Community Visions

The Great Hall
September 20, 2008 - January 4, 2009

Community Visions was the first exhibition of local artists that offered an eclectic and diverse range of visual experiences. This exhibition featured 19 local artists who explored Abbotsford's history and cultural diversity and investigated issues including immigration, multiculturalism, industry, the environment and the Sto:lo First Nations. The art works were selected by jury and explored three themes that reflected significant aspects of Abbotsford history and culture: People of the Valley, highlighting the Sto:lo people, immigration and multiculturalism; People of the Land, exploring commerce, industry and agriculture; and People of the River, examining how the natural waterways influenced the environment and people who lived in this region. The participating artists provided the public with a unique opportunity to learn about the community from diverse perspectives and make creative connections between visual art and the historical exhibition in a dynamic way.

Participating artists:
Vicky Bach
Jaspreet Brar
Sherry Dunn
Paul Eccles
Natasha Froese
Sheila Kirk
Neil Loewen
Tony Mayo
Barb Pearson
Vicki Peters
John Peters
Dianna Ponting
Myrtle-Anne Rempel
Eugene Ristau
Pauline Roberts
Stephen Shaoqin Chen
Steve Stanczyk
Lilly Thorne
Norm Williams

Jury Members:
Jacqueline Nolte, Head, Visual Art Department, University of the Fraser Valley
Brian Foreman, Assistant Curator, Surrey Art Gallery
Scott Marsden, Curator, The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford

Pendulum Collaborations:
Haeseker and Hall

The Great Hall
January 15 - March 8, 2009

Taking time from their solo art careers, contemporary masters of hyperrealism, John Hall of Kelowna, BC and Alexandra Haeseker of Calgary, AB, have worked together to bring you Pendulum Collaborations.

Beginning at the conceptual level through conversations and letters, all the way to the hands-on process of painting, the artists contributed equally to the tasks and challenges inherent at each stage of creation.

The Pendulum paintings, 12 in all, signal a deep Mexican influence experienced by both artists while they reflect the unique techniques and complementary perspectives each one brings to the canvas.

Wheel
Cast aluminum, glass, 1992

Retro-active
by Lou Lynn

The Great Hall
March 19 - May 24, 2009

This exhibition signifies the latest achievements in Lou Lynn’s extensive professional career. Included in the exhibition are early works in aluminum and glass (1990) and cast glass sculpture that explore form and implied function. Also included are pieces from the Bronze & Glass series (2004-2007) that reference tools and exhibit clarity and focus.

Lynn’s sculptures are elegantly executed and explore shape, surface texture and scale as well as disrupt traditional definitions of fine art, applied art and craft.

What's going on Up There?
Yukon Artists @ Work

The Great Hall
June 4 - September 6, 2009

Participating Artists: Bob Atkinson, Jeanine Baker, Paul Baker, Nicole Bauberger, Rich Claxton, Catherine Deer, Larry DuGuay, Kerry Fletcher, Janelle Hardy, Heidi Hehn, Lilian Loponen, Joyce Majiski, Lara Melnik, Daphne Mennell, Rosemary Piper, Patrick Royle, Stephanie Ryan,  Lynne Sofiak, John Steins and Harreson Tanner

Yukon Artists @ Work (YA@W), the most significant artist co-operative in the Yukon, is made up of fine artists, craftspeople and surface designers. Based in Whitehorse, YA@W grew from a disparate group of artists working in a skid shack on a parking lot of an abandoned construction warehouse into one of the most extraordinary artists' cooperatives north of the 60th parallel. Was the geographic isolation of the artists a contributing factor in the development of this collective? These artists who live and work in the North see it through the eyes and understanding of inhabitants, their lives and culture shaped by it.

The North plays a significant role in Canada's national imagination evoking myths and legends in the minds of many Canadians: the spirit of adventure, the richness of aboriginal cultures, the infinite reaches of nature and the unending clarity of summer days and long, cold nights. The North is an integral part of Canada's national identity and collective history. Not only a physical region, it is a subject of visual expression from both subjective and objective experiences.

