction done in a closed-door session of the LA City Council? Why has it never been made public? And the powers-that-be have the same response: “The garden is wonderful, but there is nothing more we can do.”
If everyone told you nothing more could be done, would you give up?

The Garden was selected for screening by the Coordinators of the UWSA Food Bank Program. A discussion will follow after the film facilitated by special guest Kathryn McKenzie of the Spence Neighbourhood Association.

All screenings will be open to all audiences – everyone is welcome. Our screenings will always be free, but donations to offset costs are welcome. Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall is located on the third floor of Centennial Hall at The University of Winnipeg.

Gallery 1C03 and the UWSA wish to thank Cinema Politica for making it possible for us to participate in this network. We are grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for generously supporting this initiative.

Opening of Chronochroma 6 by Rodney LaTourelle on campus

Rodney LaTourelle's site-specific public art installation "Chronochroma 6" was officially opened yesterday at The University of Winnipeg's Centennial Hall - Duckworth Centre 3rd floor corridor, with the Winnipeg-born/Berlin-based artist in attendance.
This project was the brainchild of Dr. Serena Keshavjee, Coordinator of the University's History of Art program and tireless advocate for the recognition of the University's Centennial Hall as a significant example of modernist architecture.
The University is pleased to acknowledge Number TEN Architectural Group as the title sponsor for this installation.
When you make your next trip to campus, be sure to check out "Chronochroma 6"!

Gerry Kopelow

Rodney LaTourelle Installation

What was once a dark dingy hallway joining Centennial Hall and the Duckworth Centre on campus is now a jubilant experience of colour! This project was spear-headed by Dr. Serena Keshavjee. Rumour has it that the official opening of this installation will take place on November 8 at 1:30 p.m. with the artist in attendance!

Artwork of the Week!

Artwork of the Week!
Week 20:

Jackson Beardy (1944-1984)
Sturgeon Clan
1979
Silkscreen

Cree artist Jackson Beardy was born on the Garden Hill First Nation at Island Lake, Manitoba. Torn away from his family at a young age, Beardy was sent to residential school in Portage la Prairie. Subsequently, he studied art at Tech-Voc High School and at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg. In the mid-1960s, Beardy returned to northern Manitoba to collect the stories of his ancestors which he then depicted in his art. His first solo exhibition was held at The University of Winnipeg in 1967, but eventually he participated in group and solo shows at major public galleries across Canada and internationally. Beardy’s mature images, including Sturgeon Clan, express important cosmological and spiritual concepts such as balance in nature, regeneration and growth, and the interdependence of all things. The colours and figures employed in his artworks are often symbolic: here, turquoise blue signifies a link between the spirit world and the actual world and the sturgeon itself represents Beardy’s clan, who were traditionally teachers and healers.

Kopelow artist talk

Thanks to all who came out to Salon Night at Platform last night with Gerry Kopelow! Now a few photos from his artist talk on Monday....be sure to read Helen Delacretaz' response to Where the Buddha Walked when you're at the gallery!

Calling all photographers -- Salon Night at Platform tonight!

Check out the front cover of today's Uniter for an image from Gerry Kopelow's current show in Gallery 1C03 "Where the Buddha Walked". Exhibition is up until November 20.
Photographers: bring some of your recent works and join us tonight at 7:30 p.m. at Platform Gallery (121-100 Arthur Street) for Salon Night crits with Gerry!

Gerry Kopelow

The University of Winnipeg presents a double solo exhibition on campus:

GERRY KOPELOW
Where the Buddha Walked (Gallery 1C03)
Forty Years Ago Today (Hamilton Galleria & University Archives)

October 21 – November 20, 2010
Opening reception: Thursday, October 21, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.(Gallery 1C03)
Public artist talk: Monday, October 25, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
(Manitoba Boardroom, Room 2M70, 2nd floor of Manitoba Hall)
Salon Night: Thursday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m.
(Platform: Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, 121-100 Arthur Street)

In a double solo exhibition on campus, The University of Winnipeg will present two distinct bodies of work created by Winnipeg photographer Gerry Kopelow. While Where The Buddha Walked and Forty Years Ago Today tackle different subjects and are separated in time by four decades, they are connected as integral moments in Kopelow's artistic career. Forty Years Ago Today consists of black and white shots of Canadian youth culture from 1969-70, taking viewers back to the origins of Kopelow's photographic practice. Capturing spontaneous moments of the youth hippie scene of the day, the emerging photographer worked in the tradition of W. Eugene Smith and Henri Cartier-Bresson. These images will be shown in the Hamilton Galleria and University Archives, both located in The University of Winnipeg’s Library.

Kopelow's photographic pursuit of the “decisive moment” in the late-1960s indirectly led him to study Eastern meditational practices and, ultimately, the methods of mental cultivation invented and taught by the historical Buddha. For years, Kopelow has pursued the meditative life that he was introduced to by his meticulous approach to photography. In 2006 and 2007, Kopelow found himself travelling to India to visit historical sites associated with the life of the Buddha: the places where he is said to have been born, achieved his realizations, taught, meditated and died. The results of Kopelow's pilgrimmage are the subjects of the photographs in Where the Buddha Walked, which will be presented at Gallery 1C03.

