Exhibition Audio tours (collected below)
Conférence d’artiste avec Anne Brochu Lambert
Panel Discussion: How Artists and Biologists See Plants Differently
Heather Shillinglaw, Laurel Terlesky, Rachel Broussard, Alyssa Ellis, and Dr. Mel Hart
This online discussion forum compares how artists represent plants and compares them with specimens from the George F. Ledingham Herbarium's collection.
Four artists (Heather Shillinglaw, Laurel Terlesky, Rachel Broussard, Alyssa Ellis) for whom the complex biology of plants is a subject will show and discuss examples of their work. Artists will discuss why they value the plants they depict in their artworks, how their method of representation reveals unseen or unknown qualities of their botanical subjects and their perspectives on the role of the artist.
Dr. Mel Hart, a member of the George F. Ledingham Herbarium committee at the University of Regina, will show a complimentary image of a dried plant specimen from the herbarium's collection. The biologist will briefly outline the goals of biologists in representing plants and how their approach differs from that of artists. For example, all specimens must be uniform in presentation while novelty and invention are valued in the work of artists.
The discussion will also encompass connections between biologists' and artists' understanding of plants. For instance, artist Laurel Terlesky's botanical drawings illuminate when touched making visible the fact that all living beings carry an electrical charge on the surface of their cells. Evolution, cultivation, extinction and domestication of plants are additional topics addressed by artists and biologists. Artist Heather Shillinglaw stitches a record in thread of traditional knowledge passed onto her from a family member and elder in her large-scale embroideries of medicine plants foraged by her ancestors. Artist and horticulturalist Alyssa Ellis delves into the codependent relationship of care between humans and houseplants. Rachel Broussard uses plant and animal bodies cut from the pages of scientific textbooks to spell messages of environmental doom, recognizing the interconnectedness and vulnerability of all species in an ecosystem.
This forum was recorded with ASL translation and can be viewed free, on-demand through the Art Gallery of Regina's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/Khkwo2PYLSk
Panel Discussion: Abstraction in Saskatchewan
Holly Fay, Nikki Middlemiss and Peter Tucker
Some of Saskatchewan's best-known artists - Agnes Martin, Art McKay, and Bob Boyer - have been abstract artists. Although popularly assumed to be purely formal and free of content, abstract artworks, historically and today, are a new language to convey what is beyond words. Abstract artists seek to represent not what already exists but invent a new language to express what we don't have words for, such as the passage of time, decay, mortality, experiences of difference and a swarm of individuals coming together as one.
The process of creating an artwork is a ritual that brings artists into contact with metaphysical truths. Middlemiss and Tucker continue the sensitive work of their artistic forebears.
Our panellists discussing their practices in the context of abstract minimalism and modernism in Saskatchewa are the two artists presenting their work in the exhibition Elevate & Holon, Nikki Middlemiss & Peter Tucker, and former AGR Director/Curator, a professor in the Media Arts and Performance at the University of Regina and an abstract artist Holly Fay.
Watch the panel discussion illustrated with examples of minimalist and modernist art from the University of Regina's President's Art Collection and the artists own work on the Art Gallery of Regina's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/0P7dUESomW4
Artist's Talk: Katherine Boyer
Let artist Katherine Boyer lead you through her solo exhibition How The Sky Carries the Sun.
Boyer created all new work for her solo exhibition (January 13 – March 13, 2022) at the Art Gallery of Regina. In this online tour, Boyer will explain the layers of meaning — autobiographical, familial, and contradictory — she embeds in her cyanotypes, light-boxes, hooked rugs and beaded textiles through laborious processes and intimate material choices.
This talk was debuted in conjunction with Sâkêwêwak Artist's Collectives' Storytellers' Festival and simultaneously translated into American sign language.
Souris River Valley Metis Settlement Map created by Christine Blondeau.
Watch the talk accompanied by documentation image of the exhibition on the Art Gallery of Regina's YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/N1ot3fEiADg
Artist's Talk: Aganetha Dyck
The AGR is pleased to present a live, online artist talk by Aganetha Dyck in conversation with Curator Sandee Moore.
Aganetha Dyck, who became an artist while living in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, is particularly known for her collaborations with honeybees.
Since the late seventies, Aganetha Dyck's work has been shown in hundreds of solo and group exhibitions across Canada, in the U.S., England, France and the Netherlands and collected by major institutions. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2007.
Her Mennonite heritage and its emphasis on thrift are sources of inspiration for her artwork, in which she commonly gives new life to broken and discarded items. She has reshaped wool sweaters into tiny, shrunken effigies, used family pickling recipes to preserve buttons from the sewing factory that occupied her studio before it was a space for artists and placed hand-crocheted doilies and broken porcelain figurines into beehives to be "mended" by the bees. She will share her inspirations, experiences, and examples of artwork created in collaboration with honeybees over more than two decades of her storied career.
Watch the recording of this talk from September 25, 2021 throughout the month-long celebration of Culture Days (until October 24): https://youtu.be/UQHbsBT9VRU
Black In Art: Peter Tucker, Hagere Selam “shimby” Zegeye-Gebrehiwot & Janielle Ogilvie
The Art Gallery of Regina partnered with Black In Sask on a visual arts-focused second installment of their "Black In" panel series.
We are thrilled to share the practices of Black artists living in Saskatchewan, the paths they’ve followed in their artistic careers, their personal experiences of blackness, and how these experiences inform their practices in visual arts, film and graphic design. Get to know and be inspired by Peter, shimby and Janielle, their artwork, their thoughts and goals in this recorded panel discussion, co-developed and moderated by Mwila Munganama (Black In Sask) and Sandee Moore (Art Gallery of Regina).
WATCH VIDEO ONLINE: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=364858031721900
Vera Saltzman Online Artist Talk & Studio Tour
Award-winning photographic Fort Qu'appelle, Saskatchewan-based artist Vera Saltzman shares her unique hybrid of digital and analogue photography techniques, give viewers a glimpse into her makeshift, home developing lab, and talk about her unconventional path to becoming an artist.
WATCH VIDEO ONLINE: https://youtu.be/Osse6fy5i5E
The Artist Is In: KC Adams, Brenda Wolf & Carole Epp
Get to know ceramic artists in your community! The Artist Is In is a forum for discussion featuring short presentations by artists about their work. The AGR has invited KC Adams (Winnipeg), Carole Epp (Saskatoon) and Brenda Wolf (Regina) to share their practices as they resonate or contrast with our scheduled main gallery exhibition, Tend, featuring a profusion of porcelain flowers and bulbs sculpted by Ruth Chambers.
WATCH VIDEO ONLINE: https://youtu.be/QFQG8ehMMs8
Artists' Studio Tours Video Series
Get a behind the scenes look at how artists create their work, what inspires them and their other passions.