The
Kelowna Art Gallery is pleased to present the nationally exhibition
Regina Clay: Worlds in the Making. This
exhibition examines how in Regina, clay came into its own as a sculptural
medium and became the vehicle
for a creative explosion. Nearly seventy
works by fourteen artists are featured
in this nationally touring exhibition, which includes sculptures by Lorne
Beug, Victor Cicansky, Joe Fafard, David Gilhooly, Ricardo Gomez, Beth
Hone, Ann James, Margaret Keelan, Marilyn Levine, Lorraine Malach, Maija
Peeples-Bright, Jack Sures, David Thauberger, and Russell Yuristy.
The
exhibition narrative begins in 1964-65, with the arrival of sculptor
Ricardo Gomez and ceramist Jack Sures at the art school of the University
of Saskatchewan, Regina Campus. Under their influence, gifted students,
such as Marilyn Levine, Victor Cicansky and Ann James, developed an
interest in clay as a medium and helped establish Regina as a vital centre
for ceramic sculpture and studio
pottery.
Events
in 1969 set the stage for Regina's ceramists to be recognized on the
national and international stage. The Hone-James Studio, founded
a year earlier by Ann James and Beth Hone, held an important workshop
featuring California funk artist James Melchert. A coinciding exhibition
at the MacKenzie Art Gallery exposed the community directly
to leading figures from the California clay scene. Significantly, one of
the artists in that exhibition, David Gilhooly, was soon afterwards hired
by the university to teach ceramics.
Although
the Regina clay scene never developed into a movement with a formal
manifesto or a defined membership,
it was soon evident to outside observers that a creative eruption
unlike anything else in Canada had occurred. Here was a group of artists
who had rejected the serious modernist enterprise
of uncovering abstract, universal truths in favour of a playful, if at
times ironic, exploration of concrete, local realities. In many cases,
artists had become associated with imagery that reflected a personal
connection to people, places, and histories: Fafard's Pense portraits,
Cicansky's outhouse temples, Gilhooly's frog mythologies, Levine's leather
bags and boots, Yuristy's stone boat drawings and animal playground
sculptures, and James's urethane and clay figurative assemblages. Their
assertion
of the importance of place aligned them with the emerging
postmodern concern for locality and they struck a chord with the popular
imagination at a moment when the back-to-the-land movement was at its
zenith.
Throughout
the 1970s, artists were shown in a flurry of exhibitions in Saskatchewan
and across Canada. International recognition took place simultaneously
through exhibitions in Japan and the United States, and, most
significantly, in the selection of Gilhooly, Fafard, Cicansky, Yuristy,
Levine, and James to exhibit in Canada Trajectoires '73 at the Musée
d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1973.
In
retrospect, the Regina Clay artists are notable for being among the first
in Canada to win respect for ceramics as a sculptural medium.
Despite the limitations of producing small scale works without a
theoretical agenda and in a regional centre, their work succeeded in
gaining international attention. Furthermore, their articulation of an
aesthetic that is based in place and personal experience
stands as one of the first attempts at a "cognitive mapping"
of the emerging postmodern world. Located at the intersection
between the local and the global, the worlds that they created continue to
engage viewers with a freshness and intensity that derives from their
intuitive understanding of the complex cultural
issues that even now shape our globe.
Regina
Clay Public
Tours
Regina
Clay Public
tours begin at 1:00pm and are included with the cost of admission
Saturday, April 15
Saturday, May 20
Saturday, June 10