Gerry Kopelow is an internationally published photographer, author and educator. As an emerging artist in the late-1960s, his photographic work received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada. Kopelow subsequently established himself as an award winning commercial photographer, producing projects for various corporate, institutional and government clients. His writing and photographs have appeared in professional journals and his books on photography are widely respected as definitive works in the field. He has lectured and delivered workshops at various academic institutions including the University of Florida, The Georgia Institute of Technology, The Pratt Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also teaches architectural photography regularly at the Cooper Union in New York. Kopelow's most recent publication is All Our Changes: Images from the Sixties Generation, Photographs by Gerry Kopelow (2009, University of Manitoba Press) and reproduces photographs that will be presented in Forty Years Ago Today. Where The Buddha Walked and Forty Years Ago Today are the first public solo presentations of Kopelow's non-commercial photography in nearly four decades. Gallery 1C03 gratefully acknowledges the partnership of Platform: Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts for hosting Gerry Kopelow at their Salon Night event.

Contact:
Jennifer Gibson, Curator, Gallery 1C03
The University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9
Ph: 204.786.9253
F: 204.774.4134
E: j.gibson@uwinnipeg.ca
http://www.uwinnipeg.ca/index/gerry-kopelow
http://gallery1c03.blogspot.com/

Regular Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday, noon - 4 p.m.
Saturday: 1 - 4 p.m.
Closed Remembrance Day

Admission is free to all events and all are welcome!

Cinema Politica: Club Native

Gallery 1C03 & The University of Winnipeg Students’ Association will screen Club Native
WINNIPEG MB, October 13, 2010

Together as part of the international documentary screening network Cinema Politica, Gallery 1C03 and The University of Winnipeg Students’ Association (UWSA) are pleased to present the film Club Native at Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall on Tuesday, October 19 at 7 p.m.

Written and directed by Tracey Deer (NFB, 2008), Club Native is a candid and deeply moving look at the pain, confusion and frustration suffered by many First Nations people as they struggle for the most important right of all: the right to belong.

On the Mohawk reserve of Kahnawaké, located just outside the city of Montréal, there are two firm but unspoken rules drummed into every member of the community: Do not marry a white person and do not have a child with a white person. The potential consequences of ignoring these rules – loss of membership on the reserve, for yourself and your child – are clear, and for those who incur them, devastating. Break the rules, and you also risk being perceived as having betrayed the Mohawk Nation by diluting the "purity" of the bloodline.

In Club Native, filmmaker Tracey Deer uses Kahnawaké, her hometown, as a lens to probe deeply into the history and contemporary reality of Aboriginal identity. Following the stories of four women, she reveals the exclusionary attitudes that divide the community and many others like it across Canada. Deer traces the roots of the problem, from the advent of the highly discriminatory Indian Act through the controversy of Bill C31, up to the present day, where membership on the reserve is determined by a council of Mohawk elders, whose rulings often appear inconsistent. And with her own home as a poignant case study, she raises a difficult question faced by people of many ethnicities across the world: What roles do bloodline and culture play in determining identity?

Club Native was selected for screening by the Aboriginal Student Council at The University of Winnipeg. Special guest Dr. Brian Rice, member of the Kahnawaké community and faculty member of the Department of Education at The University of Winnipeg, will facilitate discussion after the film.

For more information about Club Native, please visit: http://www.cinemapolitica.org/node/1927 or
http://films.nfb.ca/club-native/. For more information about the Cinema Politica network, please visit www.cinemapolitica.org.

All screenings will be open to all audiences – everyone is welcome. Our screenings will always be free, but donations to offset costs are welcome. Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall is located on the third floor of Centennial Hall at The University of Winnipeg.

Gallery 1C03 and the UWSA wish to thank Cinema Politica for making it possible for us to participate in this network. We are grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for generously supporting this initiative.

Work-Study Program Job Openings

The University of Winnipeg

WORK-STUDY PROJECT APPLICATION 2010/2011

Deadline for submission of application to the Awards & Financial Aid Office: October 20, 2010

PLEASE TYPE OR PRINT

Department: Art Curator Project Supervisor: Jennifer Gibson

Room #: 4M58 Telephone#: 204.786.9253

____________________________________________________________

Position 1:

Detailed Description of Project & Duties:

The Art Curator department seeks a work-study student to assist with registration and maintenance of The University of Winnipeg’s Fine Art Collection. Duties will include: conducting research on individual artists and artworks; updating information in the electronic database (i.e. insurance and appraisal records, condition reports, loan information, etc.); moving and assisting in the hanging of artworks; preparing identification labels; photographing artworks; maintaining the art storage facility and carefully cleaning artworks. The student may also be asked to assist with research, public/educational programming, and/or installation pertaining to Gallery 1C03 and other exhibit spaces on campus.

Please note: this project description offers an excellent opportunity for any student interested gallery or museum work from a curatorial and collections management standpoint. Individuals interested in research and archives, more generally, will find this experience beneficial to future work in a related field, as well. It is important that the campus collection and gallery be harnessed as a resource for hands-on career training and students who gain this type of work experience now will have a much better chance of working in their preferred field following graduation.

Required Qualifications: (Outline skills, academic program/courses, if applicable)

Preference will be given to students with a background in art -- ideally art history majors, or students with previous work experience in a gallery or museum setting. Good research, writing, and computer skills are assets, as are organizational skills and the ability to work independently. The ability to move and handle art is also an important consideration; training on careful handling techniques will be provided. Students from other disciplines will be considered.

