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.