Book launch: FEAR by Todd Lambeth (flask publishing, 2023)
In conjunction withDon’t Look Now, the VAC is pleased to host a special event to launch the new artistbook by Victoria-based artist Todd Lambeth.
Please join us at the Pat Martin Bates Gallery | 1800 Store Street:
Saturday, 16 September 2023 @ 3pm Artist & Publisher will be in-attendance
About this limited edition artistbook:
Published by flask, FEAR is derived from a series of 9” X 12” pencil crayon drawings created by the artist Todd Lambeth.
A selection of nine of these images were scanned in the original scale, arranged together consecutively and then printed on a single page 9” H X 108” W. This was then accordion folded into a 9” X 12” book. The book is bound in a cloth cover gold stamped with the title in an edition of 12.
PAT MARTIN BATES GALLERY 1800 Store Street (wheelchair accessible) 8 September – 29 October. Wednesday – Sunday from noon to five pm. Suggested donations: $2-$20
This focused group exhibition is curated from existing and new work by artists from Victoria and Vancouver. Thematically, this is an exploration of the various ways fear permeates our society, from personal to cultural and even global concerns.
As an exhibition, Don’t Look Now offers multiple perspectives on the topic of fear, all through the lens of unique installations. Now with clarity stemming from 2020 and the overlapping calls to action for health care, social justice, and infrastructural reform, we can see how artists have observed and absorbed these conversations and it is now time to present them for consideration and open discussion.
“I wanted to discuss the different ways fear presents itself in our lives.” notes VAC Executive Director and the Curator of the Pat Martin Bates Gallery, Kegan McFadden.
The four artists in Don’t Look Now are local or with ties to the Island. Todd Lambeth will be expanding his painting practice to create site-specific murals at the Gallery, as part of a series he began during the Covid-19 lockdown… Taking the word ‘fear’ as a starting point. Whereas Wendy Welch is showing a suite of watercolour paintings that directly reference climate anxiety. On display is her series ‘A World Without Ice’ that uses the stark white sheets of watercolour paper as a stand-in for the ice flows which are increasingly disappearing. Her blue jagged lines of pigment delineate the cracking and crumbling of the ice as the ocean heats up. These two installations are met by an impressive one-to-one scale replica of an F150 truck made of paper by Brendan Lee Satish Tang. Tang grew up in Nanaimo in the 1980s and made this work reflecting on his time there as someone who didn’t quite fit in… the truck becomes a metaphor for xenophobia.
“When I curate group exhibits, I am interested first in how the works speak to one another, and then also how the conversation can be complicated to produce new ideas.” says McFadden.
The installation that turns away from fear and into celebration is provided by local artist Monster Boy, whose felted wool sculpture of a fantastical unicorn acts as “a celebration of the trans form in fantasy. It’s a love letter to all the trans elders who have come before, and paved the way for what we have today, and how important it is to protect it.” says the artist.
“As our neighbours to the south (and closer to home) continue to challenge trans* rights and freedoms of expression, it’s so important to be able to make space for trans* joy as a counter to the fear-mongering that pits community members against one another.” clarifies McFadden.
The Inter-Cultural Association of Greater Victoria is partnering with the Victoria Arts Council to present a group exhibition that will feature artwork from the diverse community of Newcomers in Winter 2024.
The exhibition will be called YOU ARE WELCOME and it will be a celebration of the diverse artists that now call Victoria home. We are looking for: drawing, painting, performance, printmaking, photography, video, textiles, weaving, and any other sort of artwork that connects you to your homeland.
The ICA and VAC are hosting two community meetings to offer information about this exhibition.
The first meeting will take place at the ICA’s downtown office (808 Douglas Street) Tuesday October 10 from 3PM – 5PM. Anyone interested in this opportunity is encouraged to attend this first meeting, where you can introduce yourself and tell us about your artwork.
From that meeting, we will identify artists for various opportunities, including exhibiting but also co-curating this exhibition. The second meeting will be at the Victoria Arts Council (1800 Store Street) Saturday 25 November, 3PM. This is where selected artists can see the gallery where the show will take place, as well as ask any questions about the exhibition.
You Are Welcome will be presented at the Victoria Arts Council’s Pat Martin Bates Gallery from 13 January – 3 March 2024, with opening celebrations and many public events taking place throughout the exhibition.
This is a paid opportunity; all artists selected to participate in You Are Welcome will be paid a professional artist fee.
A founding member of the Victoria Arts Council (formerly the Community Arts Council of Greater Victoria, established in 1968), Pat Martin Bates is internationally recognized for her work as a visual artist.
PMB, as she is known, has won many prestigious awards, including the Queen Elizabeth II Silver Jubilee Medal, the Zachenta medal in Poland, and the International Print Art of Norway Gold Medal, and various awards from the Canada Council for the Arts. She has received recognition at exhibitions all over the world, and has exhibited in China, Chile, Yugoslavia, Poland, Great Britain, Norway, Japan, France, the United States, Argentina, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, and Australia. Her works appear in major collections in many countries, including the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria and the National Gallery of Canada. PMB’s contributions extend to being a charter member of the Victoria chapter of the Zonta Club, as well as the President of the Victoria Visual Arts Legacy Society. In 2019, as part of our 50th anniversary, a fifty-year survey of PMB’s dynamic visual art in prints, painting, sculpture, and lightboxes was exhibited in our main gallery at 1800 Store Street.
