The Art Gallery of St. Albert’s upcoming 2025 season is nothing if not a metaphor for the contemporary experience of Indigenous and immigrant artists.
As one enters the brick building on Perron Street and ascends to the second-floor main gallery, the open spaces present a diorama reflecting a multicultural Canadian mosaic.
Eight main gallery exhibitions are planned for the season. Each is diverse in stylistic features, scale, mass and materials, yet all are linked by one similarity.
“A lot of artists are interested in storytelling and creating spaces for telling stories. You see art presented with a different lens from our own, but it’s something we can relate to,” said Emily Baker, art gallery curator.
Launching the season is Elsa Robinson’s The Garden running Feb. 1 to March 15. Built over a period of four years, the fibre art and sculptural installation is rooted around her Jamaican heritage, its characters, imagery and stories.
“It’s all black and gold and formed around the idea of a gathering space. In Jamaica a gathering tree is for social activities where everyone joins in a social activity. She’s even built a tree covered in knitting and crotchet with branches and roots stretched out,” said Baker.
Another stunning Robinson creation is The Cape, six-foot phantasmagorical figure shrouded in a cape. It is inspired by Nanny of the Maroons, an 18th-century Jamaican folk heroine and fighter who led a community of enslaved escapees to freedom.
Robinson's artist talk and reception is on Thursday, Feb. 6 at 6:30 p.m.
Edmonton artist Edith Chu features a portfolio of photographs, paintings and drawings during Sweet and Sour Memories starting March 20.
“These are her memories of growing up in a family restaurant. Her family came from Hong Kong to Canada. There were few job prospects for them and they decided to open up a restaurant. Edith spent a great deal of time in the restaurant. Her aunt and uncle worked there and they were a very close family,” Baker said.
High Energy 30, an artistic collaboration of dynamic art by St. Albert High School students, will be displayed from May 8-31. Nearly 100 students will feature about 120 paintings. The gallery has issued a challenge to students and this year's theme is “Look Up and Marvel.”
“They are to design a sculpture, or an installation suspended from the gallery ceiling so people can walk under it and around it.”
Throughout Kinship Ecologies running June 5 to July 19, Edson artist Lara Felsing focuses on the environment. She was evacuated twice from her home during the 2023 fires and has since spent time wandering through burnt-out areas pondering nature and its changing face.
“She wanted to consider the complexity of it. Everything in the exhibition is made from recyclable or compostable material. She even makes her own inks and dyes from charcoal on burnt sites. She’s trying to find a balanced relationship, and since everything she does is harvested from nature, the exhibition will have a beautiful smell as well.”
In contrast, St. Albert photographer Nicholas Hertz rambles throughout the city, snapping recognizable locations from key moments in his life. A Mirror With No Reflections is on from July 24 to Aug. 30.
“He frames them as snapshot in his memory and imports them to a computer and reworks them as digital drawings and sculptural pieces.”
Edmonton visual artist Heraa Khan introduces the Persian tradition of miniature painting in Discomforting Echoes from Sept. 4 to Oct. 18. Persian miniature painting lends itself to exquisite colours, balanced compositions and meticulous attention to detail.
“The painting technique is intense. Heraa uses teeny, tiny brushes and brush strokes. It requires precision and focus and comes from a courtly tradition of telling stories.”
Following on Oct. 23 is Kiona Ligvoet’s Your Hands Touch Between Brambles. The Indigenous artist shares paintings of growing up in a multi-generational family farm purchased after the Michel Band was disenfranchised.
“She creates a document of the landscape and since the paintings centre around the fall harvest, it captures all the warm gold lights of the season. And she tries to capture all the little things, the inside jokes or what people were talking about, that reinforce family ties.”
Closing the season on Dec. 4 is Mohammad Abbasi’s The Home. The Iranian visual artist documents the emotional challenge of uprooting and travelling from one side of the planet to the other, said Baker.
“His fragile landscapes are houses that feel as if they’re trying to find foundations like immigrants trying to rebuild and establish themselves. When you look at the paintings, they make you feel the emotional weight of searching for stability.”
In addition, the art gallery features four smaller staircase exhibitions and one vault exhibition.
