{"id":25762,"date":"2024-09-18T09:00:04","date_gmt":"2024-09-18T16:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/?p=25762"},"modified":"2024-09-13T11:03:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-13T18:03:36","slug":"generations-exhibit-to-be-remembered-for-generations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2024\/09\/18\/generations-exhibit-to-be-remembered-for-generations\/","title":{"rendered":"Generations<\/em> exhibit to be remembered for generations"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I stepped foot into the exhibit space of Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art<\/i>, I immediately became immersed in a powerfully emotive and reflective world of cultural exploration.<\/p>\n

Generations<\/i> is a curated exhibition of the Sobey family\u2019s personal art collection. Hailing from Nova Scotia, they\u2019re best known as the founders of the Sobeys grocery chain\u2014however, for four generations they\u2019ve also amassed an impressive collection of Canadian art that has been travelling across the country and has arrived at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (AGGV).<\/p>\n

Generations<\/i> captures an exploration of what it means to be \u201cCanadian,\u201d and the many tensions within the history of Canadian identity. Through landscapes, daily life, and other cultural expressions, the exhibition develops the effect of an iceberg: what you see on the outside is only a glimpse of what lies within. With the help of excellent lighting and well-planned flow, Generations<\/i> did the job of an art gallery environment well by strongly facilitating the art encapsulating the viewer. This allowed me to look deeper into the works individually and as a collective and understand the depth curators were conveying using the purposeful juxtaposition of European settler descendent art and Indigenous art to explore what Canada is.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lawren Harris\u2019 Algoma Hill<\/em> is one of the many pieces on display in Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art<\/em> (courtesy of collection of Donald and Beth Sobey).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Clarence Gagnon\u2019s Winter Landscape, Baie St. Paul<\/i> and the famous Group of Seven\u2019s work serve as homages to Canadian landscapes; there\u2019s also various scenes of European descendent culture, such as the Toronto streets in Lawren Harris\u2019 painting Sketch in the Ward<\/i>. European modernist influence can be strongly felt in the Group of Seven\u2019s work, such as J.E.H. MacDonald\u2019s Morning Light, Lake O\u2019Hara<\/i>, and AY Jackson\u2019s Northern Landscape, Great Bear Lake<\/i>. They\u2019re installed near Joseph Tisiga\u2019s piece Fabricated Fear May Only Prolong Risk<\/i>, which demonstrates the relationship of settlers with the land in a direct confrontation between a man and a decapitated bear. It evokes the feeling that the land is keeping score as an omniscient presence, and that the laws of nature have been broken.<\/p>\n

The exhibition claims to be in the style of art collecting itself\u2014eclectic, drawing new connections between different artists, and defying segregation of art movements. After my visit, I would absolutely agree. Generations<\/i> also notes the exhibition is \u201cartist food for the soul from the Sobey family pantry,\u201d but I think it\u2019s more complex than that. By the time I reached the final room of the exhibition, my many thoughts, feelings, and ideas all became clear.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The last room of Generations <\/i>was intense, directly highlighting the tensions between European settler colonial culture and Indigenous culture, with Kent Monkman\u2019s work directly taking this tension on.<\/p>\n

Erotic, comedic, and deathly serious, the subject matter intensely highlights the historical tension between European colonial settlers and Indigenous peoples. It is the epitome of the exhibition, and being saved for last, it is explosive. People were crowding around each massive painting to talk, unravelling the many threads of the jumbled, knotted mess that Monkman ties together using exaggerated, dream-like symbolism.<\/p>\n

Monkman\u2019s subject matter is juxtaposed with nearby paintings of lighthouses and ships on the Atlantic, William Kurelek\u2019s easter basket painting, Cornelius Krieghoff\u2019s early Canadian sugar-coated \u201crural life\u201d paintings, and Sobey art award winner Ursula Johnson\u2019s Museological Grand Hall<\/i> installation.<\/p>\n

My experience at the exhibit was incredible. This is certainly one to spend hours in, giving it the attention it deserves. It really is a collection that needs to be seen, and it benefits from careful curation, to elevate it as a marker of culture and the way we see it. Catch Generations<\/i> before the exhibit closes at the AGGV\u2014and give yourself time to take it in.<\/p>\n

Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art
\n<\/i>Until Sunday, October 27
\nArt Gallery of Greater Victoria
\naggv.ca<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When I stepped foot into the exhibit space of Generations: The Sobey Family and Canadian Art, I immediately became immersed in a powerfully emotive and reflective world of cultural exploration. Generations is a curated exhibition of the Sobey family\u2019s personal art collection. Hailing from Nova Scotia, they\u2019re best known as the founders of the Sobeys […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,317],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-september-18-2024"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25762"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25765,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25762\/revisions\/25765"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}