The Department of Art is committed to the study and practice of the visual arts as these relate to creative art making, educational practice and theory, and the understanding of art in its diverse historical and cultural settings. The U of C produces graduates well equipped to meet the numerous overlapping skills currently demanded within professional art practice and theoretical discourse.
Announcements
Department of Art printmaking professor, Bill Laing, was recently inducted into the Student's Union (SU) Teaching Excellence Hall of Fame. Hall of Fame inductees are “an exceptional group of people who are enthusiastic about teaching and passionate about the subject matter…. They are the instructors who take students beyond the walls of the classroom by teaching more than what is in the textbook, offering additional resources and illustrating real world applications for the course content.” Bill has also won the SU Teaching Excellence Award five times - congratulations, Bill!
The Department of Art’s Graduate Program Administrator, Biljana Arnautovic, who also holds a part-time appointment with the Department of Linguistics, was nominated for an “Exemplary Administrative Award - Support Staff” by the Linguistics graduate students. Congratulations to
you, Bilijana.
Performing & Visual Arts at U of C
Upcoming Events
Conceptually and visually intriguing, Glimpse encompasses themes of cultural stereotyping, public art, narrative portraiture, text and linguistics as interpreted by the seven emerging artists of the 2013 BFA Studio Concentration Graduating Class.
Friday, April 26, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Saturday, April 27, 2013 - 12:00 - 17:00Monday, April 29, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Wednesday, May 1, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Thursday, May 2, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Friday, May 3, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Saturday, May 4, 2013 - 12:00 - 17:00Tuesday, May 7, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Wednesday, May 8, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Thursday, May 9, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Friday, May 10, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Saturday, May 11, 2013 - 12:00 - 17:00Tuesday, May 14, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Wednesday, May 15, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Thursday, May 16, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Friday, May 17, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Saturday, May 18, 2013 - 12:00 - 17:00Tuesday, May 21, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Thursday, May 23, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Friday, May 24, 2013 - 10:00 - 17:00Saturday, May 25, 2013 - 12:00 - 17:00Friday, April 26, 2013 - 17:00
Faculty and Student Exhibitions in Calgary and Around the World
Former B.F.A. graduate, Megan Dickie has an installation at a new gallery in Edmonton, Latitude 53. Dickie’s installation, Flips Folly, is a series of sculptures inspired by architecture and mathematics and presented as props that invite comic interaction from the viewer through touch and movement. While the creative process behind the sculptures embodies thought and intellectualism, viewers are free to touch and interact with them, breaking down the divide between physical and mental states, by engaging on a tactile level before the censorship of reason kicks in. Dickie, who has exhibited across Canada and in the United States, teaches sculpture and printmaking at the University of Victoria; her installation will be at Latitude 53 from May 24 until July 13. Latitude 53 is located at 10242 - 106 Street, Edmonton, Alberta.
“Rendez-Vous”, is a thirty-minute documentary produced by the French Canadian Broadcasting Company about the making of Toro ENVISTIENDO, an art installation produced by Jean-René Leblanc, an Associate Professor with the University of Calgary’s (U of C) Department of Art, and Carl Spencer, a local artist and U of C Alum.
The installation employed interactivity combined with a video representation of a bull, an iconic animal in rodeo and cowboy culture. Installed in a +15 space during last year’s Centennial Calgary Stampede, the artists were symbolically transposing the bull into the city’s downtown core with the intention of creating a playful yet powerful metaphorical installation that used interactivity as a bridge between the virtual and the real. Viewers were invited to experience the responsive video imagery by moving in proximity to sensors concealed behind the windows. The documentary will air May 7th, 2013, on ARTV.- Department of Art graduates are among the artists taking part in WRECK CITY: An Epilogue for 809, a community-based art experiment transforming 9 houses, 3 garages, and a greenhouse scheduled for demolition into temporary art, installation, and performance spaces. The biggest project of its type in the history of Calgary (perhaps even all of Canada), Eight Artist-Curators have invited 100+ Artists, Musicians, and Performers to participate. Artist participants will be free to alter the architecture of entire houses, re-shaping the homes using materials from the houses themselves, without need for repair at the end of the project. This newly formed community of artists intends to produce a neighbourhood of magical and critically-engaging spaces, made possible only by the freedom of working inside houses soon to be destroyed. WRECK CITY is located between 621 and 823, 5th Ave N.W., and will be open to the public from April 19 – 27, 2013.
Jayme Chalmers, a 2nd year MFA student in the Department of Art, participated in a student exchange in February with the Royal Coll
ege of Art in London, U.K. Jayme met students and faculty as well as visiting artists and attended student presentations. His painting, “Harlequin face”, was displayed at the Royal College's art show in the Henry Moore Gallery.Professor and artist Eric Cameron is one of 36 artists from nine Alberta communities featured in the 2013 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta (AGA). Eric’s piece, Thanatos (the Greek word for peaceful death), a suspended plane of paint-dipped Remembrance Day poppies, was a reaction to an illness and the belief he was dying. The AGA's exhibit, entitled The News From Here, features a range of works reflecting the Alberta perspective and includes light installations, sculptures and short films. The exhibit is at the AGA until May.
- Chika Modum will exhibit in Aesthetica Art Prize’s First Major Exhibition. Recent MA graduate, artist Chika Modum, will be featured in an international art show in the U.K. from March 8 to April 28, 2013, as the Aesthetica Art Prize launches its first major exhibition in the historic city of York. Selected from over 3,000 entries, Chika earned her place in the Aesthetica Art Prize longlist of 100 artists with an innovative and outstanding submission, and will have her work projected in York St Mary’s – York Art Gallery’s contemporary art space. Chika’s piece will be juxtaposed with the medieval setting of York St Mary’s in an exhibition which challenges the notion of the “white cube” and delivers a unique experience. This new visual context showcases Chika’s work alongside other international rising stars of the art world in a major event.