This exhibition explores how making art is a passionate activity that creates opportunities for connecting to participants, various audiences and those who see art and the creative process as a way of understanding unfamiliar communities such as the Yukon. YA@W is committed to building a creative community that brings together a diversity of creative practitioners committed to developing a culture of experimentation and creative exploration. YA@W's axiom, art is the soul of our community, is what keeps this eclectic and cooperative of artists and craftspeople alive and well in one of Canada's most unique geographical, social and cultural contexts. This exhibition explores how a group of individual artists living in one of Canada's last frontiers came together to create a unique and rich community of visual art practices.

The art works tell us as much about the artist as they do about the Yukon through an eclectic and diverse exploration of forms of cultural production that combine materials and techniques into innovative designs and handcrafted construction. The art works create a variety of visual experiences representing a community that is rich and diverse and that explore and celebrate a great northern culture treasure, the Yukon.

This northern land is an omnipresent character and has a profound effect on the creative art process. This exhibition examines how artists and their practices can be seen as a way of understanding their community and the relationships between art and specific kinds of aesthetic experiences that these artists offer the public. Artists are moving up to the Yukon from the Outside, leaving behind friends and family in the South and in moments of self-doubt ask themselves why would anyone live up here?

The diversity of the art work found in this exhibition offers the viewer an opportunity to experience through the eyes of the visual artists definitions of life in the North.

The North remains a mystery to many Canadians, who may have visited it only in imagination. This exhibition can help us unravel this mystery and take us on a journey through unknown territory. The art works articulate a diverse and quirky collection of voices that are engaged in numerous creative processes from the unique geographical, social and cultural context of the Yukon.

 

 

A Common Thread:
Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian & Mennonite Communities

The Great Hall
September 24 - January 3, 2010

This exhibition examines and juxtaposes the quilts and textiles from three specific cultural communities. It explores the complex stories and meanings that are contained within each of the artworks as a way of sharing their diverse cultural voices.

The Stó:lō weaving tradition, which was almost lost until the 1960's, is now a part of an international cultural renaissance of Salish weaving. Today Stó:lō weaving contains many beautiful designs each with specific symbols and meanings.

The Mennonite quilts are both functional and emotional providers of family connections; while the quilts literally keep people warm, they are also layered with social and symbolic warmth. Utilitarian objects are elevated through imagination, enterprise and love to the status of an original art form.

The Ralli quilts from the India-Pakistan region date back thousands of years. This humble craft was made with discarded fabrics and is an integral part of the culture. The history and beauty of the rallis themselves attest to the great creative talents of the women of the Ralli.

A Common Thread will initiate a dialogue in an attempt to help define community, encourage connections between communities and share memories and stories through the exhibition of quilts and textiles.

Lois Klassen's Comforter Art-Action a call to contribute to "Social Wealth "

Artist Lois Klassen's vision is of a bed piled high with luxuriant quilts to warm body and soul. Klassen's Comforter Art-Action: Princess City is an invitation to the people of the Fraser Valley to participate in generating this social wealth. The installation is part of A Common Thread: Textiles from Stó:lō, South Asian and Mennonite Communities.

Klassen produces collective-action projects, performance, video and installation works. Since 2001 she has hosted Comforter Art-Action, an ongoing material response to human displacement that has involved over 200 individuals and groups from over 20 countries. The September 11 attacks, and the subsequent retaliatory strikes that produced millions of displaced people, was the impetus for her to send an invitation for contributions of fabric squares or textile art that she would incorporate into a ‘refugee blanket'. She learned how to make these blankets, for use in refugee camps, from her mother who was involved in the Mennonite Central Committee Canada.

Through Comforter Art-Action Klassen has made about 100 of these blankets to send overseas. Through discussions with The Reach staff the focus for the Comforter Art-Action: Princess City installation shifted to gathering quilts for those in need in the local surrounding area. Klassen invites the community to contribute new hand-made quilts or purchased quilts or blankets for the bed on display in the gallery. In early December The Reach will distribute them, through the Fraser Valley Housing Network, to women-serving organizations to give to women in need. According to Klassen, "Just as the bedding in the old story, "The Princess and the Pea" demonstrated great wealth and comfort, this pile of blankets in a museum today signifies our collective social capital."

