Radical Regionalism
Local Knowledge and Making Places
January 17 to March 15, 2009
Organized and circulated by Museum London
Curated by Ihor Holubizky
This exciting group exhibition
contains a wide range of contemporary works by six artists, three of whom
live and work in Canada, and three who are from Australia. The curator is
Ihor Holubizky, who was curator at the Kelowna Art Gallery in the year
2000, and is currently curator at Museum London, in London, Ontario, the
organizing gallery for this exhibition. Each of the artists selected is
concerned with their own place or location in their work: its
histories, social concerns/events, and more. Holubizky posits for these
artists a new sense of the word "regionalism," instead of its
equation often with a parochial form of provincialism. This new
"radical" regionalism would be a purposeful one based on local
engagement and not standing consciously in relation to global centres of
cultural production.
Although the works created by
the six artists Holubizky has selected are completely different in terms
of mediums used and visual vocabularies employed, the viewer is not
intended to be limited to looking at the stylistic characteristics of the
pieces. Holubizky’s point of investigation is about each artist’s
relationship to his/her specific location, and how that relationship is
borne out/expressed in the work.
Let’s look at our own local
example, Ann Kipling. She has eight drawings in the show, and refers in
the works’ titles – all called View through the Spallumcheen
– not to a specific locale (they are all created sitting out in the
fields around her home near Falkland) but instead, to the name of the
First Nation located in nearby Enderby. So there is an overt reference to
a palimpsest, that is, Kipling really is looking through a layer of
history, now embedded in the very landscape in which she sits and which
she attempts to record in her work.
Through his text in the
accompanying catalogue, Holubizky clarifies his notions about all six
artists’ relationships with their respective places. The show seems apt
for Kelowna, not just because the three Canadian artists all have works in
the permanent collection of the Kelowna Art Gallery, but because all
artists working here also have had to develop their own stances and
relationships to this place, and to the other places where they may hope
to win audiences, untainted by the moniker of "regionalism." It
is a tricky term and issue, and one worth our contemplation and
discussion, brought to our collective attention by this unusual
exhibition.