Project start date: As soon as possible.
Length of project (# of hours): The maximum (120 hours).
Specific days of week: Flexible
Specific hours of work: Flexible
Flexible: Yes
REMINDER: All projects must end by March 31, 2011

_____________________________________________________________________

Position 2:

Detailed Description of Project & Duties:
A student performing art exhibition programming assistance will be offered opportunities to develop skills researching contemporary art practices, working with professional contemporary artists, coordinating and delivering public programming, and contributing to marketing and communication efforts. Curatorial research assistance opportunities will be available to explore future art programming on campus. The student may also be asked to assist with installation pertaining to Gallery 1C03 and other exhibit spaces on campus as well as assisting with the preparation of grant applications for exhibitions.

This project description offers an excellent opportunity for a student interested in art exhibition programming. The student will be guided through the protocols of contacting local artists to gather materials relating to past projects for closer study, and through the course of this research, the student will gain insight into the process of selection, commissioning strategies, budget development, and eventually grant application procedures. The student will experience the interdisciplinary nature of art curation and identify how art projects link to a range of curricula on campus.

Required Qualifications: (Outline skills, academic program/courses, if applicable)

Preference will be given to students with a background in art, ideally art history majors, or students with previous work experience in a gallery or museum setting. Good research, writing, and computer skills are assets, as are presentation and organizational skills, and the ability to work independently. Students from other disciplines may be considered on an individual basis.

Project start date: As soon as possible.
Length of project (# of hours): The maximum (120 hours).
Specific days of week: Flexible
Specific hours of work: Flexible
Flexible: Yes
REMINDER: All projects must end by March 31, 2011

Artwork of the Week!

Week 19:

Caroline Dukes (1929-2003)
Landscape #49
1987
Acrylic and charcoal on canvas

Born and raised in Hungary, Caroline Dukes studied sculpture privately and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Budapest in the late-1940s and early-1950s. She moved with her young family to Canada in 1958 and put her art studies on hold until 1968 when she enrolled in the School of Art at the University of Manitoba, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1972. Initially Dukes’ paintings revealed the stylistic influence of her School of Art teacher Ivan Eyre, but she eventually branched off to a more expressive mode of communication, as can be seen in the loose brushstrokes of Landscape #49. Although Dukes numbered many of her landscape paintings, this particular image is part of a series alternatively titled Apple Pickers or Apples of Sodom. In this series, as in many of her works, Dukes is concerned with the state of humanity and she uses her art to point to larger societal issues. Specifically, Dukes stated that ‘the apple became a symbol of moral decadence; corruption; indifference; violence; greed’ (interview with the artist, Autumn, 2001). Here, a biblical theme is revisited with a twist: a group of voluptuous nude male and female figures push and shove one another in order to grasp the choicest of the forbidden fruit. The large scale of this work is typical of Dukes’ art; in her later years, her paintings became even more monumental in scale, ‘a testament,’ as art historian Claudine Majzels has written,’ to her stamina, survival, and endurance’ (Cities, 8).

Shaughnessy Park School visit

On Thursday, September 30 Sashira Gafic brought a great group of grade 7 & 8 students from Shaughnessy Park School to Gallery 1C03 for a tour and drawing exercise related to the Dominique Rey: Pilgrims exhibition. The students produced some very freaky drawings, a few samples which you can see above. More images can be found at the album we created on Facebook.

Thanks for coming guys, and thanks again to art educator Tracy Woodward for leading the group and to Victoria Nikkel for helping out!

Artwork of the Week!

Artwork of the Week!
Week 18:

Ernest Wilson (1933-1987)
Self-portrait (profile)
1957
Ink on paper

This self-portrait was created two years after Ernest Wilson completed his Diploma of Art at the University of Manitoba. Throughout his lifetime, Wilson produced many drawings of himself and he used them as opportunities to capture his noticeably striking, blunt features, but also as a means by which to reveal his brooding intensity. A contemporary of fellow Winnipeg artists Bruce Head, Winston Leathers, Ivan Eyre and Kelly Clark, Wilson was interested in Surrealism early on in his career. When travelling in Europe in 1957, he met renowned Surrealist artist Max Ernst at a café in Paris. Besides drawing intimate sketches of himself and others, Wilson painted large-scale surreal landscape scenes. In order to support himself, Wilson worked as a graphic designer at Pollard Banknote Limited for nearly twenty-five years and he was recognized across the country as a top graphic designer. An excellent writer as well, Wilson penned passionate articles for ArtsWest magazine in the 1970s in a regular column titled “view from the Plain.”

Children of the Earth School visit

A few days ago, we received a visit from the grade 11 art class at Children of the Earth School. Our volunteer art educator extraordinaire Tracy Woodward developed a program for the Pilgrims exhibition and led the group through it. As you can see, the activity involved a drawing exercise where the students were encouraged to re-interpret works in the exhibition and also create self-portraits that included a "freakish" element. Above are some examples of what they did.....awesome work! If you want to see more photos, check out the album on our facebook page.


Thanks to teacher Moraina Hochman for bring her class and to the students for their participation....we hope to see you back again soon!

