This year's regional summer art tour is, as the kids say, totally sick.
When the kids say it, it counterintuitively means "exceptionally good" but in this case, sick also means what author Susan Sontag intended. That is, it also means literally sick. Ill. Unwell.
The tour is an annual service provided by the Two Rivers Gallery in partnership with the art galleries of the Fraser-Fort George Regional District. This year's featured artist is Jos Delgado-Guevara, who created a set of sparse images especially for this travelling exhibition. The theme he worked with was illness as a normal human condition. He called his show The Night-Side of Life: A Personal Iconography.
The tour opened this week in Mackenzie where it will be on display at the Mackenzie Art Centre until July 27.
"This body of work investigates the challenges of coping with chronic illness and its effects upon one's circle of support," said Valerie Henault, the summer curatorial staffer co-ordinating the tour.
"The title of this exhibition, The Night-Side of Life, borrows from Susan Sontag's book Illness As Metaphor, where the author uses this expression to describe how being unwell is, in fact, an ordinary aspect of human existence. Using a very personal iconography, Delgado-Guevara looks at some of the challenges and emotions that illness generates."
The images are not of sick people or medical facilities. This conversation plays out in subtle artistic terminology. Delgado-Guevara puts his mind to more stark and symbolic ideas.
"Experiencing illness, on one level or another, is universal. Consequently, each of us can find points of connection in these drawings and in doing so gain deeper insight and understanding of this unwelcome but common aspect of life," said Henault.
"Delgado-Guevara analyses illness in all its complexity as a means of reconciliation. Inspired by Dutch still-life paintings, he has developed his own personal symbolism to explore the many considerations that coping with illness necessitates.
"The artist repeatedly uses the sponge, potato, tree, cut flower, and body part in unconventional compositions, conveying ideas of resistance, invasiveness, fear, hope, and rest, which illness brings in its wake."
The art does more than hang on a town's wall for a period of time. Delgado-Guevara will be in Mackenzie on Sunday to talk about these concepts and conduct a workshop so the public can try these techniques out for themselves.
"This workshop presents an opportunity for self-representation through the medium of drawing and use of personal iconography," said Henault. "In the same spirit as Jos Delgado-Guevara, one will create a self-portrait embedded with hidden meanings and personal symbolism."
The cost is $10 to work with the artist between 1-4 p.m. at the Mackenzie Art Centre.
To register, call 250-997-5470 or email [email protected].
The show will travel next to Valemount where it will be installed at the town's museum from Aug. 4-27 before it switches to the Valley Museum & Archives in McBride from Sept. 1-24, then it will travel back to Prince George for an exhibition. Those details are pending.
