Category Archives: Creative Works Off Campus

Art @ KCT is a professional art exhibition within the lobby of the Kelowna Community Theatre presenting the work of visual artists from the Central Okanagan featuring accessible, thought-provoking visual art in two exhibition spaces, the Rise and the Cube.

Most recently this exhibition features the work of two UBC Okanagan BFA alumni; Patty Leinemann and Arianne Tubman.

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Paintings by UBC Okanagan student: Fredrick Thacker

‘Youth culture’ is a term generally reserved for negative conversations, almost always dripping with a condescending tone, and regarded as something not worthy of a more meaningful conversation. What makes youth culture? Has it changed since the 70s? Since the 50s? What is it about young people that is so simultaneously terrifying and exhilarating?

In MAKE A RUCKUS, Fredrik Thacker explores his own interpretation of youth culture in the 2020s. By using popular iconography paired with bold colours and patterns, he shifts the view of today’s youth to highlight the power that young people have in shifting societal progression, as well as the beauty and ease in which collaboration can take form through digital spaces.

Considering how COVID-19 affected artists’ ability to work with models in person,  Fredrik decided to lean on social media for the answer, asking his peers and friends to send him their favourite selfies. This created a space where figurative art is equal parts documentation and collaboration; communication was important throughout the process, with an understanding that the selfies people chose to send were what they thought to be the most accurate representations of themselves. Both factors greatly influenced the composition of each painting.

So, to answer the question of ‘what the **** are kids doing?’: they are moulding a space in society where your physical form can be whatever you want it to be and you can be as loud as you need. They are telling us to support our peers, embrace our eccentricities, and make a ruckus.

MAKE A RUCKUS was shown in the Alternator Gallery Members’ Gallery from September 30 – October 22.

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Tethered: A Study In Entanglements exhibition by UBCO MFA Alumni Alison Trim

This exhibition was shown at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art (421 Cawston Avenue (unit 103) in Kelowna, BC

Tethered is the latest development of an ongoing project that layers and stitches cut paper into floor-based installations, engaging with surface as a rich and complex interaction.  The thread of our inescapable connection to land that moves through the work is reflected in the title. Tethered is a phrase used when an animal is tied to restrict movement.

Alison Trim’s practice demands a haptic engagement with materials and a physical immersion in place. Walking and other somatic engagements with land and place are intrinsic to her work, while drawing, photography, cutting and reassembling are the studio processes through which she interacts with ideas and materials. The resulting works are the artefacts of both, as much about the process of making as they are a record of the phenomenological experience of land. This work was made across the Okanagan and Slocan Valley regions, unceded territories of the Syilx and Sinixt peoples.

Alison is a visual artist and arts educator from Co. Cork, Ireland currently based in British Columbia. In 2020 she completed her MFA in Visual Arts at UBC Okanagan with a thesis exhibition that explored expanded drawing practice as a response to place.  She has a background in contemporary arts and gallery education, with 15 years of experience working for a public contemporary arts centre in Ireland (Uillinn,West Cork Arts Centre) before moving to Canada in 2018.

alisontrim.weebly.com

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Living Through Wildfire

I began documenting landscapes affected by wildfires during the summer of 2017. At the time, standing near the edge of a forest that had recently burned offered a certain amount of exhilaration. Through dialogue with members of diverse communities, including fellow researchers at UBC’s Okanagan campus, I have learned about how forest ecosystems have adapted to wildfire and how certain species depend on fire for renewal. These conversations have altered my perspective of fire as a destructive force. Over the three fire seasons that followed, I made photographs that contained a certain amount of optimism. I avoided photographing devastated structures and, for the most part, turned my camera to environments that were undergoing renewal after the fire rather than depicting active wildfires.

This land is managed by various stakeholders, including sovereign Indigenous communities, settler residents and the forestry sector, who hold divergent views on appropriate use. Globally, a lengthy history of fire suppression to protect natural resources and infrastructure has led to media representations of wildfire as inherently destructive. My artistic approach to this subject acts as a critical foil to the dominant media discourse.

The arrival of the heat dome in early June of 2021 signalled a shift in my approach to making art on this subject. In the following weeks, I watched as communities in my vicinity were evacuated and burned to the ground. Picking up my camera and engaging in the creation of hopeful pictures seemed to attack the dignity of those who were displaced or had lost everything. I was also uninterested in documenting this trauma directly, thereby contributing to the media rhetoric. Perhaps visitors to this exhibition have been directly impacted by wildfires themselves.

This exhibition comes at a time when artistic representations of wildfire are becoming increasingly prevalent. As global communities continue to heal following the trauma of recent fire seasons, I hope that my images can act as a conduit to understanding our local ecology within the context of international climate change, and ultimately enhance our resiliency.

Andreas is a lecturer and researcher in the Faculty of Creative and Critical studies.
His research includes contemporary art, climate change, border studies, extractive industry. He teaches photography, visual art.

www.andreasrutkauskas.com

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Processing…

Work by UBC Alumni, Christina Knittel

Christina is an artist living in Kelowna BC, who creates abstract paintings using mixed media. She graduated in 2006 from UBC Okanagan with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, where she studied drawing and digital media. Her work has been on display at many local venues and has participated in art shows for over 15 years. 

Colour and mark making are distinctive elements in Christina’s work. As an intuitive, process-based artist, she usually begins with a single colour applied with a gestural mark. She then responds with another, working with the movement and choosing colour combinations that feel right in the moment. By working this way, allowing the moment to determine what happens next, Christina makes room for the unexpected. This process produces a vibrant and gestural style that reflects the ebb and flow of everyday moments, their transitions, and our emotions in them. 