Artwork of the Week!

Week 17:

Sheila Spence (born 1952)
Chris, West Broadway
1997
Black and white silver print

Winnipeg artist Sheila Spence studied photography at Red River College and at residencies in Banff, Quebec and Great Britain. Spence has gained respect for her strong photographic portraits which often have an underlying socio-political message. During the 1990s, she worked with Noreen Stevens under the name Average Good Looks and placed positive images of gays and lesbians in the public domain. In 1997, Spence engaged in a photographic project that was to prove controversial for crossing conventional boundaries of class and race. At the same time, Spence lived in the West Broadway community bordering the University of Winnipeg, a neighbourhood that had been labeled negatively by the media as a result of youth gang violence. The artist decided to photograph the children and teenagers in the area and allowed them to pose as they wished. Some of the kids flashed hand signals that referenced the language of the streets, while other portraits, like Chris, West Broadway, are seemingly casual shots of happy-go-lucky adolescents. When Gallery 1C03 attempted to present Spence’s West Broadway series in a solo exhibition in 1999, some community members objected to the art, resulting in the removal of the portraits and their replacement with blank canvases on which the public could voice their opinions of the situation.

Pilgrims review in today's Free Press!

Check this out....Alison Gillmor's review of Dominique Rey: Pilgrims in today's Winnipeg Free Press!

Artwork of the Week!

Artwork of the Week!
Week 16:

E.J. (Ted) Howorth (born 1943)
The Double Crossing
1979
Silkscreen

Originally trained as a sculptor, Ted Howorth began experimenting with silkscreen prints at the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop in 1970. Howorth’s psychedelic images of the 1970s are characterized by flat blocks of bright, solid colour bordered with heavy black outlines. By the middle of the decade he was incorporating photographic images into his prints as can be seen in The Double Crossing, which includes a black and white picture of a rural Manitoba blizzard. The Double Crossing was produced in Paris during Howorth’s apprenticeship at Atelier Arcay and the subject of the piece reflects the artist’s interest in human-powered vehicles. At the time, American aeronautical engineer Paul MacCready had designed a human-powered aircraft called The Gossamer Albatross –a simplified rendering of it is included at the left of this work – that won the Kremer prize for successfully crossing the English Channel. At the same time, Howorth was crossing the Atlantic Ocean to begin work in France. The small figure in the centre holding a camera is fellow Winnipeg artist Don Proch. Two years earlier, Howorth had travelled to France with colleagues Proch and Bill Lobchuk for an exhibition of prints from the Grand Western Canadian Screen Shop. The title Double Crossing thus comes from the idea of two separate crossings of bodies of water – MacCready’s and Howorth’s.

Pilgrims makes cover of Uniter!

Dominique Rey's oil painting Romp is on the cover of the current issue of The Uniter, the UofW student newspaper! Look inside as well for a review of the Pilgrims exhibition by Robin Dudgeon.

Later this afternoon, you can catch Dominique speaking about the exhibition on CKUW 95.9 FM in Winnipeg. The program will air live from 5:30 - 6:00 p.m. CST.

Cinema Politica film screening

Gallery 1C03 and the UWSA are pleased to host our first film screening of the 2010-11 season as part of the international documentary screening network Cinema Politica.

Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, will be shown in Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall (3rd floor, Centennial Hall) on Tuesday, September 28 at 7:00 p.m. in conjunction with Freestyle IV, a week long festival organized by the UWSA where inner city youth, community members and students are invited to learn and create in a highly structured (and artistically driven) programming environment at The University of Winnipeg.

Directed by Byron Hurt (USA, 2007), Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is an in-depth look at manhood, sexism and homophobia in rap music and hip-hop culture. Hurt, former star college quarterback, longtime hip-hop fan and gender violence prevention educator, conceived the documentary as a "loving critique" of a number of disturbing trends in the world of rap music. He pays tribute to hip-hop while challenging the rap music industry to take responsibility for glamorizing destructive, deeply conservative stereotypes of manhood.

The documentary features revealing interviews about masculinity and sexism with rappers such as Mos Def, Fat Joe, Chuck D, Jadakiss and Busta Rhymes, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons and cultural commentators such as Michael Eric Dyson and Beverly Guy-Shetfall. Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes is critically acclaimed for its fearless engagement with issues of race, gender violence and the corporate exploitation of youth culture.

Please stay for discussion after the film screening facilitated by Dr. Roewan Crowe of the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Institute of Women’s and Gender Studies.

All screenings will be open to all audiences – everyone is welcome. Our screenings will always be free, but donations to offset costs are welcome.

Gallery 1C03 and the UWSA wish to thank Cinema Politica for making it possible for us to participate in this network. We are grateful to the Canada Council for the Arts for generously supporting this initiative.

Culture Days at Gallery 1C03

Gallery 1C03 is pleased to be part of Culture Days!

In conjunction with this nation-wide celebration, we will offer a FREE all ages drawing and mask-making workshop in the Gallery led by artist and art educator Tracy Woodward on Saturday, September 25. The workshop will complement Gallery 1C03 's current exhibition Dominique Rey: Pilgrims. The public can drop by any time between 1:00 and 4:00 p.m. to view the exhibition and take part in a workshop if they wish.

