AT THE GALLERY
What: Emily Carr: Seeing + Being Seen
Where: Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 1040 Moss St.
When: July 17, 2021, to July 17, 2022
Admission: $13 for adults, $11 for students/seniors (public open house on Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., is by donation)
A new Emily Carr exhibit at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria will keep issues pertaining to the environment and Indigenous rights in conversation through 2022.
Its timing couldn鈥檛 be better. Emily Carr: Seeing and Being Seen, which opens Saturday at the Moss Street gallery, features a range of well-known pieces by the Victoria artist, much of which either directly or indirectly addresses topics that have come to the fore in recent months, from the Fairy Creek blockade to residential schools.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a great opportunity for us to use her work to reflect on more current issues that are happening today,鈥� said Nicole Stanbridge, who co-curated the exhibit with Mel Granley. 鈥淭hrough her pieces, we can look at the impact of industrial logging and the changing landscapes around the Island.鈥�
The exhibit is split into two halves: Seeing, which centres on Carr鈥檚 work, and the histories of places that inspired her; and Being Seen, which presents work by artists such as Pat Martin Bates, Jack Shadbolt, and others 鈥� some of it critical 鈥� along with the history of sites painted by Carr.
The Carr originals in Seeing and Being Seen all come from the gallery鈥檚 collection.
鈥淭here have been so many Emily Carr shows, so we were looking at what we could do differently with this project, and how we could use our collection in a different way,鈥� said Stanbridge.
During the last decade of her career, Carr often addressed environmental issues in her work. She also wrote about the impact the logging industry had on Indigenous peoples and traditional First Nations lands, and her paintings from the mid- to late 1930s, including Odds and Ends (1939) and Above the Gravel Pit (1937), both of which are on display at the gallery, reflect those same topics.
Though the exhibit features work nearly 100 years old, it provides some context on the history of 91原创 Island. The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is located on the traditional territories of the Lekwungen peoples, today known as the Esquimalt and Songhees Nations, so it was important for the gallery to acknowledge that history as well, Stanbridge said.
鈥淥ne area Emily Carr is really well-known for is documenting Indigenous villages and culture, so we鈥檙e using that to talk about perspective and appropriation and the impacts of that. We鈥檙e really in a time of listening, and taking Carr鈥檚 work as a way to open bigger conversations.鈥�
The exhibit will be at the gallery through 2022, so these conversations will be ongoing for some time. The gallery has shot footage of some of the sites Carr painted as they are today, and will be shown on screens at the gallery with the names and history of their territories attached.
鈥淲e want people to have that context,鈥漇tanbridge said. 鈥淭he power of language is to do more than just describe a place or a thing, it鈥檚 to give a whole sense of a worldview. The more we see something and hear it, the more we invite it into our lives in a bigger way.鈥�
