The Vernon Public Art Gallery opens to a brave new world of art-making with its upcoming exhibitions, featuring works by David and Jorden Doody as well as UBC Okanagan printmaking students.
The Doodys’ Electric Sleep is a collaborative sculptural installation that incorporates re-purposed, ready-made objects with hand-built sculptural elements juxtaposed with today’s screen culture.
“David and Jorden Doody work collaboratively to create their sculptural installations, which often are difficult to decode or get a hint of what the narrative might be. Their sculptural practice’s basic premise is to contrast the three-dimensional space we inhabit with the virtual reality apprehended on a screen,” gallery curator Lubos Culen said.
Both UBC Okanagan alumni, David and Jorden graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2008. David went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts degree from Montreal’s Concordia University in 2017 and is now a sessional lecturer at UBCO, teaching drawing, painting, sculpture, and, most recently, mural art.
Jorden is currently pursuing her MFA at UBCO and has her work on display in the solo exhibition, I Must be Streaming, at the Kelowna Art Gallery.
Together, they commit to experimenting and improvising to create more accessible works by examining the contextual underpinning of various interesting juxtapositions of sculptural elements, Culen says.
“When viewing or experiencing the Doodys’ work, one inevitably ponders the materials and their use, as they are varied and often inconsistent with the objects’ re-purposed signifiers. The works are situated in a flux of screen culture and the omnipresence and proliferation of images, which are immaterial yet representational of three-dimensional archetypes. In contrast, the Doodys’ sculptures often borrow the aesthetics of images seen on various devices. Still, they manufacture the three-dimensional assemblages that mimic the appearance of images seen on a screen.”
Along with the Doodys’ Electric Sleep, the gallery will show The Repeatable Image: Printmaking at UBCO, which consists of prints created by current fine arts students in UBCO’s Department of Creative Studies.
Produced by traditional and modern methods, including relief prints, intaglio, lithography, and screenprinting, the prints cover various subject matter from questions surrounding the landscape and environmental stewardship, to the human condition, to formal abstract structures.
“Some have used ultraviolet light screenprinting, which uses non-toxic materials to produce highly detailed prints,” said Culen.
Both exhibitions open at the gallery Thursday, Oct. 8 and run to Dec. 22. Please note that there will be no opening reception due to COVID-19 health and safety regulations.
The VPAG is also now receiving applications to its annual members’ exhibition, Exposed!
“Members are at the core of the Vernon Public Art Gallery and Exposed!, our annual member’s exhibition, is one way that we can say thank you for their ongoing support,” executive director Dauna Kennedy said. “This exhibition is a mix of artworks from our membership. Some are established artists, and for others, it will be their first opportunity to display their work publicly. All works are available for sale, so it is a great opportunity to find a special Christmas gift while supporting local art.”
Exposed! opens Nov. 5 and continues to Dec. 22. Those who wish to submit artwork must be current VPAG members. The deadline for submissions is Oct. 28. Applications are available here through the Vernon Public Art Gallery website.
Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Saturday, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
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.