Though the VAC operates throughout the city and beyond, with our community satellite program, it is our main gallery space on Store Street that has become a touchstone for the arts in Victoria. We are all so thrilled to be able to give this main gallery the honour of naming it after our founder: Pat Martin Bates. A singular artist who has always championed her community, and given of herself over and over through numerous charitable and educational initiatives, PMB remains invested in the continued success of the VAC.
Our Garden Party June 17th is where we will celebrate this naming, where PMB will be the Guest of Honour.
In March 2020, the Victoria Arts Council launched a new digital magazine as a way for our members to stay connected while practicing social distancing.
In Fall 2021 the VAC conducted an accessibility audit and as a result transitioned UNTIL from a PDF to a stand-alone website, now located at:
____________________________________________________________ ISSUE 7: THE PREQUEL, with Guest-Editor Kemi Craig
Release date: November 2020
With the return of our digital publication, UNTIL, we’re taking stock of the past six months since we initiated this project… of course it’s a different world now. And with this revamped magazine, we look to play with time and space as a way of fumbling forward to what might (or should) happen next.
The Victoria Arts Council is proud to present the latest issue of our digital magazine, which “borrows heavily from speculative approaches to franchises, but also the possibilities of futurisms in its multifaceted forms.”
While curating this issue, we asked the community a number questions: What came before this? How does a deep dive into under-acknowledged histories allow for a better understanding of how to be now as well as how to be better for the future? Where do the lines of experience blur into what is felt, what is knowable, and what is needed? How does this location of an Island on which we find ourselves reinforce the possibilities of where we might end up next? Will your work be a re-imaging of this time and place? Perhaps you are an echo of cells and actions of the past millennia?
This issue presents a number of talented artists, writers and thinkers whose work engages with these questions and more.
UNTIL Issue Four: Home features contributions of visual, literary, and performing art by VAC members on the topic of what ‘home’ means and how our understanding of home has been reinforced, altered, or subject to various interpretations and permutations since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged.
UNTIL Issue Three: Resilience features contributions of visual, literary, and performing art by VAC members. Issue 3 also includes the 2nd installment of our Poetry in Public project, featuring the poem What to do when the world wants you dead, by past Youth Poet Laureate for the City of Victoria, KP Dennis.
For the second issue of UNTIL…, we invited local artists to explore what being tender means to them, and whether they have been able to preserve that tender spot in their heart when life seems harsh in a time like this. Exceeding all expectations, we received such a wide variety of responses that challenged and broadened our preexistent understanding of the theme.
The first issue’s theme is Interconnected. How do we nurture and sustain meaningful relationships during a period of time when we cannot physically interact? In what ways can we support one another? What role does art play in defining your “new normal?” How do we sustain our individual practices when all we want to do is be among our peers?
19 Sept – 19 Dec 2023 GVPL Central Branch 735 Broughton St, Victoria, BC
Biography:
Born Lethbridge, Alberta March 1945. Art and ornithology have monopolized my life equally. My childhood was split between Saskatchewan an Ontario with very brief stays in Alberta and British Columbia. Educated at Western Technical Commercial in Toronto majoring in art. Studio 5 provided my first wage. Immigrated to Australia in 1971 and spent two years working for the University of Queensland banding birds. Art and ornithology linked when returning to Canada and joining the staff at the British Columbia Museum as curator of collections and illustrator of books and scientific papers. Self-employed from mid-1980’s as a freelance bird illustrator and stone carver at which time watercolour paintings of birds dominated my art sales with several one-man shows and pieces selling in galleries. I was also the author of several bird-finding guides that included the Costa Rica best seller and other foreign and provincial guides. Numerous articles for birding and nature history magazines and the appraised “Birds of Vancouver Island” were written. Art work took priority again some ten years ago principally as a retirement pastime when beginning a series of small, high-realism acrylic landscapes on paper and more recently birds in gouache on half-sheet watercolour paper.
Paintings have been shown twice at the Tulista Art Gallery, twice at the Roost Restaurant including “meet the artist exhibit”, twice at the Saanich Fair Art Gallery where two won second prize ribbons, at the Bubble Tea Place, three times at the Koffee Cafe, once at the Bruce Hutchison Library, twice at the Saanich Municiple Hall, once at the Cedar Hill Recreation Center, twice at the Coffee and Tea Cafe, one at the Fickle Fig Restaurant, and the McTavish Academy of Art. Several pieces have been accepted on three occasions to the juried Sooke Fine Art show and nine times to the juried Mary Winspear Fine Art show where one piece won the Juror’s Choice Award and two won honorable mention. Past awards include a portrait admitted to the National Diploma Collection of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour.
The latest project was illustrating the 38 species of duck that have occurred on Vancouver Island that took 2 1/2 years. Giclee prints are being produced with 5 each of ten paintings with the entire set to be printed eventually. The originals will be shown at the Tulista Art Gallery in spring of 2023.
