Desert Landscapes to Hues of Abstraction

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists:

JUDITH FAIRWOOD

NINA DI GIOVANNI

 

Desert Landscapes and Hues of Abstraction is an exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Nina Di Giovanni and Judith Fairwood. Desert Landscapes and Hues of Abstraction is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday  November 28th 2015 and run until December 19th, 2015.

Desert Landscapes and Hues of Abstraction is an exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Nina Di Giovanni and Judith Fairwood. Judith Fairwood’s paintings are the result of a photography trip through Langara college to Eastern Californian and Nevada. Fairwood’s fascination of the movement of sand by wind and time as well as the form of the dunes as delineated by light and shadow is evidenced in her dune paintings. Fairwood explores the faculties of perception through her re-creation of the dunes by paint. Giovanni’s enthusiasm for colour and the process of creating laborious detailed mosaics enables Giovanni to perform careful considerations of light. With an obvious delight for creativity and love for materials and making both Giovanni’s and Fairwood’s excitement, translates through their individual exploration of desert landscapes and forms of abstraction.

Nina Di Giovanni is a mosaic artist, painter and teacher who lives in Puerto Vallarta Mexico and Vancouver BC. Nina Di Giovanni started working with mosaics in 1987 when studying in Barcelona. Her creative explorations of the processes of mosaic and painting, are propelled by a fascination with the formal properties of abstraction and a deep respect for this tradition in both European and North American contexts. Giovanni has studied visual arts extensively in both Canada and abroad and is a certified teacher in adult education and methodologies. As well as completing major projects and installations in Vancouver BC (West Restaurant and the Vancouver Public Library) and the US , Giovanni has designed contemporary mosaic tile line for various high end specialty stores in New York, Miami, LA and San Diego. Giovanni’s portfolio includes shows in galleries throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico in sculptural mosaic art and architectural installations in exclusive homes working closely with interior designers and architects.

Judith Fairwood immigrated from England in 1965 and then completed an MA at UBC, teaching languages at Langara until retiring in 2005. In 2005 Fairwood also completed a BFA from Emily Carr that she had been completing through part time study for fifteen years. Fairwood has shown her work at the Britannia Community Center, The West End Community Center, Gateway Theatre and in other places around the lower mainland.

Please join us for the opening reception of Dessert Landscapes and Hues of Abstraction that will be held November 28  to December 19, 2015 between 2-4 pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

 

 

 

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URBAN RAMBLES

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists:

LUCIANA ALVAREZ

JOY HANSER

 

Urban Rambles is a two-person exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Luciana Alvarez and Joy Hanser. Urban Rambles is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday October 24th 2015 and run until November 21^st 2015. The work of Luciana Alvarez and Joy Hanser evidences a love for the materials and process of paintings as well as a love of ‘looking’.

Urban Rambles features paintings that explore the perceptual experience of urban environments. Urban environments across the globe as a result of rapid technological innovation, hyper development, climate change and globalization are changing quickly and the subject of the city is caught in that alienating transition. This reality is the essential backdrop for understanding this work. The title suggests that the artists enjoy rambling around the city, taking in the sights and then recreating the scene through memory and a photograph. What if this work wasn’t simply a personal interpretation of the city but rather an attempt to understand an experience of the city? Art is not simply personal expression and style but rather an attempt to reconcile, the socially irreconcilable aspects of life.

Regardless of the differences in Luciana Alvarez and Joy Hanser work stylistically all of this work is a monument to the spatial abstraction of urban environments. Urban Rambles attempts to capture, and rectify the dizzy disorientation of contemporary urban embodiment.

Luciana Alvarez’s colourful warm city streets are the opposite of Joy Hanser’s dark alienated pictures. Alvarez’s cities take on a dream like wave. The details that might differentiate one city from another are erased and instead Alvarez presents us one interchangeable mass. Alvarez chooses to paint moving wobbly cities, without a ‘traditional’ three-point perspective. The paintings lack a fixed orientation point, which is not dissimilar to the contemporary experience of the city and the world. Is this decision purely stylistic or can we consider it in relation to the previously mentioned larger social contexts? Is the act of painting cities in the style of Parisian street painters a desire to understand and fix her self in a globalized world that increasingly has no fixed point, to fix herself in the wave? Joy Hanser’s work restricts itself to a cool, dark palette except in the portrait of the young girl against the moving background of a sky train. Hanser’s out-side world is always mediated by a plane of glass. These images paint the familiar scene of looking out a bus window on a humid fall day, looking into a camera lens, or out a car window. Even the paintings hide glass, because they were painted from photographic images. All windows can be understood as a lens of the camera, and all paintings are a window into the world. What kind of world does Hanser reflect back to us the viewer?

