Paintings, photographs, sculptures and fibre designs by more than 100 members of the Gibsons Public Art Gallery provide an exuberantly diverse cross-section of Sunshine Coast creativity in the gallery’s annual Present Tense exhibition.
The show of works — adorning the main hall, Eve Smart Gallery, and GPAG’s newly-opened Library Lounge — attracted a crowd of more than 60 artists and admirers during a public opening reception on Dec. 10. Contributions are unjuried, meaning that every piece provided by a gallery member is accepted and exhibited.
“A lot of the members really appreciate the opportunity to exhibit their work,” said Stewart Stinson, a GPAG board member who assisted volunteer curator Manon Staiger in organizing submissions. Staiger’s etching Beach Ripples also appears in the show, a monochromatic study of time and tide.
“Doing a whole exhibition on their own, or as a group, is a very different thing,” added Stinson. “But to have one piece in an exhibition can be very motivating, giving an artist a goal and helping them to get their work out there.”
Present Tense also serves as a fundraiser for the gallery. A commission from each sale is designated to support operations and programming.
The gallery’s wide-ranging membership includes amateur and professional artists. Robert Keziere, who submitted his digital print Oaxaca Garden Wall at IAGO, previously exhibited a selection of his photography in a solo show at GPAG in October 2021.
“Robert, for example, is quite an established artist,” said gallery manager Christina Symons after greeting Keziere at Saturday’s event. “We feel very supported by this show. This is a members’ show, and we’re a community gallery. It’s wonderful that so many members come out to support each other, and to support the gallery at the same time. Sometimes the artists donate even more [than the designated commission]. It’s a really nice balance of supporting each other.”
Familiar Sunshine Coast settings are well-represented in landscapes and still life studies. Karen Webb’s Bonnie Sunset, in mixed media, depicts crepuscular rays over the Salish Sea; Sheri Peters’s acrylic Sunday Race Around Keats tempers its tautly-rigged subjects with dreamlike strokes; Diedra Goodwin’s On Roberts Creek is a reductionist vision that sublimates oil on canvas into a harmony of falling water and age-worn stone. Hazel Maxwell’s Hidden Beach uses felted wool to shape a stormswept coastline, treetops arched by salt-scented gusts.
The works demonstrate an array of artistic media. David Evanson’s Looking Thru You, carved from fine-grained red cedar, tempts viewers to peer through its suggestive fissures. Marilyn Butt’s mixed media sculpture Regeneration imagines a driftwood-strewn beach atop a gnarled trunk. Betty Ackroyd’s Harvey & Friend uses fired clay to form the bust of an affable court jester, a bird perched atop his head wearing a fool’s cap of its own.
“We’re always amazed by the diversity and how unpredictable the submissions are,” said Stinson. “When we’re conceptualizing, we often wonder if we’ll have enough wall space. It’s impossible to predict.”
“We didn’t anticipate the dress,” added Symons, referring to Marylynn Merlot by Ursula Bentz. The violet and gold garment was fashioned from repurposed textiles. Nearby, in Alan Townsend’s Diptera, recycled metal is transformed into an jet-black arthropod on walkabout.
Following the pattern of GPAG’s year-round Tiny Art Gallery (visible in its Marine Drive-fronting window), the newly-completed Library Lounge also features miniature works for sale at modest prices.
Present Tense remains on display at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Dec. 23. Browse to gpag.ca for more information.