"In the exhibit A Common Thread, the quilts and blankets celebrate generosity and a concern for comfort, as well as skill and creativity, across ethnic, cultural and historic lines," says Klassen. "They also make me imagine the people for whom the blankets were intended. I hope that Princess City also makes obvious that even in a well resourced city like Abbotsford, there are people requiring the assistance of the organizations that are part of the Fraser Valley Housing Network and encourages everyone to participate in assembling those resources."

Klassen has exhibited and participated in the Means of Production Community Garden artists residency (Vancouver); Banff New Media Institute Liminal Screen Residency; Richmond Art Gallery's Archive City; CityScape (North Vancouver), VIVO Media Arts Centre (Vancouver), The Western Front (Vancouver), Transportale (Berlin), and aceartinc (Winnipeg). She is currently an instructor and a Masters of Applied Art Candidate at Emily Carr University in Vancouver.

Stories to pass on ...
by Deanna Bowen

The Great Hall
September 24 - November 8, 2009

This is a multimedia exhibition by Toronto based interdisciplinary artist Deanna Bowen. The exhibition is comprised of two installation works: Gospel (2008) and Shadow on the Prairie (2009).
Both works are a result of the artists' efforts to document her great grandparents' migration from Alabama to Western Canada.

Gospel is an interdisciplinary suite of works (photo series, video installation and audio/sculptural work) that explores complex notions of trauma and recurrent sorrow. Alternately framed as a song of loss and longing, the combined works form a surreal semi-autobiographical account of a daughter's repudiation of mother, family, and home.

Shadow on the Prairie is an interdisciplinary installation (video installation and vinyl floor text) that derives its name and overarching narrative from the National Film Board of Canada's 1952 film adaptation of Gweneth Lloyd's seminal ballet "Shadow on the Prairie: A Canadian Ballet."

Beadwork - Radical Practices:

Beading Practices of Yukon First Nations (Canada) and the Ndebele (South Africa)

The Great Hall
January 21 - March 21, 2010

Beadwork - Radical Practices is an international exhibition which profiles historical and contemporary beading practices of Southern Yukon First Nations (Canada) and the Ndebele (South Africa). It consists of both historical and contemporary work from the Iziko South African National Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa as well as historical work from the MacBride Museum and contemporary work from the Yukon Territorial Government Permanent Art Collection both located in Whitehorse, Yukon. Eighty objects and artworks from these institutions will be on display. Beadwork - Radical Practices offers another way of understanding indigenous communities through the intersections of historical context, life experiences and social and cultural transformations. The exhibition provides an opportunity to explore both historical and contemporary beadwork as means of trying to understand the stories of two diverse indigenous cultures.

Learn more - download our exhibition notes .

 

Fifteen Restless Nights
by Derek Besant

The Great Hall
January 21 - March 21, 2010

Fifteen Restless Nights is a multi-media installation that incorporates large digital photographs of rumpled motel-room beds accompanied by music and an original soundtrack. This exhibition explores Derek Besant's impressions of fifteen nights spent over the course of one year in different motel rooms in different cities. Each morning Besant would photograph the unmade beds and record the rumpled sheets and pillows in what he calls "metaphoric landscapes". The digital photos show rumpled sheets and pillows, but they represent the "distances of intimacy" between each of us.

From Different Perspectives:
Photographs from the Agricultural Landscape

Participating Artists:  Craig Berggold, Elaine Brière, Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge

The Great Hall
April 8 - June 6, 2010

Farmworkers are Canada's forgotten workers. They work in the fields and harvest the crops that feed us. They work in slave-like conditions for 12-14 hours a day and are paid piece rate. They travel in overcrowded buses to the fields or live in converted chicken coops. Many suffer chronic health problems because of exposure to pesticides during every working day." - Canadian Farmworkers Union spokesman Charan Gill, June, 1994.

