calendario eventi  :: 

X

26/3/2011

Three Exhibitions

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery, Kitchener

Expressions 36

Each spring, Expressions showcases artwork from Waterloo Region students, offering a glimpse into the varied perspectives and experiences of young people in our community. This year students were asked to respond to the theme, imagination, or the exhibition's featured image, Metamorphosis of an Ill Contained Mind, by grade 11 Eastwood Collegiate student Hilary Dow.

During Expressions, The Imaginarium, a special interactive space featuring artwork from KW|AG's permanent collection by Kim Adams, offers further opportunities for young visitors to engage with ideas surrounding imagination and encourages them to make connections between the student work and the exhibited permanent collection pieces.

Each Expressions, the Gallery also celebrates the contributions of teachers who nurture and develop an appreciation of the arts within their students. We are proud to continue partnerships with the Waterloo Region District School Board and the Waterloo Catholic
District School Board and acknowledge their roles in advocating for the arts in education. Art is a medium for shared experience; it opens minds and encourages observation, discussion and reflection. We believe that these qualities are the foundation for the kind of teaching, learning and relationshipbuilding essential to creating a strong and healthy community.

In|Sight
March 27-June 5, 2011
Opening Reception: Sunday March 27, 2-5 p.m.

Every year the Gallery presents a complementary
exhibition to Expressions. This year's exhibition,
Re-imagining Ourselves features a collective artwork created by Wilson Avenue Public School Grade 6 students. Taught by Ms. Reiter and Ms. Bacchus in collaboration with Artist Educators from KW|AG, the project introduces students to work by contemporary portrait artists and provides them with an opportunity to respond by creating a portrait of their own.

--------------------

Althea Thauberger
Co-presented by the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound.

KW|AG is pleased to present Althea Thauberger as part of the 2011 Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. Recognized as one of Canada's most diverse and adventurous musical events, the Open Ears Festival celebrates the act of listening through innovative programs, from guided sound walks to multi-media performances.

Vancouver-based artist Althea Thauberger has internationally produced and exhibited work which typically involves collaboration with a group or community. The end result of these collaborations usually takes the shape of performances, videos and photographs. Thauberger gravitates towards groups of people who often exist in some form of social seclusion. Through the constraints inherent in her work, Thauberger illuminates the tension between the coercive and voluntary actions we undertake in our everyday lives. Utilising almost-exclusively nonprofessional performers such as Canadian tree planters, U.S. military wives and male youth in the German civil service, Thauberger creates complex documents of self-expression and isolation.

As a part of the Open Ears Festival, KW|AG will present Thauberger's not afraid to die, an early video piece which first introduced the tense relationship between sincerity and performance so palpable in her current work. Central to this piece is a young woman seated in front of the Northwest Rainforest Diorama at the Royal B.C. Museum in Victoria. She is clad in a gore-tex jacket, dressed for adventure despite the static representation of nature behind her. The "silence" that we typically expect of museum spaces is replaced with a series of artificial ambient sounds, birds chirping and planes flying overhead. The young woman remains silent, except for the sounds she makes while she consumes a snack. A haunting voice, the artist's own, interrupts the near-silence with a folk-song. A portrait of both a vital subject and the strange world that surrounds her, not afraid to die offers us a delicate balance between uncertainty and fearlessness.

Thauberger's work has been commissioned and exhibited by major museums and galleries across the world. In 2009 she participated in the Canadian Forces Artists Program and travelled to the CFB in Kandahar, Afghanistan where she worked on a collaborative photography project with military members there. KW|AG will be working with Thauberger on a new
commission as part of our ongoing Parochial Views series. Watch this space for further information on how you can participate in this project.

-----------------

Perspective; Perception:
What Matters Most
Guest curated by Jane Alison Breithaupt

In The Secret Life of Bees, writer Sue Monk Kidd explores the concept of community, family and personal authenticity during the civil rights era of the United States. A young teen needs to find answers to questions about her life. "The whole problem with people is…they know what matters, but they don't choose it." Our personal or collective perspective unconsciously filters what we see or experience around us. How do we make choices that are authentic in a world growing closer, faster, needier, meaner? Do we listen to our hearts, our belief system? Or to societal creed, social expectation, religious / political credo?

The Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery possesses a wealth of artworks by artists who explore the interdependence of the individual, society, nature and the future of humankind. Overwhelmingly the works themselves seem to offer a basic need for genuine compassion and respect for the other's dignity as a prerequisite for understanding and choosing "what matters most." August, an important character in The Secret Life of Bees and a woman of wisdom and compassion, explains, "You know some things don't matter much, Lily. Like the colour of a house. How big is that in the overall scheme of life? But lifting a person's heart - that matters."

- Jane Alison Breithaupt

Jane Alison Breithaupt was born in Quebec and educated in Montreal, Philadelphia, Toronto and Waterloo. She has taught for
the Waterloo Regional School Board in the elementary and high school divisions and served as head of the English Language
Arts department at Centennial Senior School. Since retirement Jane has focused on community issues and served on the Leadership Roundtable of Opportunities Waterloo Region, which actively seeks solutions to poverty and its influence on
individuals and community life.

Curator Talk: Thursday, April 7, 7 p.m.

This exhibition is the second in a series of new Community Curator projects at KW|AG.

Image: Althea Thauberger, not afraid to die, 2001, Single channel projection 16 mm to DVD, Edition of 3, 7 minutes, 20 seconds. Image courtesy of the artist.

Media Contact: Kirstie Paterson, Communications 519-579-5860 x222 E: kpaterson@kwag.on.ca

Opening Reception Sunday March 27 | 2 p.m. (Opening Remarks 2:30 p.m.)

Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery
101 Queen Street North Kitchener, Ontario N2H 6P7
Hours: M-W 9:30am-5pm., T 9:30am.-9pm, Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 1pm-5pm.
Admission free

stampa

permanent link