Please join us for the opening reception of Urban Rambles that will be held October 24^th 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

 

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Water’s Edge

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists:

Roderick Brown

Peter Gutmanis

John Haig

 

Water’s Edge is a group exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of John Haig, Peter Gutmanis and Roderick Brown. Water’s Edge is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday September 26th 2015, remaining open until October 17th 2015.

Water’s Edge is a group exhibition featuring three distinct practices that engage the ocean’s edge, where human industry and marine life collide. The work of John Haig, Peter Gutmanis and Roderick Brown all construct and or engage in a certain romance of the water’s edge. The works record and become monuments to the after shock of a once booming and now exhausted marine industry, found in aestheticized nets, turned over boats, coiled up ropes, boats haunting horizon lines, sleepily anchored and or washed ashore. John Haig’s paintings methodically record a type of west-coast lifestyles through patterning and repetition. Care and imagination construct Haig’s stylized landscapes. The precise positioning and repetition of shapes and colours within Haig’s tableaus succeed and the illustrative paintings hum. The works featured within Water’s Edge exhibition will be familiar to all those who frequent the lower mainland of British Columbia. Kayaks, boats, salmon, nets, mountain views, sailboats, ferries and forests contribute to this our west-coast mythos. Also a resident of British Columbia, Peter Gutmanis practice is committed to translating disparate scenes into watercolors paintings. Gutmanis regular practice was intensified in relation to his demanding days as a surgeon. Gutmanis working off of photographs sketches his scenes before dipping into his preferred medium, watercolor painting. Gutmanis dematerializes the exactitude of his photographs through abstracting the recorded scene one degree further; this abstraction makes visible the function of both the camera and the paintbrush. Roderick Brown’s carved and then engraved fish are monuments to materials, myths, sustenance, destruction and industry. The fish and animals he carves and then illustrates evidence care, appreciation and curiosity. Working with reclaimed red cedar Brown inscribes the fish with patterning that engages the shape of the form. Brown lives in Terrace B.C with his growing family.

Please join us for the opening reception of Water’s Edge that will be held September 26th 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

 

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Ardent Impressions

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists

Stephen Dittberner – Sharon Norman – Alice Rich

 

Ardent Impressions is a group exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Alice Rich, Stephen Dittberner and Sharon Norman. Ardent Impressions is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday August 29th 2015 and run until September 19th 2015.

Ardent Impressions is a group-painting exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Alice Rich, Stephen Dittberner and Sharon Norman. Abstraction and the canon of landscape painting have a long and involved legacy within western art history. Ardent Impressions features three disparate investigations of the legacy of modernist abstraction, gestural expressionism, photo-realist painting and collage. Alice Rich’s impressionistic landscapes call on the notion of place within her subjective imaginary. Rich’s love of color, brush strokes; composition, and the study of light define her emotive atmospheres. Stephen Dittberner’s realistic waterways are precise careful studies. His paintings break down the photographic index of the waterways he paints through the application of careful colour gradations that build the depth of the scene. Similar and yet very different to the much acclaimed Group of Seven, Dittberner frames and aestheticizes his much-admired waterways. This act places Dittberner’s work within a trajectory of artistic practice that has come to define official Canadian art history. Sharon Norman’s surrealist landscapes collage together different fragmented images. The experience of the body moving through time and space, its passage alongside changing landscapes is objectified within her pictorial tableaus.

Dittberner realistic portrayal of waterways delight in the slight departure between photo and painted realisms, particularly when recording a moving entity such as water over river rocks. Sharon Norman’s works create collaged painterly landscapes. The images she creates are reminiscent of peering out the window of a moving vehicle. The landscape slides by and different fragments, and moments collide. A static and dizzy landscape is created through painting over collaged images. This dizzy disorientation defines this our globalized contemporary experience.