From Different Perspectives: Photographs from the Agricultural Landscape tells three stories of forgotten workers whose struggles on the landscape have been forgotten or ignored and reveals a landscape of opposition where workers are both represented and see themselves represented in ways which will challenge dominant views of the agricultural landscape. Each of these artists uses their own visual vocabulary in the form of engaged social documentary to expose the realities of farmworkers in British Columbia, Ontario and Washington State. These artists have defined their art practice around the facilitation of dialogue among the diverse farmworker community and are exploring the concept of dialogue as a form of social engaged art practice. From Different Perspectives will be a catalyst for dialogue and collaboration with the public and explore how socially engaged art can connect with others and create community.

Craig Berggold's exhibition, I would like to tell you a story is a series of photographs accompanied by farmworkers' testimonies, newspaper articles and narration. Each photograph is a visual representation of an actual event where farmworkers and their children have been poisoned, injured or killed while at work. Carole Condé's and Karl Beveridge's work, Salt of the Earth, depicts the arrival of migrant workers, their exposure to chemicals and injury and their departures in Ontario. It is part of a larger project on the four elements that include The Fall of Water, Under Fire and a video AIRwav. Salt of the Earth was produced in collaboration with migrant farm workers in Southern Ontario. Elaine Brière's, R-E-S-P-E-T-O Mexican Farmworkers in the Yakima Valley is a striking series of photographs that document the lives of Mexican apple pickers in Washington State.

In conjunction with From Different Perspectives, The Reach will display photographs from our art collection of a series of photographs of farmworkers in the Fraser Valley that were taken in the early 1980s and artefacts from its permanent collection that tell the stories of farmworkers throughout the twentieth century. These images and artefacts explore our rich agricultural history and provide an historical context for the From Different Perspectives exhibition.

I would like to tell you a story - Craig Berggold

Salt of the Earth - Carole Condé and Karl Beveridge

R-E-S-P-E-T-O- Mexican Farmworkers in the Yakima Valley - Elaine Brière

Keeping the West Alive
by Hank Funk

The Grotto
September 20-November 16, 2008

The Big Picture:
Art work from Students of Abbotsford High Schools

South Gallery
September 20-November 16, 2008

Udaari Pioneer Exhibition:
a photographic exhibition about early Indo-Canadian immigrants
and their families

Curated by
Centre for Indo-Canadian Studies at University of the Fraser Valley
South Gallery
November 25, 2008 - January 4, 2009

 
Shifting Visions:
University of the Fraser Valley (UFV) Visual Arts Students

The Grotto & South Gallery
January 15 - 31, 2009

The senior student artists participating in this exhibition represent a broad spectrum of personal experiences, cultural backgrounds and individual artistic styles. This is reflected in their works as Shifting Visions, an experience to be shared with viewers as they move through the exhibition space.

Featured student artists:
Lisa Court
Diane Moen
Eduardo Dioses
Jon Reist
Karla Friesen
Colin Watchorn
Patrick McMath

Photographic Prints
by Members of the Abbotsford Photo Arts Club                                                

The Grotto & South Gallery
February 5 - March 1, 2009

The exhibition features the work of individual members of APAC and shows a variety of photographic styles and subjects in both colour and black-and-white formats.  Included in the show are landscapes, portraits, wildlife and graphic interpretations.

For 35 years, APAC has been helping its members develop their photographic skills.  The Abbotsford Photo Arts Club grew from the desire of a handful of people to continue to share their experiences and improve their photography. Besides fulfilling a social function, the club's main objective has always been to help amateur photographers develop and improve their proficiency, filling a gap between the knowledge they acquire from a course in basic photography and the experience they need to operate independently as fulfilled amateur photographers.