Image: Dominique Rey, General Infinite Love, 2008, oil on canvas, 42" x 30". Courtesy of the artist.

For more information on this event, please visit http://www.culturedays.ca/en/celebration-schedule/view/4c7fff3d-fd8c-4df2-a068-25e64c4a89be.

Hope to see you here!

Artwork of the Week!

Week 15:

Bruce Head (born 1931)
Conversation
1957
Oil on canvas

Ever since Winnipeg artist Bruce Head graduated from the School of Art at the University of Manitoba in 1953, his bold, abstract paintings, prints and sculptures have garnered attention. Like his comrades Ernest Wilson and Frank Mikuska, Head was employed for many years as a graphic designer. In fact, Head and Mikuska worked together as graphic artists for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. But Head’s day job did not prevent him from establishing an active career in visual art. Over the years, he received many local commissions, most notably the expansive circular sculptured concrete wall in the underground concourse at Portage and Main.

Head’s earliest commission, however, was a large mural for the Manitoba Teacher’s college in 1959. This work, titled The Seasons, is stylistically similar to the early painting Conversation. Both works demonstrate thorny enclosed shapes and sections of brilliant colour that seem to dance energetically across the surface. The dark outlines of Conversation become more dense in the middle of the canvas to suggest an encounter of meeting.

Artwork of the Week!

Artwork of the Week!
Week 14:

Eva Stubbs (born 1925)
Self-portrait with Skulls
1999
Charcoal and conté on paper

Eva Stubbs was born in Hungary. She completed a Diploma of Fine Arts from the University of Manitoba in 1957, but did not begin a regular art practice until 1974. Best known as a sculptor working both figuratively and abstractly in clay and bronze, Stubbs turns to drawing on occasion in order to create something less labour intensive and more immediate. In the somber Self-portrait with Skulls, Stubbs recalls the turbulent personal history of her formative years. She depicts a vision of her youthful self enclosed in a window-like shape, physically separated from the drawn face that she identifies as her mother, in the upper right, and the skeletons that are her ancestors, at the upper left. At the age of four, her parents left Hungary for South America, taking her older brother with them, but leaving the artist in the care of her father’s brother and his wife. Although her parents returned to Europe several years later and she lived with them for a year in Spain, Stubbs was sent back to stay with her uncle and aunt after civil war broke out. Only at the age of fourteen was she reunited with her family, this time in Tangier, where they stayed until they could secure safe passage to Canada in 1944.

Artwork of the Week!

Week 13:

Kelly Clark (1935-1995)
Untitled (Delta 1980)
1980
Watercolour and Collage

During the summers of 1978 through 1982, Kelly Clark retreated to a cottage at the marshy Delta beach on the southern shore of Lake Manitoba. This was a time for contemplation and personal introspection when Clark could escape the stress of the city; it also signaled a reprieve from the substance abuse that had consumed his life. Artistically, Clark switched gears at this time too, depicting the open vistas of the prairie landscape that surrounded him. Sometimes turbulent, at other times serene, the intimate watercolours and collages that Clark created in situ were often reworked as large acrylics on canvas during the winters spent at his Winnipeg studio. The Delta landscapes were Clark’s most commercially viable pieces; they funded his stays at the cottage and many years later he visited this theme, producing additional works in various media. Untitled (Delta 1980) is the earliest of four small paintings in the University’s collection that was created by Clark at the rural retreat.

Artwork of the Week!

Artwork of the Week!
Week 12:

Eleanor Bond (born 1948)
Another Fallen Convertible
1980
Lithograph

After pursuing studies in interior design, English and comparative religion, Eleanor Bond completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the University of Manitoba with a major in printmaking. Like her contemporary Wanda Koop, Bond is well-travelled and this has affected her art. Another Fallen Convertible is from a group of lithographs she produced shortly after she had spent time in places as disparate as Texas, India and the Columbian Icefields of the Canadian Rockies. Her prints of this period show small vehicles with no one behind the wheel amid treacherous mountain landscapes. Bond commented on this early series to Robert Enright:

“I think often when you’ve been traveling and you come back there’s a sense that nothing has changed. So this work was about not becoming complacent, about being on the road and taking chances. It was fairly metaphorical, not in a physical sense but in an intellectual and spiritual sense.” (Enright, “The Comfort of Edges”, 12)

From the mid-1980s until the present day, Bond has built her reputation as a painter of large urban landscapes that hover between utopian/hopeful and dystopian/hopeless visions of the future. Like Another Fallen Convertible, Bond’s paintings are depopulated but they show plentiful evidence of the human environment, thereby enabling individuals to project themselves into her scenes. And while the perspective Bond employed in Another Fallen Convertible seems disconcerting, the artist has become known for engaging viewers with even more dizzying aerial views.

Artwork of the Week!

Week 11:

Walter J. Phillips (1884-1963)
Grain Elevators
1939
Watercolour

Artist, teacher and writer Walter J. Phillips is recognized locally, nationally and internationally for his colour woodblock prints and watercolours. Mostly self-taught, Phillips was born in England and immigrated to Winnipeg in 1913. For several years, he was an instructor at St. John’s Technical High School and wrote a regular art column for the Winnipeg Tribune. In his own work, Phillips was able to adapt English watercolour techniques to the prairie landscape. His early Canadian images consist largely of scenes from Lake of the Woods, where he and his family rented a cottage each summer. Starting in 1926, Phillips traveled west and began painting the Rocky Mountains and the people and landscapes of the British Columbia coast.

