calendario eventi  :: 

X

11/10/2002

Michael Campbell

Southern Alberta Art Gallery, Lethbridge

Twelve thousand years collapsing into eight seconds

October 12 - November 19, 2002
Opening Reception: Saturday, October 19, 8:00 p.m.

Artist's lecture: Friday, October 25, noon, W550, University of Lethbridge

Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery with funding assistance from The Canada Council for the Arts and the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Michael Campbell's most recent project is Twelve thousand years collapsing into eight seconds, a video installation created expressly for the Southern Alberta Art Gallery's upper gallery. Campbell describes his new work as expanding on previous production with the construction of a large cinematic set that implies multiple fictive narratives. These overlap and converge to form a coherent experiential tableaux that links reality with filmic memory and transcendental fantasies.


He states:

In past projects I have made connections between the North American suburban experience with surreal and dream-like narratives. Twelve thousand years continues in this discourse between the unremarkable and the indescribable. The use of familiar cues - the domestic, the cinematic, the historical - within a somewhat surreal configuration, proposes that the ordinary can transform into the extraordinary in the blink of an eye - and that twelve thousand years can collapse into eight seconds.

David Garneau, Regina-based artist and critic, describes Michael Campbell's work as "…poised between science, fiction and spirituality; as if trying to reactivate the pre-postmodern imaginary of anxious, mid-century sci-fi radio shows and novels that often subverted the dominant discourse through anxious, apocalyptic speculations, conspiracy theories and a mistrust of rationality. [He seems] to be reaching for the repressed narratives of the contemporary world, but with modernist wonder rather than postmodern skepticism and irony." Recently, Garneau wrote in VIE DES ARTS that,

Michael Campbell is emerging as newest member of the Lethbridge School. Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller, David Hoffos and, now, Campbell have sprung from their incubation in this small southern Alberta city to return magic to the art world. The secret of the success of the Lethbridge School is that they are not ironic, they are no longer making art about art for artists, nor are they pandering to a commodity culture. They are tapping into the moments of reverie, guile-less observation and magical thinking common to everyone. Campbell magnifies these moments and presents them for our contemplation.

Michael Campbell received his MFA at Concordia University in Montreal in 1992. He is both a practicing artist and an educator, teaching at Concordia University, Arctic College (Cape Dorset), Aurora College (Inuvik), Dickinson State University (North Dakota) and most recently as a tenure-track instructor at the University of Lethbridge. Campbell has exhibited across Canada (recently at the Alberta Biennial), the United States and this summer in Europe where his video installation I want you to know who you'd be in the best of all possible worlds was exhibited at the Red District Gallery in Marseilles, France, as part of Videochroniques, a larger video festival curated by Edouard Monnet. Campbell lives and works in Lethbridge where is an Assistant Professor at the University of Lethbridge.

Image: a drawing by Michael Campbell

__________

LETHBRIDGE MODERN

Aspects of architectural modernism in Lethbridge from 1945-1970

Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Funding Assistance from Museums Assistance Program, Department of Canadian Heritage, The Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and Young Canada Works in Heritage Institutions.

Guest Curator: Gerald Forseth

Innovative techniques and inventive materials, intense luminosity and gridded patterns: these are the essential elements in the modern concept of creating a transparent, free-flowing, and engaging space. In Lethbridge, modern places of habitation and social interaction are particularly striking for their application of modern design principles to a vernacular architecture of a city experiencing rapid post-war growth. The well-preserved examples of modern buildings featured in Lethbridge Modern demonstrate that architectural integrity and style were not forfeited in the rush to develop Lethbridge as an "ultra-modern city of the future."

Lethbridge's architectural legacy extends beyond the intrigue of the historic downtown buildings of the early twentieth century to the fascinating modern gems designed by ambitious local architects such as Norman Fooks, Sam Lurie, George Robins, and George Watson in the 1950s and 1960s. Consisting of photographs, architectural drawings, and informative text panels, the exhibition will showcase fine examples of modern design in educational, religious, commercial, and industrial buildings while a related exhibition at the Trianon Gallery will display models and photographs of modern houses.

