Painting the province

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This article was published 16/07/2021 (1882 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In Eric Lowe’s sculpture Bison Stopped Dead, a bison skull is caught and suspended in dreamcatcher made of barbed wire.

Even in photographs, it’s a striking and unsettling image. Lowe wanted to create an artwork that commented on the ways in which colonization destroyed traditional Indigenous ways of life, through the lens of bison depopulation.

“Art is such a valid piece of communication,” says Lowe, an artist and art educator based in Harding, just northwest of Brandon. “I’ve always tried to teach that to my students.”

Lowe, 72, is one of more than 300 contemporary visual artists featured in this year’s virtual Manitoba Regional Art Exhibitions, on view at artgallery.manitobaartsnetwork.ca until Aug. 31.

Hosted by the Manitoba Arts Network, a non-profit organization that connects visual and performing artists with communities all over the province, the exhibitions feature rural artists from the Central, Eastman, Interlake, Northern, Parkland and Westman areas of the province.

In addition to representing a wide swath of the province, the artists on view also work in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, photography, sculpture, ceramics, mixed media and textiles. The top artworks from each region will be selected by a jury for the annual Manitoba Rural and Northern Juried Art Show, which will be held online in September.

This is the first time these regional exhibitions have gone virtual. It’s also the first time they’ve all been held simultaneously in one place.

Prior to the pandemic, each region would organize and hold its annual juried exhibitions in person. They are anticipated events; some of these regional shows have been around for 40 years. The arts councils that host these exhibitions, many of them volunteer-run, were grappling with the logistics — and the cost — of pivoting to digital during the pandemic.

The Manitoba Arts Network already had an online exhibition platform in place, so having the organization host all six exhibitions was an obvious solution — one that has also led to increased collaboration and connectivity among the regions, which cover a vast geographical distance.

“We started doing monthly Zoom calls, which we’d never done before — and now I’m thinking, why didn’t we do this before?” says Rose-Anne Harder, executive director of the Manitoba Arts Network. “Why didn’t we connect them? Because there were great conversations that were happening outside of the exhibition, like, ‘Oh, you do this?’ ‘Oh, how does that work for you?’ It’s led to some administrative efficiencies, some shared experiences and shared learning, which is quite excellent. We’re looking at continuing continuing these calls in the future.”

Artists were receptive to the idea of a virtual gallery, too. And for viewers, the online Manitoba Regional Art Exhibitions offer a low-barrier way experience the fertile art scenes that exist in all corners of our province. After all, as Harder points out, “It would be a rare occurrence that someone from the Central region would go and attend the show in the North, or someone from Westman going to the Parklands.”

“All the artists were excited to explore the possibility of a hybrid in the future,” Harder says. “Everyone gets that art is way better to view in person, no doubt about that. But there’s the benefits to overcoming the geographic barriers, and so we’re going to explore ways where a digital experience can enhance the in-person experiences in the future.”

For Lowe’s part, he’s excited to have Bison Stopped Dead in a show. His wife and daughter (who are also artists) urged him to submit it. “This is the first piece I’ve made in, I don’t know, probably about 40 years,” he says. “And I’ve got a few more on the go, too, which I think are going to be interesting as well.”

jen.zoratti@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @JenZoratti