Listen to three artists discuss their work and reflect on the still life genre
Date/Time: Nov 5 2016, 2:30 pm to 4:00 pm
Surrey, Surrey Art GalleryCost: Free
Directors aren’t just on movie sets. On Saturday, November 5, hear how artists Torrie Groening, David Ostrem, and Davida Kidd approach their still life artworks as a stage where the relationships between objects creates a story for us to interpret. They will discuss the continuing interest in still life by artists today and reflect on this genre in relation to their own works. The panel is moderated by Assistant Curator Brian Foreman.
Torrie Groening and David Ostrem are currently exhibiting in Small Stages: Still Life from the Permanent Collection at the Surrey Art Gallery. Groening’s recent works are complex, layered images of “the peripheral material of the artist’s studio” made from a blending of her practice in photography, printmaking, and drawing. She says, “I work on the still life images like stage sets—the objects, the actors, and myself, the director. Objects are chosen for their evocative sense and may take on new understanding when linked by proximity to another.”
Ostrem is a painter, photographer, and graphic artist who delves into the vast realm of popular culture (newspapers, comics, record albums) as well as “high” art (art history texts, philosophy treatises) to create arrangements of objects that speak to the complexity of contemporary culture. He believes art is about everything and plays with the boundary between the art world and the real world.
Davida Kidd is a photo-based print artist who teaches at the University of the Fraser Valley and has work in our permanent collection. She stages objects in complex, thought-provoking arrangements that engage with advertising and art history, contemporary and historical, that often result in current social satire and commentary. She says, “Working in the general realm of manipulated photography, I like to blend the line between illusion and reality, cultivating the ambiguous line at which my subjects become invented creatures. We are, after all, human projectors. How we perceive what we see in front of us can change before our eyes.”
The exhibition Small Stages, on view until December 4, considers the range of representation and expression within the genre of art known as still life. While this genre has been around for centuries, artists continue to use it to explore contemporary issues and ideas in a society that is caught in an increasingly rapid cycle of material consumption and obsolescence of objects. In other words, the genre of still life is anything but still.
About the Panelists:
Torrie Groening
Torrie Groening studied printmaking at Emily Carr College of Art + Design and is an alumna of The Banff Centre Visual Arts department. Currently based in Vancouver, she works with drawing, painting and printmaking, using new and traditional technologies. Groening has held teaching positions at University of Victoria, Emily Carr University, Vancouver, Open Studio, Toronto and University of Guelph, Ontario. She has exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally. Her work is collected by public institutions including Alberta College of Art & Design, Calgary, Carlton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Vancouver Art Gallery, Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and Palm Springs Museum.
David Ostrem
David Ostrem studied at the Vancouver School of Art in the early 1970s. Ostrem works in painting, photography, and graphic work, revealing his engagement with pop culture. An ongoing focus of his practice is the artist’s studio and the personal objects of his household. A retrospective exhibition of the artist’s works was presented at the Simon Fraser University Art Gallery. His works are in the collections of the Carleton University Art Gallery, Ottawa, Vancouver Art Gallery, Simon Fraser University Gallery, and University of Victoria Legacy Art Galleries.
Davida Kidd
Davida Kidd received her BFA and MFA from the University of Alberta in Edmonton. Currently residing in Langley BC., she is an Associate Professor of Visual Arts at the University of The Fraser Valley, specializing in traditional and contemporary forms of Print Media. In 2009, Davida received a Canada Council Project Grant and received a Special Award For Inventiveness in Graphic Art at The International Graphic Biennial in Split Croatia. In 2003, she was selected by an International jury to be the Grand Prix Winner at the International Print Triennial in Krakow, Poland, resulting in a solo exhibition at the International Cultural Museum there in 2006.
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