Jeremy Shaw: Quantification Trilogy
January 26 - May 12, 2019
At the center of Shaw’s first solo show in Calgary are three para-fictional short films: ‘Quickeners’ (2014), ‘Liminals’ (2017), and ‘I Can See Forever’ (2018), the latter of which is making its Canadian installation premiere. This trilogy of thematically entangled works present marginalized societies of the future and their engagement in transcendental activities as potential tools towards evolution. Spiritual, subcultural, and scientific systems of belief and their accompanying ideologies crystalize around the abilities and limitations of the human form while Shaw’s amplified use of aural and visual effects aspires to incite similar phenomenological responses from the viewer.
Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen: A tender proposition to the din
November 5, 2018 - January 27, 2019
Project Space
A tone is a wave, and a wave is just a circle in the format of a line: a circle in eternity, an undulating line in sequence. If a tone is alive, what is the substance of its body, and do our bodies have that substance also? Can a tone be a limb? What would it reach for?
A tender proposition to the din is a moment extracted from a cycle of water storage, distillation, distribution, consumption, transformation. This cycle takes place on a scale and scope far beyond that of our bodies and the human lifetime; it encompasses states of atmospheric haze, glacial movement, the wayward paths of astral bodies. A tender proposition to the din captures an industrialized, infrastructural instance within the cycle.
Agnes Martin: The mind knows what the eye has not seen
September 22 - December 21, 2018
This exhibition offers unprecedented focus on Martin’s print works, in addition to selected paintings that exist in dialogue with the prints. A parallel collection of ephemera and source material introduces Martin’s life and work, focusing on her on-going relationship to Canada – her childhood in Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, as well as her later travels in Canada.
This exhibition is co-produced by Esker Foundation and MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina.
Tammi Campbell: Dear Agnes
September 22 - December 21, 2018
‘Dear Agnes’ is a series of visual letters that serve as Tammi Campbell’s wordless communion with Saskatchewan-born modernist artist Agnes Martin. Beginning in 2010, Campbell would start each day in her Saskatoon studio by drawing a different variation of a grid in graphite on Japanese rag paper. Campbell would then write the salutation “Dear Agnes” in the top left corner, fold the drawing twice like a letter, and then store it in sequence. Campbell completed her last letter to Martin on 31 December 2017. This near-daily practice has led to over 1,000 drawings, the final three months of which will be on view at Esker.
Sarah Stevenson: Nothing Hidden
September 22 - December 21, 2018
For the past 30 years, Sarah Stevenson has been making sculptural work that considers and defines space in the most simple and elegant of ways. Like drawings in air, wire and string are arranged into bilateral and almost symmetrical forms and are suspended from the ceiling like a weightless bloom of jellyfish or floating microscopic particles.
Alana Bartol & Mia Rushton + Eric Moschopedis: a hint of perennial magic lingers in its fingertips
August 6 - October 28, 2018
Project Space
a hint of perennial magic lingers in its fingertips is a site-specific project that examines native and non-native weed species in relation to urban development in the community of Inglewood. Soil and seeds of native and invasive weed species were collected from the construction site across from the Esker and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. These seeds will be grown in the Esker Project Space throughout the exhibition. In this work, the artists hope to create a conversation about land use, notions of progress, and the de/naturalization process of invasive species. Throughout the process, they will ask what remediation, reconciliation, and reclamation mean in this context. Their research will explore the distribution of plants in relation to development, the perception of various plants in the neighbourhood, and phytoremediation as an actual or symbolic process.
Anna Torma: Book of Abandoned Details
May 26 - September 2, 2018
Anna Torma was born in Tarnaörs, Hungary in 1952 and graduated with a degree in Textile Art and Design from the Hungarian University of Applied Arts, Budapest in 1979. She has been an exhibiting artist since that time and has produced a body of extremely skilled and exquisitely detailed large-scale hand embroidered wall hangings and collages. She immigrated to Canada in 1988, and has lived and worked in Baie Verte, New Brunswick since 2002. This exhibition will feature new and major works produced over the past five years.
Vanessa Brown: The Witching Hour
May 26 - September 2, 2018
Vanessa Brown works in the space between strength and fragility through an alchemical fusing of steel, pigment, and glass – sculpture flirting with painting, a symbolic narrative collage, form as gesture or character. This exhibition brings together new installations and recent works, ranging in scale from grand to intimate. It is a proposal in material, colour, light, and sound; a coming-into-being, an invitation into an emotively charmed circle.
Jolie Bird: 1597; Harmonious Frequencies
May 7 - July 29, 2018
Project Space
‘1597; Harmonious Frequencies’ is a performance-based installation to be implemented in the Project Space over the course of twelve weeks. Working within a clean and minimal space, the artist will create an 8-foot diameter representation of the Fibonacci Sequence, which references the golden ratio found throughout nature. The pattern is made up of 1,597 dots configured in two sets of spirals that radiate in opposite directions. Each dot is created by wrapping a golden thread around itself and adhering it to the wall. The performance of labour and the arrangement of the artist’s tools are precise and considered; the monotonous nature of the action is physically challenging and requires self-discipline to achieve a consistent and high level of craftsmanship throughout the project.
Kapwani Kiwanga: A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)
February 3 - May 6, 2018
In this new body of work, Kapwani Kiwanga delves into disciplinary architecture and deconstructs the physical and psychological qualities of different built environments including schools, prisons, hospitals and mental health facilities.
The exhibition Kapwani Kiwanga, ‘A wall is just a wall (and nothing more at all)’ is organized and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, Toronto. The exhibition is curated by Nabila Abdel Nabi, Assistant Curator, The Power Plant. It was sponsored by TD Bank Group.
Support for the development and production of new works for the exhibition provided by Esker Foundation.