Norman has works with collage and painterly overlay. In the past she has primed her canvases by superimposing photographs onto them through colour copy transference. She is now focusing on abstract and expressionistic scenes. Alice Rich’s work aligns itself with a long history of abstract landscape painting and the romantic sublime.

Sharon Norman lives and works on Bowen Island near Vancouver. Alice Rich has a long history of working within the Vancouver Arts Community, and Stephen Dittberner also resides and works in Vancouver.

 

Please join us for the opening reception of Ardent Impressions that will be held August 29th 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

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The Reflection of All Colours

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists

Jan Henry – Wendy De Gros – Tanta Pennington

 

The Reflection of All Colours is a group exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Tanta Pennington, Wendy De Gros and Jan Henry. The Reflection of all the Colours is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday August 1st 2015 and run until August 22nd 2015.

 

The Reflection of All Colours features the work of Tanta Pennington, Wendy De Gros and Jan Henry. Within this collaborative exhibition the artists made the intentional decision to make monochromatic work that pushes beyond the immediacy of colour. The artists who generally love and study colour were as the title of the exhibition states, excited to limit their work to the reflection of all the colours, monochrome white.

Tanta Pennington practice enjoys the unconscious aspects of drawing. The process of drawing connects the hand, to the paper through the line that originates in Pennington’s consciousness. Wendy De Gros mixed-media paintings and sculptures explore and construct abstract space. De Gros’s work materializes through her process that seeks to excavate interior energies and manifest them in the exterior surface of her paintings. De Gros is interested in the role of perception in the production and reception of art, as well as the object’s capacity to produce abstract atmospheres of colour. Jan Henrys balloon sculptures within this exhibition become a monument to the capacity of non-traditional materials to become art. The materials are taken off the wall and everyday mass produced balloons become rubber bouquets.

The Reflection of all Colours exhibition becomes a monument to a much-cherished missing element, the point of saturation and then deletion, within the monochrome white of colour.  White is the limit to colour, its reflection. In this exhibition the artists sacrifices their love of colour for a closer look at the physical properties and histories of their materials.

Please join us for the opening reception of The Reflection of All Colours that will be held August 1st 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

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E P O C H A

solo exhibition

 

Ewan McNeil

 

Epocha is a solo exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the 2-D and 3-D work of Ewan McNeil. Epocha is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday July 4^th 2015 and run until July 25th 2015.

In this exhibition two major modes of inquiry emerge, those being: grey scale architectural facades and sculptures made out of found materials, that play with minimalist design principles. The question that comes to mind in looking at the work is, what does McNeil’s practice seek to understand? The other important question is, what do the objects do beyond illustrate McNeil’s practice? The subject of the work being urban decay and the lovely point regarding the table saw, as a drawing instrument.

McNeil’s work could be driven by an impulse to respond to this our, ever-changing urban environment? Constant destruction and wasting are the actual conditions of our societies ‘constant growth’. Because these forces of destruction are quite sublime, and cannot be conceptualize in their entirety, the sculptures are on the hand quite beautiful. The materials also possess the trace of a previous or other use; this trace cannot be cut away by the saw in its entirety. This use-value that marks the materials calls up a whole other economy of meaning. The delicate sculptures have a secret that we know but need to deny. That secret is, that these sculptures are a tiny fragment of a mountain of wasted materials that is cut away and taken to the dump. To look at these sculptures and not recognize both of these games occurring, beauty and social context, is to deny the way that materials work on us. McNeil’s minimalist sculptures carefully perform different design principles. Disparate materials and objects are placed in such a way to find compositional ‘balance.’ McNeil’s work explores the disjunction between the Eros of design (that meaning), and the gravity of the materials history and movement through the world (that other meaning). The success of this work is found in the precariousness of balancing those two systems of meaning together. The properties in the materials, aided by gravity, time and space, want to pull those careful sculptures down. The paintings also evidence certain anxiety about being a human in cities organized by economic rather then social rationalizations. This is marked by the perspective point of the viewer in relation to the scale of the flattened architectural façade that threaten to fall out of the picture plane and eclipse you in the process.

