Archive: 2009

Keith Murray

Keith Murray – And the People Bowed and Prayed

6–28 November in the Main Space

Artist Talk & Opening Reception Friday 6 November, 7:00 PM
Our Lady of Contemporary Art will be conducting an informative talk about the practice of Mr. and Mrs. Keith Murray at 7:00 pm, followed by a reception at 8:00.

Calgary artist Mr. & Mrs. Keith Murray’s glow-in-the-dark installation is a shrine to hundreds of deities and their multitudinous identities. As in his brightly-coloured video work, including a worshipful video of a trans Dolly Parton performing, Murray explores queer interpretations of post-Christian spiritiualities. Amongst the intense bright-on-black light and colour, Murray is working towards an ideal unity of masculine and feminine.

Shane Golby

Shane Golby – Signs of Desire

6–28 November in the ProjEx Room

Opening Reception: Friday 6 November, 8:00 PM

Illicit Illustrations Word & Image workshop with the artist: Saturday 28 November, 1:00 PM (more info)

This collection of mixed-media works focuses on personal emotional and social experience as both insider and outsider in contemporary North American society. Rooted in Golby’s coming-out narrative, and drawing inspiration from the gay-marriage debate, the works tell stories of discrimination, censorship, poverty and hidden longings. Golby explores his own positions: as a single and closeted or openly gay man, and as foreign traveller or returning local.

Chris Reid – Dazed & Amused

25 September–24 October 2009 in the Main Gallery

Artist Talk Friday 25 September, 7:00 PM
Opening Reception Friday 25 September, 8:00 PM
Bunny-Making Workshop Saturday 26 September, 1:00 PM

Manitoban artist Chris Reid’s Dazed & Amused is filled with images of bunnies, cats, planes, screaming toast and buildings on chicken legs. She places these characters in situations that she lives through or observes through her career in social work or on television, steeped in a background of feminism. Her images are absurd, fantastical and at times dark; innocent bunnies with sharp-toothed mouths and churches walking on chicken legs.

“My work is directed by a need to self-comfort. It is a metaphor for anxiety, obsessive thought and coping. It is about the desire to belong, the frustration and disappointment of having ideals mangled and the not-necessarily-logical need to meet family obligations and expectations. At the same time it is satirical and cynical it is playful, colourful and deceptively inviting.”

Kristen Hutchinson – From Sky to Ground: Fragmented Landscapes

25 September–24 October in the ProjEx Room

Opening Reception Friday 25 September, 8:00 PM

Culled from strips of National Geographic photographs, From Sky to Ground: Fragmented Landscapes is a series of 320 collages that deconstruct and combine many environments to create newly abstracted landscapes. From the opening night onwards, the collages will be sold individually. Viewers will immediately retrieve the landscapes they have just purchased and place a small red dot within the empty space. Through this process, viewers/owners become actively engaged in further fragmenting and eroding the installation.

This year, Latitude 53 is pleased to announce that the tenth annual edition of Visualeyez will take place over 6 days in September, including events during Alberta Arts Days, with a curatorial focus upon Water. The festival is curated by Todd Janes with writing and animation by Lori Weidenhammer (British Colombia), and will to present ten artists from Canada and beyond, including Naufus Ramirez-Figueroa (Vancouver, BC/Guatamala), Megan Morman (Saskatoon, SK), Michael Fernandes (East Dover, NS), Rita Kamacho (Toronto, ON/Mexico), T.L. Cowan (Edmonton, AB), Jason Fielding (Edmonton, AB), IdeaAssassins (Edmonton, AB) and Reona Brass (Regina, SK).

Visit the Visualeyez 2009 website

Thomas Kneubühler

Trespass Act

August 7–September 5, 2009 in the Main Space

North America is preoccupied with security, and embraces the idea of private property, unlike most European countries, where natural resources are accessible to everyone even when privately owned. TRESPASS ACT includes outdoor installations showing a series of security guards, raising the issue of surveillance in public space, and a gallery exhibition of industrial zones and office buildings deserted at night time. The viewer can peek through the windows and becomes a trespasser, watched by security cameras and guards.

J. Stanton

Art Paraphernalia for a Modern World

August 7–September 5, 2009 in the ProjEx Room

At J. STANTON, INC., one can purchase their very own art objects, each with various degrees of usefulness and artistic worth. Stanton's store brings the shopping experience into the gallery itself, an action which investigates the roles of art and the gallery in society as emblems of aesthetics, design, lust, desire, and wants, apparent needs, and consumer habits. Our lives revolve around the purchasing of goods and services; art takes on this role.