The first exhibition of 2016 at the Campbell River Art Gallery brings together eight diverse artists with radically distinct feminist interpretations of nature.
Myth of Fishes, sponsored by Denise Mitchell Interiors, opens at the Campbell River Art Gallery Jan. 21 and continues until March 3.
The exhibition takes its name from Rhonda Abrams’ 1985 short film in which a woman’s first fishing experience results in a comic-opera of uncertainty, where everyone involved, as well as the objects, emerge with physical and emotional contusions. A near-rhyming alliteration, Myth of Fishes is a tongue-twister, stretching the imagination, flipping the lips and slipping the S’s as the mind grasps at the species of fishes in the seas, streams, oceans and lakes, evoking the North Vancouver Island community’s history (and prehistory) with fishing.
Artists Sybil Andrews, Claire Falkenberg, Meghna Haldar, Olia Mishchenko, Nadia Myre, Wendy Red Star, Jennifer Stillwell and Holly Ward each explore notions of nature as a pure realm, redefined through political ecology, indigenous rights and feminism.
The exhibiting artists contributed works of video, photography, collage, drawing, beadwork, linocut and textile that represent each artist’s practice, while also contributing their unique voice to the composite group exhibition. Gallery visitors will have the opportunity to experience artworks by these world-renowned artists, brought together for the first time at the Campbell River Art Gallery.
Myth is a story passed through time, person to person, linked here with the fish or the symbol of shared plenty.
Myth of Fishes is the expression of eight artists speaking through their diverse practices and conceptual engagements. The core question of the human-nature relationship, as interpreted through a feminist perspective, mirrors a recurrent discourse in contemporary art at large and corresponds to the overall focus of the gallery’s program.
Learn about this exhibition at an opening reception and talk with curator Julia Prudhomme Jan. 23 at 1 p.m. Admission is by donation.
Myth of Fishes runs from Jan. 21 to March 3. The gallery will be open Tuesday to Saturday between noon and 5 p.m.
The Campbell River Art Gallery graciously acknowledges the support of federal, provincial, regional and community funding.