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Art galleries innovate in a time of crisis – Victoria News

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The pandemic crisis has forced most local art galleries to shift online, and while it’s not the same experience, it’s all they can do until it’s safe for patrons to browse the storefronts again.

The Avenue Art Gallery in Oak Bay is still showing paintings by appointment but only on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. The gallery is otherwise open for phone sales from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and online.

“We can’t allow clients in so we are meeting them at the door, but everything in the gallery is actually on the website,” said owner Heather Wheeler. “Our artists are continuing to deliver and ship new work to the gallery which we will be sharing on our website and via our semi-monthly newsletters and on social media.”

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Sales have dropped to about 10 per cent since the recent call for non-essential businesses to close in an attempt to flatten the curve and mitigate the spread of COVID-19, Wheeler said.

“For us, what it is like now is the same for everyone,” Wheeler said. “We are dealing with the shock of the situation and the knowledge this will be going on for longer than at first thought, not a two-week thing.”

The good news for The Avenue and other galleries is they’ve maintained a business presence through their website and the advent of e-commerce programs for small business.

“We have had people taking advantage of online sales and we hand over the product at the door,” Wheeler said. “We do book appointments to come in, one person at a time.”

Other galleries are in a similar situation.

Madrona Gallery on View Street downtown is also open by appointment only and available daily by email or phone to assist with acquisitions and answer questions. Madrona is now featuring the Miller Collection, a selection of Inuit art carvings collected over the span of 30 years by the Miller family of Vancouver, including such artists as Pauta Saila.

Other galleries are looking to innovate, such as the Gage Gallery’s community project “Challenge Crisis with Creativity.”

The gallery is inviting members of the community to draw, paint, doodle, sculpt or write a poem at home about what they are experiencing during the social isolation period of COVID-19.

Everybody is welcome to contribute, said Gage member Gabriella Hirt.

“Take a photo of your creation and send it to us. If you wish, provide a short description of your work. Invite your kids to participate. Our weekly prompt will help you get inspired.”

Send contributions to Ashley Riddett, a University of Victoria Art History and Visual Studies graduate student who is leading the project. ​

Entries will be published on the Gage Gallery website and social media sites, and when “this” is all over, the collective is planning to compile selected submissions into a community art book.

It will show, and tell, the visual story of how people in Oak Bay and Victoria all have been coping, thriving and surviving during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Send a photo of your creation to Riddett at riddettgreen@gmail.com.

reporter@oakbaynews.com

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E.J. Hughes’ View of a Freighter – Cowichan Bay is one of the works currently at Madrona Gallery.

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Turner Prize shortlist includes art showcasing Scottish Sikh community

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A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.

Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.

She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.

Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”

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Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.

They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.

In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.

“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.

“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”

The shortlisted artists are:

Pio Abad

Pio AbadPio Abad
[Pio Abad]
Pio Abad's installationPio Abad's installation
[Hannah Pye/Ashmolean]

Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.

The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.

The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.

Jasleen Kaur

Jasleen KaurJasleen Kaur
[Robin Christian]
Jasleen Kaur's installationJasleen Kaur's installation
[Keith Hunter]

Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.

The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.

Delaine Le Bas

Delaine Le BasDelaine Le Bas
[Tara Darby]
Delaine Le Bas's installationDelaine Le Bas's installation
[Iris Ranzinger]

Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.

The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.

The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.

Claudette Johnson

Claudette JohnsonClaudette Johnson
[Anne Tetzlaff]
Claudette Johnson's installationClaudette Johnson's installation
[David Bebber]

Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.

She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.

Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.

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Turner Prize: Shortlisted artist showcases Scottish Sikh community

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Turner Prize shortlist includes art showcasing Scottish Sikh community

Jasleen Kaur's installation
Jasleen Kaur’s installation includes a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily

A Scottish artist who uses cars, worship bells and Irn-Bru in her work is among the nominees for this year’s Turner Prize.

Glasgow-born Jasleen Kaur’s work reflects her life growing up in the city’s Sikh community.

She is up for the prestigious art award, now in its 40th year, alongside Pio Abad, Claudette Johnson and Delaine Le Bas.

Turner Prize jury chairman Alex Farquharson described it as a “fantastic shortlist of artists”

300x250x1

Works by the nominated artists will go on show at London’s Tate Britain gallery from 25 September.

They will receive £10,000 each, while the winner, to be announced on 3 December, will get £25,000.

In a statement, Farquharson said: “All four make work that is full of life.

“They show how contemporary art can fascinate, surprise and move us, and how it can speak powerfully of complex identities and memories, often through the subtlest of details.

“In the Turner Prize’s 40th year, this shortlist proves that British artistic talent is as rich and vibrant as ever.”

The shortlisted artists are:

Pio Abad

Pio Abad
Pio Abad's installation

Manila-born Abad’s solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford included drawings, etchings and sculptures that combined to “ask questions of museums”, according to the jury.