Please join us for the opening reception of Epocha will be held July 4th 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

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SCRAPYARD CHRONICLES

solo exhibition

 

VANESSA LAM

 

Scrapyard Chronicles is a solo mixed media exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring the work of Vanessa Lam. Scrapyard Chronicles is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council. The exhibition will open Saturday June 6^th 2015 and run until June 27th 2015.

In Scrapyard Chronicles Vanessa Lam utilizes mixed media assemblage to explore urban environments and everyday objects. Vanessa Lams use of a traditional color palettes (ochres and siennas), burlap, found papers and newspaper clippings visually echoes the collage work of Pablo Picasso and Georges Braques whose collage works had an incredible influence on western modern art. However unlike Picasso and Braque, Lam includes color digital photography, and expressionist gestural painting to her mixed media works.  Refuse under Lam’s care becomes the precious subject of her mixed media collages, when she takes her camera down to the local scrapyard gleefully documenting what society would rather not see, the excesses of western culture fuelled by its gratuitous waste. Lam demonstrating the well-known cliché that “one persons trash is another persons treasure” juxtaposes degraded materials with the heroic tradition of painting. Playing with the signs of western art history and the local scrapyard, Lam is able to create inventive tableaus, which confound those two very different value systems. Working with societal residue Lam’s work defies the assumption that art should explore only heroic themes like life, death, state and religion.  In treating everyday mundane objects preciously the viewer is asked to reconsider the significance of everyday rituals and the forgettable things that surround us.

Vanessa Lam lives and works in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a visual artist, merging photography with mixed media painting. While pursuing a career in health care, she maintained an interest in art that began with studies at the University of British Columbia. Lam was recently awarded first place in the Semiahmoo Arts Juried Art Exhibit and has exhibited and sold her work at various community venues and public galleries in the Lower Mainland.

Please join us for the opening reception of Scrapyard Chronicles that will be held June 6th 2015 between 2-4pm at the Deer Lake Gallery.

 

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

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 Photographic Convergences

Group Exhibition

Featuring Visual Artists

Adam Gibbs – Chris MacKenzie – Kelly Selden

 

Photographic Convergences is an exhibition of work that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery featuring work by Adam Gibbs, Chris MacKenzie and Kelly Selden.  Photographic Convergences is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council and it will open Saturday May 9th and run until May 30th 2015.

The Burnaby Arts Council is excited to announce the opening of Photographic Convergences an exhibition that features three unique photographic perspectives. Photographic Convergences features: Kelly Selden’s formal explorations of painterly degraded urban surfaces, Adam Gibb’s majestic nature shots and Chris MacKenzie’s thoughtful land art interventions.

Kelly Selden’s formal abstract photographs, explore the color, texture, and patterns of degraded urban surfaces. Texture is prominent in Selden’s work be it textile, print media or photography. In this series of work Selden explores the effects of a new archival process that infuses dyes directly into specially coated aluminum plates giving the photograph a luminescent sheen. Chris MacKenzie’s landscape interventions become the subject of his photographic practice. MacKenzie carefully alters a site through a composition of rocks, branches, flowers, berries and leaves. MacKenzie’s art engages within a tradition of land art and intervenes into landscapes using found materials derived directly from the location. Land Art gestures will often deteriorate quickly as the drawings scatter and or erode back into the earth. Adam Gibbs is an outdoor enthusiast who enjoys hiking into remote locations, setting up photography equipment and then attempting to capture the beauty of the world and the light in which it is illuminated. The practice and creativity of photography often drives Gibbs to explore new places and put his lens to the test of capturing the grandeur of what it is he sees.

Adam Gibbs is a professional photographer residing in New Westminster. Gibbs took up photography later in life enrolling in the photography program at Langara College which has resulted in diverse professional photography career. Kelly Selden originates from North Vancouver and attended Capilano College further honed her skills through studies in their Textile Arts Program. Selden then went on to UBC ‘s Art Education Program fulfilled her training as an Art Teacher and currently resides in Port Moody. Chris MacKenzie is a lecturer of sociology at UBC has had multiple solo and group exhibitions in the lower mainland.

