Exhibitions

Rebecca Loewen: Just for Staying Together

October 13, 2015 - January 3, 2016

Michelangelo Antonioni concludes his sketch for a film Just for Staying Together with a question: “I’ve always wondered whether it’s always right to provide an ending for stories, whether literary, theatrical, or cinematic. Once it’s been firmly channelized a story’s in danger of dying inwardly unless you give it another dimension, unless you let its tempo prolong itself in that external world where we, the protagonists of all stories, live.

Charlotte Moth: living images

September 26 - December 20, 2015

Charlotte Moth’s multi-layered work demonstrates her interest in the relationships among photography, sculpture, architecture, memory, and history. Her in-depth research process and the conceptual fluidity of her work poetically interlace architectural projects, archival materials, notions of itinerancy, filmic and art historical references, as well as the objects and places that surround us. In addition to a selection of recent films, photographs, and sculptural works, Esker Foundation is pleased to present a co-commission of new work made in partnership with The Banff Centre, supported by a Paul D. Fleck Fellowship residency.

Celia Perrin Sidarous: Interiors, Other Chambers

September 26 - December 20, 2015

Celia Perrin Sidarous’ photographic works present intuitively organized collages and sculptural assemblages that offer a gorgeous and considered way of looking at collected objects and how the visual language of photography and the studio transforms them. As striking arrangements of colour, form, and shape that reference histories of still life, interior arrangement, and display, Perrin Sidarous’ images also suggest the implicit associations and secret affinities between objects and materials.

Svea Ferguson: airtime

July 6 - October 4, 2015

‘airtime’ is a site-specific spatial intervention that is a continuation of Ferguson’s recent interest in exploring the potential of material. Through the cutting and manipulation of vinyl and linoleum flooring products, Ferguson makes sculptures and installations that work with the material’s versatile physical capabilities, and reveal its capacity for simultaneous structure and textile-like drapery.

Guido van der Werve: Nummers Vier, Acht, Veertien

May 23 - September 6, 2015

Deceptively simple at first glance, Guido van der Werve’s films weave together meticulous cinematography, symphonic scores, and durational performance to create enigmatic and ambiguous narratives that evoke and critique notions of the sublime landscape. Marked by a meditative, dream-like quality and punctuated with surprising moments of deadpan humour, van der Werve’s work explores themes such as loss, solitude, belonging, and the self.

Mia Feuer: Synthetic Seasons

May 23 - September 6, 2015

Mia Feuer is interested in the post-natural landscape, visible sites where human interaction – be it personal, social, political, or financial – has altered or is in the process of rapidly changing the land, and thus our relationship to it. Her work makes connections between our intense material dependency and the accelerated environmental impact this creates.

Kevin Schmidt: A Sign in the North­west Passage

May 23 - September 6, 2015

Esker Foundation presents Kevin Schmidt’s A Sign in the Northwest Passage, the multivalent documentation of the creation, delivery, and subsequent search for a cedar billboard that Schmidt emblazoned with foreboding messages from the Book of Revelations and then placed on the steadily melting ice of the Northwest Passage. Blurring the boundaries between durational performance, land art and installation, A Sign in the Northwest Passage asks powerful questions about Arctic sovereignty, colonialism, climate change, and material dependencies, and ultimately bears witness to the unyielding destruction of a not-so-remote landscape.

Corinne Thiessen: Chronic

April 6 - June 28, 2015

In this new site-specific work, Lethbridge-based artist Corinne Thiessen traces the recurring tension among composure and chaos, regimented uniformity and self-conscious release. Using a constructed forest of fragmented trunks salvaged from fallen trees around Lethbridge, Chronic performs an endless choreography of collapse, a cycle of strain and release that speaks to Thiessen’s interest in thinking of failure as an ever-dependable chorus.

Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North North America

February 1 - April 26, 2015

Oh, Canada: Contemporary Art from North North America, organized by the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA), is the largest survey of contemporary Canadian art ever produced outside Canada. Comprising of more than 100 artworks by 62 artists and collectives from across the country, Oh, Canada is huge in both scale and scope. Too big for just one gallery, the exhibition will be presented at Esker Foundation, Nickle Galleries, Illingworth Kerr Gallery, and Glenbow. This unique collaboration will encourage dialogue, debate, and a deeper understanding of local, regional, and national contemporary practice.

Oh, Canada is curated by Denise Markonish and organized by MASS MoCA. The exhibition is supported by TD Bank and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Rita McKeough: tender

January 31 - March 29, 2015

There is always hope for any hot dog who has been rescued or who has escaped from a restaurant, diner, grocery store, refrigerator, kitchen counter, or right off a dinner plate.

We always hope for a full recovery despite injuries or psychological trauma. With rest and rehabilitation the hot dogs can be returned to the fields where the fresh grasses wait for them. There, they will live in peace, unharmed.

“We never give up.”