The 40-year-old, who works in London, reflects on colonial history and growing up in the Philippines, where his parents struggled against authoritarianism.

The title of his exhibit is a nod to Mark Twain’s 1901 essay To the Person Sitting In Darkness, which hit out at imperialism.

Jasleen Kaur

Jasleen Kaur
Jasleen Kaur's installation

Kaur is on the list for Alter Altar at Tramway, Glasgow, which included family photos, an Axminster carpet, a classic Ford Escort covered in a giant doily, Irn-Bru and kinetic handbells.

The 37-year-old, who lives in London, had previously showcased her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum by looking at popular Indian cinema.

Delaine Le Bas

Delaine Le Bas
Delaine Le Bas's installation

Worthing-born Le Bas is nominated for an exhibition titled Incipit Vita Nova. Here Begins The New Life/A New Life Is Beginning. Staged at the Secession art institute in Vienna, Austria, it saw painted fabrics hung, with theatrical costumes and sculptures also part of the exhibit.

The 58-year-old artist was inspired by the death of her grandmother and the history of the Roma people.

The jury said they “were impressed by the energy and immediacy present in this exhibition, and its powerful expression of making art in a time of chaos”.

Claudette Johnson

Claudette Johnson
Claudette Johnson's installation

Manchester-born Johnson has been given the nod for her solo exhibition Presence at the Courtauld Gallery in London, and Drawn Out at Ortuzar Projects, New York.

She uses portraits of black women and men in a combination of pastels, gouache and watercolour, and was praised by the judges for her “sensitive and dramatic use of line, colour, space and scale to express empathy and intimacy with her subjects”.

Johnson, 65, was appointed an MBE in 2022 after being named on the New Year Honours list for her services to the arts.

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Claudette Johnson’s art for Cotton Capital nominated for Turner prize

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Claudette Johnson has been nominated for this year’s Turner prize for her work, which includes a portrait of the African-American slavery abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond commissioned as part of the Guardian’s award-winning Cotton Capital series.

Pio Abad, Johnson, Jasleen Kaur and Delaine Le Bas will compete for the £25,000 prize, while the nominated artists will each collect £10,000 as the prize returns to Tate Britain for the first time in six years.

Colonialism, migration, nationalism and identity politics are the key themes running through the 40th edition of the Turner prize, which the jury described as showing contemporary British art “is appealing and dynamic as ever”.

Alex Farquharson, the director of Tate Britain and chair of the Turner prize jury, said this year’s nominees were exploring ideas of identity and would be exhibited from 25 September, before the jury’s final choice.

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He said: “This year’s shortlisted artists can be broadly characterised as exploring questions of identity, autobiography, community and the self in relation to memory, or history or myth.”

Four paintings of people on grey gallery wall

The Turner prize, regarded as one of the art world’s most prestigious awards, is presented to an artist born or working in Britain for an outstanding exhibition or presentation of their work over the previous year.

Abad was nominated for his solo exhibition To Those Sitting in Darkness at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, with the jury commenting on the “precision and elegance” of his work, which takes its title from a Mark Twain poem of a similar name that critiques American imperialism the Philippines, his homeland.

The show also contains references to the Benin Bronzes, after Abad discovered that the punitive expedition of 1897 – during which British troops sacked Benin City and looted thousands of objects, of which about 900 are in the British Museum’ – set off from his home, Woolwich, in south London.

Red Ford Escort in gallery with doily on top

Johnson was nominated for her solo Presence exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, which the Guardian said “brilliantly questions depictions of non-white figures by such revered painters as Gauguin and Picasso”. She was also recognised for her New York show, Drawn Out, at Ortuzar Projects, which included her Redmond portrait.

She is the latest black female artist who emerged in the Black Art Movement of the 1980s to be recognised by the Turner prize, following in the footsteps of Lubaina Himid (2017 winner) and Veronica Ryan (2022), while Ingrid Pollard and Barbara Walker have both been nominated.

The jury said Johnson had been nominated because of the “renewal of her practice”, after she stopped making work in the 1990s, and the fact she was still “taking risks and trying new forms of practice”.

Kaur’s work in the exhibition Alter Altar, which was shown at Tramway in Glasgow, features sculptures and soundscapes, including a red Ford Escort covered in a huge doily, which references her father’s first car and ideas of migration and belonging in Britain.

Long painted drapes and seated figure

Kaur grew up in Glasgow’s Sikh community in Pollokshields, and the jury said the exhibition was a breakout show that was “generous, celebratory, moving and alive to timely issues, speaking imaginatively to how we might live together in a world increasingly marked by nationalism, division and social control”.

Le Bas’s work, shown at the Vienna Secession exhibition, was described as a “response to social and political turmoil” and includes immersive performance art with theatrical costumes and sculptures.

Farquharson said there was a chance the show may travel to Bradford during its City of Culture year, following the precedent set by Coventry, which hosted the awards in 2021, although that was still “to be confirmed”.

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