Submitted. The Reach Gallery Museum Abbotsford presents three exciting and provocative exhibitions for 2013. Cascadia, a group exhibition of artists from Canada and the United States, explores diverse art practices of visual artists from various regions throughout Cascadia who are examining and exploring wide-ranging concepts of the landscape (rural and urban) as well as social, cultural and political issues from a Pacific Northwest perspective. Nests and Trees is a two person exhibition which juxtaposes personal explorations of Minimalism and Abstraction through the depiction of familiar things as means of expression from two very different perspectives. Unintended Consequences – The Extinct Bird Series is an exhibition that explores extinct birds, the cause of their extinctions and the unintended consequences of human actions.
<h2>Winter Exhibitions</h2>
January 24 – March 31, 2013
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<strong>Public Reception</strong>
Thursday, January 24, 2013 @ 7pm
Artists in attendance
<strong>Artists Talks</strong>
Thursday, January 24 @ 6pm
Vicky Marshall and Pat Service
Friday, January 25 @ 12pm
Michael Brophy and Vanessa Renwick, Oregon
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<h2>In The Great Hall</h2>
<strong>
Cascadia</strong>
<a href=”http://www.abbotsfordtoday.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/cascadia.jpg”><img src=”http://www.abbotsfordtoday.ca/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/cascadia.jpg” alt=”cascadia” width=”239″ height=”221″ /></a>Participating artists: Marten Berkman (Yukon), Michael Brophy (Oregon), Judith Currelly (British Columbia), Owen Kydd (British Columbia) and Vanessa Renwick (Oregon) Cascadia is a bioregion that incorporates British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, parts of southern Alaska, Yukon and northern California, and in many ways is geographically, culturally, economically and environmentally distinct from surrounding areas. The region has since been divided into different political jurisdictions, but Cascadia still retains a sense of self identity. These artists provoke a re-imaging of a specific social, cultural and political landscape to establish a dialogue between artists living in different places addressing different audiences as well as one another and demarcating zones of cultural production. Marten Berkman explores the parameters of new technologies interpreting and reflecting the landscape and offers the viewer a complex layer of meaning and relationships between the earth and global industrial culture. Michael Brophy’s paintings make reference to and attempt to manipulate authoritative 19th century pictorial traditions to create critical perspectives on the contemporary social landscape of the Northwest. Judith Currelly’s painting is inspired by the stark vastness of Northern British Columbia and the Yukon and speaks about finding a relationship with nature and the environment. Owen Kydd investigates the pictorial intersections of photography, video and film. Vanessa Renwick’s work reflects an interest in place, relationships between bodies and landscapes, and borders.
<strong>Nests and Trees</strong>
Vicky Marshall and Pat Service
Vicky Marshall’s art practice reveals a personal struggle between abstract expressionism and expressionist representation through her Nest series of paintings. Marshall’s enthusiasm for the beauty and bounty of everyday existence also speaks to human intervention in the natural world. Marshall explores everyday subject matter as a means of revealing the extraordinary beauty that resides within the ordinary object. Pat Service’s Tree series reveals an intuitive and very personal approach to the landscape with a focus on vibrant, multi-layered colour and distilled form. Service explores an amplified use of abstraction in these breakthrough works. In each work it is necessary to investigate the painting from a distance as an impressionist landscape as well as up close where there exists a complex, thick and luscious application of point.
<h2>In The Grotto and South Gallery</h2>
<strong>Unintended Consequences – The Extinct Bird Series</strong>
Rosa Quintana Lillo
There are countless reasons for bird and animal extinction: the introduction of invasive species, the destruction of habitat, hunting, capture and trade. When hearing of the loss of hundreds of migrating birds in open tar sands tailings ponds and the absence of all birds in Guam Island, Rosa Quintana Lillo decided to create a new body of art works that examines the history of bird extinctions and the causes of the extinctions through a series of thought-provoking paintings.
For More On The Reach And A Complete List Of Exhibits Please <a href=”http://http://www.thereach.ca/”><strong>Click Here</strong></a>.