The featured houses embody the basic tenets of modern design such as an open floor plan, expansive windows, and a flexible, transparent interior space. The spacious great room and the formative hyperbolic parabaloid roof of the Fooks Residence contribute to the expressive and sinuous tone of the space, while the minimalist forms and transparency of George Watson's houses lend a more meditative and serene atmosphere. Innovative engineering and design merge with the modern aesthetic and the architect's intellect to develop private places of habitation and public spaces for social interaction. Elements of standardization and new construction methods opened a new market for prefabricated houses; the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Commission (CMHC) was established in the 1950s to promote the efficient construction of houses to meet the post-war demand. Yet, these generic houses maintained the essence of modern architecture by blending transparency, the grid, and light with new materials and techniques.

Public buildings such as the Yates Memorial Centre, the Paramount Theatre, and the Beth Israel Synagogue demonstrate the architects' adept manipulation of verticality and horizontality, function and aesthetic, and light and dark. The Mondrian-inspired Meech Mitchell and Meech office on Sixth Street balances a series of primary-coloured panels on the façade while adjacent walls of translucent glass enclose a minimalist garden that reflects the form of the prairies. Contrasting the vernacular and the domestic with the universal and the international results in a unique vocabulary of design and architecture in Lethbridge; the extreme climate, the interruptive coulees, the agricultural economy, and the diversity of cultural and religious affiliations influence the application of the established modern aesthetic to local buildings.

These elements of adaptive modernism also extended to suburban development and planning. For example, the prestigious subdivision along the north shore of Henderson Lake was the first realization of new urban planning designs that were based on a dynamic, curvilinear, and seemingly organic pattern rather than the traditional rigid grid. Designed by city planner and architect, Sam Lurie, the subdivision has at its centre a typical double hexagon-shaped school designed by Norman Fooks while the houses and tree-lined boulevards curve around the central green space surrounding the school.

By highlighting this community's architectural jewels, the curators, Calgary architect and architectural historian, Gerald L. Forseth, B. Arch. and University of Lethbridge Faculty of Fine Arts instructor and independent curator Victoria Baster aim to promote an appreciation for the modernist legacy in Lethbridge.

THE CURATORS
Since his graduation from the University of Toronto in 1970, Gerald Forseth has won numerous local and international awards for architecture and urban design, and especially for his expertise in heritage restoration projects. The most significant recognition of his achievements came in 1986 when he was inducted into the College of Fellows of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (RAIC), the highest honour an architect can receive in Canada. Forseth is Past President of the Alberta Architectural Association and currently manages his architecture firm in Calgary. He regularly contributes articles to heritage, architecture and art publications, and general interest magazines in Alberta and Canada. As well, Forseth teaches courses in Canadian Architectural History, International Modernism, and Historic Conservation of Buildings at the Mount Royal College and University of Calgary, and lectures regularly for the Architecture and Design Series at the University of Lethbridge. In 2000 he curated the highly regarded architecture exhibition Calgary Modern: 1947-1967 at the Nickle Arts Museum. Since studying design history at the University of East Anglia, England, Victoria Baster has contributed significantly to the arts in Alberta through her activities as a curator, writer, and educator. A long-time resident of Lethbridge, she has worked in a curatorial capacity at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the Glenbow Museum, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, and the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery. She currently teaches architecture and design history courses at the University of Lethbridge Faculty of Fine Arts. In addition to her extensive writing activities for museum and art gallery exhibition catalogues, she publishes as an independent curator. Together with Lorraine Fowlow she is researching and writing a book on theme parks, which is scheduled for publication later this year.

Southern Alberta Art Gallery
601 Third Avenue South Lethbridge, Alberta T1J OH4
T. 403 327 8770
F. 403 328 3913

stampa

permanent link