Please join us for the opening reception this May 9^th 2015 between 2-4pm:

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

 

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 World in Transit

Solo Exhibition

Featuring Joy Munt

 

World in Transit is a solo painting exhibition that will be held at The Deer Lake Gallery by Joy Munt. World in Transit is hosted and organized by The Burnaby Arts Council it will open Saturday April 11^th 2015 and run until May 2nd 2015.World in Transit features the industrial inspired surfaces of the artist Joy Munt. The materiality of paint in Munt’s work is pushed to its capacity through her process of layering, sanding and scraping back. Process is integral to Munts work and the effects of her tools and gestures are left ingrained into the surfaces of her paintings. The central approach to painting that Munt applies is not additive but subtractive. Mirroring the processes of abstraction itself, Munt abstracts through the material subtraction of pigment through sanding. The paintings aren’t only illusionary images but also objects that are cut into and pushed to their limits. The title of this exhibition World in Transit illustrates where Joy Munt finds her textured inspiration. She recreates surfaces that echo the worn surfaces of industrial painted objects, the signs of highway travel and found text. Like the painted hull of the ship that has been worn away through years of global travel and saltwater erosion Munt’s paintings bear the wear of painting itself. As painting continues to grate up against itself its processes, materials, subjects, and iconography. Munt sands down, grates against and carves out of her works her love for process, texture, abstraction, colour and formal composition.Joy Munt resides in Vancouver B.C she completed a BFA in Visual Arts with a double major in Sociology and a minor in Film Studies in 1992 from the University of Victoria. Please join us for the opening reception of World in Transit that will be held April 11^th 2015 between 2-4pm and the exhibition will run until May 2^nd 2015.

Written by K. Leigh Tennant

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 DRAWN: Exploring the Line

Featuring:

Anson Aguirre Firth

Aimee Henny Brown

Teodora Zamfirescu

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Deer Lake Gallery presents:

Expressions in Abstract

Exhibition:  February 7 – 28th

Opening Reception:    Saturday, February 7th 2-4pm

6584 Deer Lake Avenue

Burnaby, B.C.

 

Featuring:

Evan Locke

Iris Low

Karen Santos

 

The Burnaby Arts Council presents an exhibition of paintings of 3 emerging artists from different generations and backgrounds, who share their own interpretations and philosophies of abstraction.  Abstract art has many purposes and inspirations, and covers many styles communicating an idea or concept through the use of color, composition, shape and line. The journey of the artists express in their own terms what abstract art means to them, exploring the very nature of expression.   The Burnaby Arts Council are very excited to showcase this selection of abstract art at the Deer Lake Gallery!

 

Evan Locke: Evan approaches painting from the viewpoint of paintings as objects.  Creating paintings able to express their own construction attempting to turn the expressive nature of abstract painting into a explicable one.

 

Iris Low: Iris strives to diminish the stigma associated with mental illness by expressing herself through her art.  Iris looks for different ways to express the beauty in the dark and the struggle to obtain the light by communicating through her paintings.

 

Karen Santos: As a singer and a painter Karen’s work is an extension of the emotions that stem from singing and creating music. Karen is inspired by the relationship between art, music and psychology.

 

 

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Discovery: A Slice of Diversity

Group Exhibition of Ismaili Muslim Female Artists

Curated by Taslim Samji

 

A Contemporary Art Exhibition of Ismaili Muslim Female Artists.

Curated by Taslim Samji, Discovery is an exhibition of the works of 6 Professional and Emerging local Female Ismaili Muslim Artists who migrated to Canada from their birthplace of East Africa, with cultural roots from India and surrounding countries. Even within such a defined group of artists, the forms of expression and concepts explored in the pieces widely vary.  Pieces range from paintings, sculptures, installations, mix media and literary works. The closer we look within a visible minority group, such as the Muslim community, the more diversity we find there is to celebrate.

Bio of Taslim Samji

Taslim Samji is an artist and curator. She is in search of different perspectives that relate to her existence and identity in the global environment. Through the exhibitions she curates and her art practice, she is able to continue the dialogue of her search.

Taslim was born in a small town in Tanzania and migrated to Canada when she was three years old. With cultural roots from India, the Middle East, East Africa and Canada, Taslim finds herself struggling, at times to connect with her cultural identity, versus the spiritual and gender ideas she resonates with.

