UNDERSTANDING CONTEMPORARY ART | THE SOUTHERN ALBERTA ART GALLERY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE ART GALLERY
04.26.2008 | 06.08.2008
Ten years ago, the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, in conjunction with The University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, presented What’s This? Understanding Contemporary Art. This exhibition was based on an educational video of the same name produced by the National Gallery of Canada that addressed fundamental questions about contemporary art. Viewers were encouraged to participate, examine and ask questions: How should we look at contemporary art? What is the artist trying to say? What makes this valuable? What’s This? Understanding Contemporary Art was an effort to help the visitor approach their own answers to these questions through an engaging, challenging and rewarding experience of contemporary works.
This exhibition is a continuation of the effort to present ways to ‘understand contemporary art’. Drawing from The University of Lethbridge Art Collection and the City of Lethbridge’s Buchanan Bequest, this exhibition features Canadian and international artworks, in particular those produced from 1970 to present. Many of the artists consider the link between art and everyday life and use the element of chance in their work. Others demonstrate how traditional techniques and materials have been combined to form new approaches to art that resist classification, thereby pushing the boundaries of our understanding. Humour and irony are also effective strategies employed by artists to communicate ideas and cleverly undermine structures of power, authority and other conventions that pervade contemporary life.
Another component of the exhibition consists of a scaled-down modernist ‘white cube’ exhibition space constructed within the historic architecture of the SAAG’s upper gallery. Viewers are reminded to examine how the physical space of the gallery affects their experience of art and, conversely, how an artwork can affect our experience of the space.
Understanding Contemporary Art highlights how visual art can communicate information and prompt questions about the world we live in. It is intended to provide points of departure for those unfamiliar with some of the concepts that contemporary artists employ. This exhibition is meant to encourage the viewer to question what they are looking at and what the artist is trying to communicate, examine the techniques employed, and be aware of the curatorial choices that influence the presentation of contemporary art.
Organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery, curated by Hannah Wigle. With artworks from the City of Lethbridge’s Buchanan Bequest and from The University of Lethbridge Collection.