In the last 2 years, overwhelming uncertainty in the world often made it difficult for Christina to work in her usual process. The paintings included in Processing are special because they represent moments of reconnecting with calm and joy within that uncertainty. These paintings are dynamic and vibrant pieces of art that feel light and dreamlike, capturing the complexities of moving from moment to moment. They radiate a calm, joyful energy that she hopes people feel when they experience her work. 

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Lindsay Kirker is a recent graduate of the MFA program at The University of British Columbia Okanagan Campus.

This is Water

I’ve been thinking a lot about water.

To float down the river effortlessly

And break away from thought, form and distraction.

To play in tune with the vibrating strings of You.

Continuously I tell myself, be water.

Through the city I observe the banal.

Concrete walls constructed to contain

Lifting us up from one prefabricated structure to the next and I struggle to breathe

Plan your escape, I hear her say.

I feel the urgency to stand at ocean’s edge.

Be water. This is water, I hear You say.

I look across to you and

You are the only one

Drinking coffee.

The parking lot is empty and we no longer talk about the weather.

I leave you and I move through space

Continuing the search for stability;

The foundations of Being beyond being in-itself

And I know.

Be water. This is water.

This is Water

Exhibition Essay

Lindsay Kirker invariably questions the world around her. The artist is drawn to her surroundings, and her paintings are a reimagining of the connection between the natural and industrial world, and the people, places, and things that are a part of her journey. Her practice does not appear fixed, rather constantly evolving and carrying with it a level of certainty, and equally, a desire to embrace change. Through the use of numerous perspectives, Kirker allows us to imagine multiple scenarios. On the one hand, our civilizations are being overtaken by the environment as a result of climate change or vice versa. On the other, our urban and organic worlds are working in unison, a vision of sustainability and hope. These facets are steeped in themes of love, loss, and sacred matters of the heart. There is so much that can be found in Kirker’s work, but the leading figure of this exhibition is water, that which requires some time to unpack.

Water means something different to everyone. For myself, water means security, hydration, and relaxation. It means something scary. Specifically, a fear of what is underneath its surface, the power it wields, and my reliance on it. Water also means a physical and mental link to the organic components that make up life on earth. It has become a role model for embracing the most organic path of existence. Water is all of this and so much more, but these thoughts only came after thinking and feeling through Kirker’s paintings.

As humans, our relationship to water is not perfect and is certainly not linear. Before seeing the world through Kirker’s eyes, I could not articulate my connection with water. You would think that the substance providing life to all living things, one of the most pertinent elements that exists alongside us, would be easy to love. Many of us have grown up knowing water as a resource and it feels like our relationship with water has become misconstrued because of this. It loves and nourishes us, but many people do not treat it with the same care. Kirker’s choice to highlight water’s physical and spiritual value allows us to rethink our relationship with water.

Kirker as a guide, facilitating a connection between humans and our surroundings. Her paintings speak a language of compromise. We build gigantic concrete structures, asphalt roads, and urban spaces that feel so far from their natural foundations, but the artist shows us that organic and manmade can work in unison. The two spaces can flow together, intertwined the same way our bodies are with water. Water becomes a site of contemplation. Interpreting what is being built and destroyed before our eyes is a part of the story Kirker tells, but I think it is the way she depicts water that informs some higher awareness. In The Flood, water seeps into the concrete structure with ease. It is not only a metaphor for the irreversible effects of climate change but an example of water’s flowing personality. Water is inevitable, it coasts through our bodies every day. In a world that is often taken for granted, there needs to be a deeper connection between us and water.

Let us be wary of over-simplifying our connection to water. Kirker has stated that climate change may be a more collective trauma, and to say this trauma is a result of our disconnect from nature would be to under estimate a complicated situation[1]. The topics raised in her work are more layered than saying we have lost touch with water. To approach this intricate subject matter, the art offers a re-imagining of the spaces that surround us[2]. We can see this in Vibrations. The waves that flow through the canvas comingle with orange lines extending from the sunset-colored sky. These lines run parallel to large industrial shapes, reminding us that a brightly colored world in which city and nature flow together is possible. In this painting, water becomes the facilitator for complex change.

Kirker has just recently returned from a Canadian residency program with La Napoule Art Foundation, spending six weeks in France developing connections with artists, curators, and writers, and diving deep into her practice. The pieces Parallel Universe and Wanderer bove the Sea of Fog were both created during this time of movement.  Like many of her works these paintings engage in multiple perspectives, but they contain exuberant elements that might be indicative of the growth and love Kirker attributes to the flow of life. The name Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, communicates her curiosity towards the world, her willingness to surrender and explore, and to question her surroundings. The ship in the painting purposefully charges forward, unafraid of the choppy waves. Similar to the ship, Kirker embraces an artistic persona that is not scared of what seems unattainable, opting to follow the flow of what can be attainable.

What intrigues me about this exhibition is that the act of being human and having waves of emotion and thought are not taken out of the context of our climate, which they often seem to be. I think we can feel closer to the elements that make up the earth, the ones most threatened by the rapid global warming around us, when we assume a thoughtful and reflective role alongside them and when they help us understand our own hearts. As Kirker puts it “the external landscape that unfolds in front of us is best known by understanding the energy that runs through us”[3]. Finally, we are reminded to follow the current of life. Kirker’s artistic thesis is methodical but it is also complex. Found in this divergence is a level of grace that allows us to loosen our grip on these categories and move within them. It might just be that the unruliness of life suits us.

Maggie McKenney

Guest Writer

BA in Art History alumna, presently working at the Jasper Public Art Gallery.

[1] Kirker, Lindsay. Creating Structure: The Complexity of Making, Dwelling and Being. 2020. U of British Columbia (Okanagan), MFA thesis, 7.

[2] Kirker, Lindsay. Creating Structure, 7.

[3] Kirker, Lindsay. “Artist Statement.” The Relativity of Space and Time, 2022.

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