She received her BA, with a major in Asian Studies from UBC, a marketing diploma from BCIT, and is currently finishing up her Fine Arts Certificate at Emily Carr University of Art and Design.

Taslim is an active member of the local art community and currently holds the post of Vice Chair on the BC Ismaili Arts and Culture Portfolio. Over the past year she curated a visual art exhibition titled “Intersections” at the Roundhouse Community Center, and showcased over 30 performing artists as the creative lead for a community festival that welcomed 10,000 visitors on the PNE grounds.

 

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FROM DARKNESS COMES ILLUMINATION

 Burnaby Art Council presents:

GILLIAN WORSLEY

with Seonas MacMadh

October 11 – November 1st, 2014

Press Release

Opening October 11th 12 – 4 pm

The Burnaby Arts Council is pleased to present:

Gillian is inspired by words and their connection to how they make us feel; whether it be song lyrics, poems, quotes or fragments of ideas. She wants people to look at each personae apart from how they are recognized in the public eye.

By creating portraits with words, she finds herself connecting with the subject matter in a way that is unrestrained and unrefined. It enables the viewer to look deeper into the persons whom she has portrayed. Gillian seeks to forge a bond between the words and the audience but, most importantly inspires people to appreciate and to celebrate each other’s lives – collectively or otherwise.

Gillian founded the Civil Disobedience Company in 2008, as a platform to explore the bonds that connect an idea with an open audience.  Creating everyday wares with a personal touch she hopes that her work will inspire people to appreciate and to celebrate each others life- whether that be collectively or otherwise.

Gillian works with a variety of mediums including drawing, painting, screen printing, installation art, textile and film.

Enlisted by the Civil Disobedience Company in 2010, Seonas began to serve as a creative consultant to founder and artist, Gillian Worlsey.  His primary focus is the acquisition & procurement of Civil Disobedience artifacts.  Born on the banks of the Fraser River in Steveston BC, Seonas blends his love of nature with this passion for creative endeavors.  Seonas also serves as a conceptual designer of the eponymous clothing line.

 

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  Discerning Nature

 Burnaby Art Council presents Artist in Resident:

Janet Wang

 September 16 – October 4th, 2014

 

Press Release

Opening September 20 2-4pm

The Burnaby Arts Council is pleased to host the

Janet Wang is a visual artist working within a traditional painting practice, integrated with sculptural installation practices and digital media.  She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of British Columbia and her Master of Studio Practice from the University of Leeds in England. Her work has been exhibited in Canada, the United States, and the UK, and has been awarded residencies from the Arts Council of England, ArtStarts, and the Visual Arts Development Award by the Vancouver Foundation. She is currently is an instructor at the Art Institute of Vancouver.

During her residency, the artist will reference the tradition of landscape painting, and the Romantic practice of framing Nature as a sublime entity.  The natural sanctuary of Deer Lake Park is in fact part of a larger city plan, and is thus Nature in the shape (or negative space) of the larger urban development.  In the same way, our experience with nature is more often mediated, framed, and carefully filtered through pathways, signage, and the ubiquitous recording via smartphones and social media.

Janet will explore the landscape genre using photographs of the environment surrounding Deer Lake Gallery and the Burnaby Arts Council.  Even in this age of constant digital manipulation, we are programmed to accept the photograph as a truthful document.  By reframing, reflecting or distorting our perception of the landscape, the medium of the photograph can help us consider, but perhaps not capture, our immediate environment and intermediate experiences of Nature.

For more information about the artist, please visit www.janetwang.com

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2014 Exhibitions

 

BRING IT TOGETHER

WITH SCULPTURE

August 16th – September 6, 2014

Press Release

The Burnaby Arts Council is pleased to host the “Bring it Together: With Sculpture” exhibition at the Deer Lake Gallery, August 16th  – Saturday September 6th,, 2014.   You are invited to join us on the opening on Saturday August 16th , 2 – 4 pm, 2014.  This juried group exhibition features sculpture and installation work by local & emerging artists.  We are excited to be hosting an exhibition of diversity of form  in contemporary sculpture.