A great deal of his work during the 1930s, however, also took inspiration from his wanderings around Manitoba. A much-loved subject was the grain elevator, upon which he commented in Duncan Campbell Scott’s 1947 monograph Walter J. Phillips:

“You can see an elevator ten miles away as you drive along a prairie road. We used to drive so much and over such uninteresting ground that elevators were glimpsed with joy. They stood up like beacons, and betokened a village, with gas or food or whatever our needs might be. I have a warm feeling for the elevator. Someone said that it expressed the only original architectural thought in the history of Canada.” (Scott, 26)

Phillips often identified the specific location of his elevator paintings and this image may in fact depict Headingly, Manitoba. Grain Elevators reflects the characteristic control and sensitivity with which Phillips handled his subjects and it was painted when the artist was in his prime; he had just been elected a full member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 1933.

In 1941, Phillips moved to Calgary to teach at the Alberta Institute of Technology and Art. He later retired to Victoria, where he died, but he is most often recognized as a Winnipeg artist and his contribution to the development of the local scene was significant.

Artwork of the Week!

Week 10:

Winston Leathers (1932-2004)
Periodic Dynamic Field
1969
Silkscreen

Painter, printmaker, poet and professor Winston Leathers graduated from the University of Manitoba School of Art in 1956 and studied art education in the late-1950s. A design instructor at Winnipeg’s Tech-Voc High School for ten years, Leathers joined the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Manitoba in 1969, where he taught until his retirement in 1993.

Leathers experimented with new materials and techniques throughout his artistic career. An example of this is Periodic Dynamic Field which was included in the 2005 Gallery 1C03 and Gallery One One One joint exhibition Winston Leathers: In the Moment. Periodic Dynamic Field wdas one of the artist’s earliest images that used plastic as a printing medium and employed new fluorographic and metallic inks, causing parts of the work to glow under black light conditions. The hard edges, geometric shapes and bold colours of this print represent a shift from the compositions Leathers produced earlier in the decade. However, this work also incorporates painterly calligraphic markings that reflect the artist’s abiding interest in the teachings of Zen philosophy. In writing about a slightly later series of prints, Cosmic Variations, for which he is perhaps best known, Leathers explained the purpose behind his art: ‘As for my own work I hope to evoke a sense of wonder I see around me, not as a pictorial souvenir, nor as an equivalent of what I see, but as a personal statement of order and beauty.’ (Winston Leathers’ Cosmic Variations, unpaginated)

2010-2011 Programming

Check out our line-up for 2010-2011!

Dominique Rey: Pilgrims (September 9 - October 9, 2010)

Gerry Kopelow: Where The Buddha Walked (Gallery 1C03) AND Gerry Kopelow: Forty Years Ago Today (Hamilton Galleria & University of Winnipeg Archives) (October 21 - November 20, 2010)

Scott Stephens (January 20 - February 19, 2011)

Robert Kelly: Minutia (March 3 - April 2, 2011

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Gallery 1C03 presents
Dominique Rey: Pilgrims
September 9 - October 9, 2010

Performance by the Abzurbs: Thursday, September 9, 2:30 - 3:30 p.m.
(front lawn of The University of Winnipeg)

Opening reception: Thursday, September 9, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.
(Gallery 1C03)

Public artist talk: Friday, September 17, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
(Room 2C15, 2nd floor, Centennial Hall)


Dominique Rey, General Infinite Love, 2008, oil on canvas, 42" x 30" - Image courtesy of the artist

Throughout her artistic practice, Winnipegger Dominique Rey has been fascinated by representations of the other — a figure both real and imagined — and the ways this figure embodies our deepest fears, our suppressed longings and the infinite complexities of human life. Gallery 1C03 will present Pilgrims, a series of Rey's oil paintings and ink drawings that explore notions of the “unbeautiful” and how the unbeautiful becomes permissible, and even desirable, via performance and public display.

To accompany this exhibition and coincide with the festive atmosphere of The University of Winnipeg's Orientation Week, Gallery 1C03 and the University of Winnipeg Students Association will co-present a participatory performance by the Abzurbs, a collective of artists and musicians that merges burlesque, performance, music and visual art, evoking the grotesque through absurd and purposeless play. Dominique Rey is a founding member of the Abzurbs and their use of the mask and adoption of unconventional physical traits are vehicles of self-transformation which can be seen in Pilgrims.

Working in photography, video, painting and performance, Dominique Rey completed a BFA in painting at the University of Manitoba (1999), a MFA in photography in 2007 at Bard College (New York) and is currently pursuing a MFA in New Media via Berlin's Transart Institute. Her work has been shown in solo exhibitions at Plug In ICA, Clark Gallery, Michael Gibson Gallery, Alternator Gallery, Gallery TPW, Truck Gallery, Gallery One One One and La Maison des artistes. Rey has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Manitoba Arts Council, the Winnipeg Arts Council, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and the Ricard Foundation. Her work has been reviewed in the Globe & Mail, Frieze, Canadian Art, Border Crossings and the Winnipeg Free Press. In addition to her visual work, Dominique Rey's activities include performing with the Abzurbs, teaching, presenting lectures and curating. Rey was a member of the Board of Directors of Ace Art Inc. from 2002-2009, and a MAWA mentor in 2008/09 in collaboration with La Maison des artistes. She is presently Winnipeg's Visual Arts Ambassador for the duration of the city's designation as Cultural Capital of Canada in 2010.