 

Get to Know Your Wild Neighbours
Environmental Education & Art
Robert Bateman Secondary School
and Dave Kandal Elementary School

The Grotto & South Gallery
March 5 to 30, 2009

The students researched animals, visited animals at the Mountainview Conservation Centre and taught other students about animals.  Through studies of artists who work through nature as an inspiration and the experiences with nature the students created amazing artworks in pencil crayon, acrylic painting, relief printing, and soapstone.  The Bateman students shared this experience with younger students.  They have been involved in mentoring workshops with Dave Kandal Elementary.  The eco-art buddies from the Grade One and Two classes are also showcased along with the Grade Nine, Ten, 11 and 12 students.  All of the students are submitting their work to the Robert Bateman Secondary Get to Know Your Wild Neighbours and some of the work showcased at The Reach features the 2009 National Get to Know Calendar Contest and TD Friends of the Environment Desktop Calendar winners.  Through an art study and a mentoring experience the students' ecological experience is enriched and the students' feelings and actions toward nature alter.  The connections between people and nature are a first step to a sustainable future, when we get to know each other and other species we start to care about them.

MSA Museum P653

Fertile Abbotsford:
Archival Photographs from MSA Museum Society Collection

South Gallery
April 2 - May 3, 2009

Rain Face
Oil on Canvas

Icons and Abstraction:  Faces of Triumph, Tragedy and Beauty
by Steve Stanczyk

The Grotto
April 2 - May 3, 2009

Daisy, Giclee canvas print, 2007

A Brush With Nature
by Laura Levitsky

The Grotto
May 7-31, 2009

Abbotsford artist, Laura Levitsky, is a nature artist who is inspired by British Columbia's landscape, wildlife and landmarks. Levitsky, an outdoor enthusiast is constantly outside documenting natural settings as the focus of her subject matter.

She works in acrylic paints which she feels most captures the realism of nature. "My nature walks and hikes are not as brisk as most might travel. I cannot help but gaze at every colour, shape and texture that nature has on her ever-changing palette, mesmerized by the unspoiled beauty."

She invests a great deal of time and energy to each of her paintings, sparing no detail. Levitsky is a member of the Federation of Canadian Artists.

A Time to Change:
Thirty Photographs of
Indo-Canadian Farmworkers
in the Fraser Valley
by Craig Berggold

South Gallery
May 7 - July 5, 2009

In the 1980s Vancouver photographer, Craig Berggold, extensively documented the farmworkers' struggles: living in substandard housing, dealing with occupational disease and poor working conditions. These are the social and cultural conditions that led to the formation of the Candian Farmworkers' Union in the Fraser Valley.

Farmworkers and the union continue to fight today for the abolition of the contract labour system, minimum wage and maximum hours of work for farmworkers, and an end to discriminatory Employment Insurance regulations.

Absence, oil on canvas, 2006

Confluence:
Paintings by Brandon Gabriel

The Grotto
June 4 - July 5, 2009

Brandon Gabriel's work embodies traditional Coast Salish narratives, told through contemporary visual art forms.

Perfume Bottles
by Lindsay Craig

The Grotto
July 9 - August 2, 2009

These cast glass and bronze sculptures are interpretations of female archetypes past and present.

Scrupulous Historthography

TERRAnumena:
The Art of Atom Johnson
by Darrel Spenst

August 6 - September 6, 2009
The Grotto

Inspired by his own fictional character Atom Johnson, writer and painter Darrel Spenst creates uniquely layered colourscapes built of pulverized rock and clay quarried from various sites around the globe, a visual poetry of earth.

University of the Fraser Valley Indigenous Arts Certificate Graduation Exhibition

The South Gallery
July 9 - September 6, 2009

The following participating students are the first graduates of this unique program:

Ron Austin Jr.
Allison Buffalo
Crystal Chapman
Isadore Charters
Bernadette James
Lee Prevost
Harvey Robinson
August Williams

The works in this exhibition were completed under the instruction of Master Carver Francis Horne Sr. and Technician Rocky LaRock.

With thanks to the support of the Aboriginal Community Council and the Indigenous Art Advisory. With thanks to instructors and staff who worked on this program. The delivery of this certificate was sponsored by Aboriginal Special Projects funding from the Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development.