The exhibition includes large, outdoor metal pieces, sculptures that integrate  drawings, collage , mixed media, installation, recycled and found materials

‘Bring it Together with Sculpture’ features the work of:

Ellen Bang –  The artist works mainly in sculpture and abstract painting.  Most of her sculptural work is concerned with the conditions and challenges of living in urban environments.  The piece being exhibited however, is more of a playful piece.

Vanessa Black – Vanessa’s work explores the physical, psychological and spatial relationships surrounding collecting and hoarding. Using objects she and other family members have collected for years, she transforms them into biomorphic forms as sculptures, drawings and paintings.

Neil Chung – Curiosities is a piece where the uncanny is the main focus. This work is Neil’s way of facilitating a broad discussion regarding the act of combating decay and the natural cycle of life.

Amelia Epp & Bronwen Payerle – Use drawing, collage, sculpture, and installation to address human shelter both as conceptual and realized form.  The artwork examines the physical, emotional and aesthetic materiality of enclosures, the perceived protective quality of fabrics, and environment-specific textures that are all found within built and natural spaces.

Anyuta Gusakova – An artist that uses diverse mediums and means of expression.  Her love of life is manifested through her world of Bunnies, Minotaurs, Dandelion Girls, and Teddy Bear Molecules.  Roted in classical tradition, she employs her creativity with a unique vision that is clearly her own.

Brigitte Lochhead –   Drawing inspiration from the history of art, popular culture her work investigates the relationship between knowledge, memory and experience.   Lochhead focuses on multiple iterations of materials both raw and manufactured.

Ewan McNeil – His sculptures are mixed media bricollage that are inspired by the art historical movement of Constructivism and artists such as Gordon Matta-Clark and Henri Laurent.

Ronald Simmer – It is Ron’s challenge to repurpose consumer products into the unusual.  He searches for materials and objects that speaks to him with the promise of sublime creations that will amaze, tickle, surprise or pause to make you think.

Angela Smailes – Setting up specific moments of interaction with materials, Smailes is interested in the body’s response to form and space with as little intervention from the mind as possible. Using this method she produces large series of studies that accumulate into what she calls a ’3D sketchbook’.

Bill Thomson – Approaches his art making as a visual exploration of the everyday world around him.  He revisits traditional perceptions of the relationship between form and function, as he transforms found and recycled materials into ‘one of a kind’ assemblage sculpture.

     

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  Corallia

“Corallia” an exhibition of sculptural work by Diane Roy.

will run in the Deer Lake Gallery from July 19^th– August 9th 2014.

A resident of B.C. since 1986 Roy was raised in Northern Quebec Diane Roy received a D.E.C in Art and Literature from college in Rouyn, Abitibi, Québec. As well as a B.A in Fine Art and Education from the University of Québec in Chicoutimi.

The exhibition “Corallia” is a survey of Diane Roy’s extensive collection of fibre sculptures. Working with materials such as linen, cotton, nylon  and recycled material linen,  she creates sculptures  that are inspired by and venerate marine life.  Formally her fibre sculptures are reminiscent of  sometimes familiar and other times fantastical marine creatures.   Roy’s work is marked with endurance and devotion to the laborious processes of knotting, bending, weaving and crocheting fibres.

Please join us for the opening reception this Saturday  July 19th  2014 between 2-4pm. For more information on Roy’s practice visit her website: www.fibreart.ca.

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 “Nature Inspired”

 

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Internal Whispers

www.johannegalipeauartist.blogspot.ca

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2014 Exhibitions:

Multiple Visions

Works by BAC Member Groups: Richard Major Art Group and My Artist’s Corner, Opening April 26th 2-4pm  2014.