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Gallery 1C03 presents
Gerry Kopelow: Where The Buddha Walked
October 21 - November 20, 2010

AND

Hamilton Galleria & University of Winnipeg Archives present
Gerry Kopelow: Forty Years Ago Today
October 21 - November 20, 2010

Opening reception: Thursday, October 21, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
(Gallery 1C03)

Public artist talk: Monday, October 25, 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
(Manitoba Boardroom, Room 2M70)

Salon Night: Thursday, October 28 at 7:30 p.m.
(Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts, 121-100 Arthur Street)


Gerry Kopelow, Buddhist Shrine, Bohdgaya, India, 2006-07, digital image - Image courtesy of the artist


Gerry Kopelow, Niverville Participants, 1969/2010, digital image scanned from black and white silver negatives - Image courtesy of the artist

In a double solo exhibition on campus, The University of Winnipeg will present two distinct bodies of work created by Winnipeg photographer Gerry Kopelow. While Where The Buddha Walked and Forty Years Ago Today are different in subject matter and separated in time by four decades, they are connected as integral moments in Kopelow's artistic career. Forty Years Ago Today consists of black and white shots of Canadian youth culture from 1969-70, taking viewers back to the origins of Kopelow's photographic practice. Capturing spontaneous moments of the youth hippie scene of the day, the emerging photographer worked in the tradition of W. Eugene Smith and Henri Cartier-Bresson. These images will be shown in the University's Hamilton Galleria and Archives, both located in the University's Library.

Kopelow's photographic pursuit of the “decisive moment” in the late-1960s indirectly led him to study Eastern meditational practices and, ultimately, the methods of mental cultivation invented and taught by the historical Buddha. For years, Kopelow has pursued the meditative life that he was introduced to by his meticulous approach to photography. In 2006 and 2007, Kopelow found himself travelling to India to visit historical sites associated with the life of the Buddha: the places where he is said to have been born, achieved his realizations, taught, meditated and died. The results of Kopelow's pilgrimmage are the subjects of the photographs in Where The Buddha Walked, which will be presented at Gallery 1C03.

Gerry Kopelow is an internationally published photographer, author and educator. As an emerging artist in the late-1960s, his photographic work received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and the National Film Board of Canada. Kopelow subsequently established himself as an award winning commercial photographer, producing projects for various corporate, institutional and government clients. His writing and photographs have appeared in professional journals and his books on photography are widely respected as definitive works in the field. He has lectured and delivered workshops at various academic institutions including the University of Florida, The Georgia Institute of Technology, The Pratt Institute and the Harvard Graduate School of Design. He also teaches architectural photography regularly at the Cooper Union in New York. Kopelow's most recent publication is All Our Changes: Images from the Sixties Generation, Photographs by Gerry Kopelow (2009, University of Manitoba Press) and reproduces photographs that will be presented in Forty Years Ago Today. Where The Buddha Walked and Forty Years Ago Today are the first public solo presentations of Kopelow's non-commercial photography in nearly four decades.

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Gallery 1C03 presents
Scott Stephens
January 20 - February 19, 2011

Opening reception: Thursday, January 20 from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
(Gallery 1C03)

Public artist talk: Friday, January 21 from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
(Room 2C14)


Scott Stephens, Unsacred #4, 2010, digital image - Image courtesy of the artist

Gallery 1C03 is proud to host Scott Stephens' first solo exhibition. Stephens will present new and recent digital images and a single channel video installation that draw, in part, upon research he conducted while studying at The University of Winnipeg. His exhibition will explore liminality through an investigation of the landscape and the Windigokan, a contrary figure in traditional Anishinabe society.

Operating on the fringe of traditional Anishinabe culture, the Windigokan represents the opposite of accepted norms. Stephens contends that, like clowns or misfits in other cultures, the Windigokan use their backwardness to teach others and that their contrary nature represents a powerful symbol that has received little attention to date, both within and outside of Anishinabe society. His landscape studies suggest the imagined physical space from which contrariness might originate and his depictions of material manifestations of the Windigokan will open discussion about this sacred society and the importance of deviant cultural figures. Stephens' show is co-presented as a satellite exhibition of Plug In ICA's Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, a large-scale exhibition of contemporary Indigenous art from around the world that serves as the banner project for Winnipeg's Cultural Capital of Canada 2010 Program.

Scott Stephens is an emerging Anishinabe artist based in Winnipeg who works in photography, printmaking and video, among other media. Stephens obtained a BA in Psychology and Religious Studies from The University of Winnipeg (2002) and has completed mentorships and workshops with Manitoba Printmakers Association (Martha Street Studio) and Aboriginal Film Training. In the past four years, Stephens has been awarded grants from the Manitoba Arts Council and the Winnipeg Arts Council for his artistic work. Although Stephens has taken part in several group exhibitions across Canada and in North Dakota, most notably in Subconscious City at the Winnipeg Art Gallery (2008), this project represents his first solo exhibition in a public gallery. Later in 2011, work from Stephens' series of prints exploring inter-cultural conflict will be the focus of a second solo show at Martha Street Studio.

