The Richmond Art Gallery has announced its sweeping 2024 programme, featuring a slate of six innovative shows where artists use their craft to ask hard-hitting questions—and seek difficult answers.
With a lineup including iconic conceptual artists Paul Wong and Theodore Sasketche Wan, group exhibitions focusing on spiritual ritual and food culture, and solo shows from emerging creatives, there’s a mix of local, national, and international art on offer over the coming year.
“The 2024 program centres on existential questions, such as how do we communicate with others across communities and how do we create connections across difference?” says RAG curator Zoë Chan in a statement. “The artists address representation, embodiment, performativity, and more through works that span video, installation, performance, printmaking, and puppetry.”
The programming is ordered by seasons, with two exhibitions each running from January 20 to March 31, and April 20 to June 30; and a pair of expansive group exhibitions running consecutively from July 20 to September 29, and then from October 19 to December 31
“Our exhibitions are programmed to offer various entry points for a range of diverse visitors, while also introducing them to exciting works by artists both from Richmond and further afield,” RAG director Shaun Dacey says in a release. “Our shows are responsive to… the social fabric of the city.”
Here’s more information about all the upcoming exhibitions at the gallery, which is located inside the Richmond Cultural Centre (a short walk from Richmond-Brighouse SkyTrain station). Entry is by donation.
but this is the language we met in; 我们在这个语言中相遇
Shen Xin explores emotions and ethics through her visual art. This solo exhibition centres on an eclectic video that explores language’s primality, prose, and protest.
When: January 20 to March 1, 2024
Let the real world in
Contemporary video focused on children and youth abound in this exhibition, with pieces from Kirsten Leenaars, Wapikoni Mobile, and Yoshua Okón, and responsive screenprints from Vancouver-based artist Yaimel López Zaldívar.
When: January 20 to March 1, 2024
Until Bruises: Theodore Wan & Paul Wong
Two titans of 1970s conceptual art, Theodore Sasketche Wan and Paul Wong, are paired together in this exploration of physical, person-forward works. Given the infuriating rise of anti-Asian hate, the Chinese-Canadian artists’ work continues to resonate today.
When: April 20 to June 30, 2024
<span class=”picturefill” data-picture data-alt=”Theodore Saskatche Wan’s Bound by Everyday Necessities, part of the Until Bruises exhibition.”> Theodore Saskatche Wan’s Bound by Everyday Necessities, part of the Until Bruises exhibition.
Hazel Meyer: The Marble in the Basement
Power, inheritance, and curation pervade Hazel Meyer’s work. It’s part research project into Canadian artist Joyce Wieland’s legacy, and part exploration of how we decide what gets remembered.
When: April 20 to June 30, 2024
It begins with knowing and not knowing
A group exhibition featuring Rebecca Bair, Xinwei Che, Patrick Cruz, Zoë Kreye, Ogheneofegor Obuwoma, Michelle Sound, and Ximena Velásquez. These disparate artists are tied together through meditations on spirituality and ritual, with works spanning textiles, cyanotypes, and video.
When: July 20 to September 29, 2024
<span class=”picturefill” data-picture data-alt=”From Ogheneofegor Obuwoma’s In Memory of Who We Were, part of the It begins with knowing and not knowing exhibition.”> From Ogheneofegor Obuwoma’s In Memory of Who We Were, part of the It begins with knowing and not knowing exhibition.
FOODWAYS
What is the intersection of art and food? This innovative exhibition mixes artists who explore the myriad dimensions of food cultures, and public programming that highlights food-related community events like gardening, food security, and seed saving.
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