The exhibition “Multiple Visions,” will be opening in The Deer Lake Art Gallery from April 26th- May 17th 2014. “Multiple Visions” features the work of The Richard Major Art Group and My Artist’s Corner both groups are long term Burnaby Arts Council member organizations. Both organizations share similar mandates of inclusivity and grass roots community development, they nurture individuals by providing platforms for shared creative experiences. The diversity of the work presented within “Multiple Visions,” evidences the different methods, mediums, approaches, struggles, imaginations and therefore creative potential of all individuals.
Richard Major Art Group celebrates its 42nd anniversary with this exhibition of paintings. The group was formed in 1972 by Burnaby resident Richard Major who had the vision of bringing people together to develop their artistic skills. This exhibit is a vehicle to show the public that seniors can still be active in the art world and produce first-class paintings that are professional and imaginative.
My Artist’s Corner (MAC) is a member-driven group comprised artists living with mental health issues from the lower mainland. The group embraces and promotes art as a fine art medium and as a vital support for recovery. MAC hopes that others learn about the issues that challenge MAC members and gain an appreciation for the ‘real people’ beyond the stigma.

Please join us for the opening reception of “Multiple Vision’s” Saturday April 26th between 2-4:00pm. Free to the public.

Info: info@burnabyartscouncil.org

 

 

 

 

“Frames of Reference”

By Anouk Jonker and Douglas Ibbott

Opening Reception:  March 29th  2 – 4pm

Exhibition Runs:   March 29th – April 19th, 2014

“ Frames of Reference”, an exhibition of work by Anouk Jonker and Douglas Ibbott will run in the Deer Lake Gallery from March 29th- April 19th 2014. The opening reception is Saturday, March 29th between 2-4:00pm.
Anouk Jonker and Douglas Ibbott let the guide of their preferred mediums, frame and develop their creative practice. Douglas Ibbott a Print Maker is a student of the Capilano University Studio Arts Program and Anouk Jonker a Oil Painter is currently the Artist In Residence at the The Kent Harrison Arts Council. Both Anouk Jonker and Douglas Ibbott work with the confines of challenging mediums that require devotion, practice, and patience. Ibbott’s work evidences the progression of both his creative and technical practice as an emerging printmaker. Ibbotts growing technical literacy in printmaking is increasing his creative potential as an artist. Ibbott is enthralled by the magic of the print making press; The dialogue that occurs between science and art when one employs the use of metals, acids, ink viscosity, paper and technology to create an image. Anouk Jonker looks at art as the product of its history and its creation; she is interested in why certain paintings spark a feeling of familiarity. Jonker paints intuitively and quickly in order to explore traditional principles and decorative elements. Her quickly applied gestures push her representational images towards abstraction. On her canvases she includes her pallets and cleansing brush strokes. These self-reflective gestures stress the importance of the practice, process and object of painting to the viewer. Both artists work within the framework of both the possibilities and limitations inherent within the material properties of their chosen mediums. In the exhibition “Frames of Reference” there is beauty and simplicity within the different visual worlds referenced within each individual frame.
Please join us for the opening reception of “Frames of Reference,” Saturday March 29th between 2-4:00pm. Free to the public.

“Life in Colour”

By Claire Sower and Jim Keayes

Opening Reception:  March 1st  2 – 4pm

Exhibition Runs:   March 1st – March 22nd, 2014

‘Life in Colour’, an exhibition of work by Claire Sower and Jim Keayes will run in the Deer Lake Gallery from March 1st-22nd 2014. The opening reception is Saturday, March 1st between 2-4:00pm.

Claire Sower and Jim Keayes are artists that exhibit a passionate joy for the practice, medium and potentials for painting. Both artists explore abstraction in different ways.

Claire Sower who also works as a fashion illustrator states “As an artist I am drawn to the way in which light and colour marry to form shape, fire our imaginations and inspire our emotions. I believe that the act of looking at a piece of art should inspire. I love whimsical combinations of light and colour that inspire happiness and joy and flowers, to me, do just that.” Sower seeks to capture our phenomenological experiences with the world through paint, she puts down her embodied memory through flower images.

Jim Keayes is motivated by the infinite possibilities for shapes and color inherent within different forms of painterly abstraction. Jim Keayes an Engineering Draughtsman as equally passionate about the potentials for painting and for the possibilities beyond illustrative realism, has experience a renewed vigor within his practice as a result of opening his work up to explore abstraction and more open forms of representation.

 

2013 Exhibition Archives (6)

2012 Exhibition Archives (2)

2011 Exhibition Archives (6)

 

 

 

 

 

Deer Lake Gallery, 6584 Deer Lake Avenue, Burnaby, BC V5G 3T7 Phone: 604.298.7322