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Gallery 1C03 presents
Robert Kelly: Minutia
March 3 - April 2, 2011

Opening reception: Thursday, March 3 from 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
(Gallery 1C03)

Public artist talk: Friday, March 4 from 12:30 - 1:30 p.m.
(Room 2C14)

Artist workshop on “Bookworks in the Digital Age and Their Continued Relevance”: (Platform Centre for Photographic + Digital Arts; date and time TBD)

Artist workshop on “The Book as Art” for The Writers Collective: location and time TBD


Robert Kelly, The Book of A (detail), 2004, hard cover book - Image courtesy of the artist

Calgary-based artist Robert Kelly will present Minutia at Gallery 1C03, a conceptual installation consisting of eleven books of concrete poetry displayed on lecterns arranged in a circular formation. The bookworks are based on the eleven words from the sentence fragment “the first time I heard the sound of a page turning.” The essence of this installation is that awareness of minutiae is fundamental to meaningfulness. Minutia demonstrates this by isolating and recontextualizing components from the English language to create an arena in which to explore meaning.

Robert Kelly is a conceptual artist and educator who works in various media that include painting, printmaking, installation and performance. Kelly teaches creativity theory and practice, studio art and design and curriculum theory and design for the faculties of art and education at the University of Calgary. The editor of two recent publications on creativity as a primary rationale for education, Kelly has delivered many lectures and workshops on the subject of creativity and educational practice and serves as a consultant for the new Fine Arts Curriculum Initiative for the Alberta Ministry of Education. Kelly has presented his art in solo and group exhibitions across Alberta and in British Columbia and Ontario. Since its initial presentation at the Nickle Arts Museum in Calgary, Minutia has also been shown at the Maltwood Gallery in Victoria and at the McIntosh Gallery in London, Ontario. Minutia is Robert Kelly's first solo exhibition in Manitoba.

Gallery 1C03 gratefully acknowledges financial assistance from the Manitoba Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Regular Gallery Hours:
Monday - Friday, noon - 4 p.m.
Saturday: 1 - 4 p.m.
Closed Thanksgiving Day, Remembrance Day and Louis Riel Day.

Contact:
Jennifer Gibson
Curator, Gallery 1C03
The University of Winnipeg
515 Portage Avenue
Winnipeg, MB R3B 2E9
Ph: 204.786.9253
F: 204.774.4134
E: j.gibson@uwinnipeg.ca

Artwork of the Week!

Week 9:

Diana Thorneycroft (born 1956)
Self-portrait in Field of Dolls II
1989
Black and white silver print

Internationally recognized photographer Diana Thorneycroft obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba’s School of Art and subsequently studied at the University of Wisconsin, where she received a Master of Arts in Art. Until the late-1980s, Thorneycroft concentrated primarily on drawing and printmaking. Self-portrait in Field of Dolls II was one of the first successful photographs she produced. Shot with infrared film on a warm summer night in a friend’s yard in Winnipeg, the subject matter and theatricality of this piece is indicative of the direction that Thorneycroft’s photographs would take in the years ahead. From exhibitions Touching: The Self, in which this image was included, to The Body, its lesson and camouflage, the artist spent several years photographing her own body, examining issues of gender, identity, vulnerability, the subconscious and the grotesque. Thorneycroft has also worked with dolls in both her photographic practice and in her drawings for more than twenty years. Employing them as human surrogates, Thorneycroft not only laid down beside dolls, she has distorted and manipulated them to act as metaphors for pain and suffering. Technically beautiful, Thorneycroft’s images are always challenging and they often raise disturbing questions about our psyche.

Artwork of the Week!

Week 8:

Nikola Bjelajac (1919-2006)
Kennedy Street
1961
Watercolour

Milwaukee born Nikola Bjelajac is most recognized for his teaching contributions. He obtained undergraduate and graduate degrees in Art Education from the Milwaukee State Teachers’ College and the University of Wisconsin respectively. After completing his studies, Bjelajac immigrated to Canada where he taught drawing and painting at the Universities of Saskatchewan and Manitoba and at the Banff school of Fine Arts. In 1964, Bjelajac and fellow artist Steve Repa founded the Forum Art Institute in Winnipeg, a not-for-profit art school that continues to operate today. Although Bjelajac spent most of his time teaching, he pursued his artistic work during summer months. The University of Winnipeg owns three watercolours by Bjelajac, the medium in which he excelled. All three images, including Kennedy Street, are studies of urban architecture and their vibrant colour schemes and expressive brush strokes signal the activity of the city. In Kennedy Street, one distinct architectural element is certainly recognizable: the dome of Manitoba’s Legislature is visible beyond the apartment buildings in the foreground.

CITY.BLOCK.STOP

CITY.BLOCK.STOP

Check out the new sculpture by David Perrett on Ellice, created as a public art project for the University of Winnipeg Gateway and Transit project.

City.Block.Stop
David Perrett, 2010
Tyndall Limestone, Mariash Limestone, Sandstone, Slate, Steel, Glass, Moss
Public Art Program - Winnipeg Arts Council
Collection of the City of Winnipeg