The Prince George public owns a library of visual art pieces. It is held in trust by the Two Rivers Gallery (2RG) and each year the gallery's staff select a set of these works to be displayed for a group exhibition.
This year's edition from the permanent collection is entitled An Ephemeral Land. Gallery curator George Harris will lead the unveiling of the show on Thursday evening at an event free and open to the public.
"We try to come up with a germane theme that lets us highlight our collection, especially if it can include some of the new additions," Harris said.
The impressions that prevailed upon them during the planning stages were the forest fires. The threatened communities, the lost homes, the disrupted lives, the enormous resources invested in fighting the flames, the massive loss of timber and ecosystem all weighed on 2RG curatorial staff and inspired their views of the many works available to them for the upcoming exhibition.
"This notion emerged of smoke and flames and getting glimpses at the landscape, and the changes to the landscape," Harris said. "If you take that experience we've had over the last couple of years and go one step further to climate change, it naturally opens the conversation wider."
Each of the artworks selected for the show depicts some form of nature.
The artists included are: David Alexander, Patrick Dunford, Edward Epp, Annerose Georgeson, Pnina Granirer, Alfred Muma, Alice Park-Spurr, Patricia Piddington, Philippe Raphanel, Dana Rae Shukster and Peter von Tiesenhausen. Some have more than one work, some have multiple panels that amount to a single work.
Some appear to be abstract until more closely examined, like the large mottled double canvas dominated by blue by David Alexander.
"Yet it's not so abstract when you think of Monet's Water Lilies, which is what this painting is based upon. Then you have the grid painted over it which suggests human influence over the impression of the water scene, like roads or utility lines," Harris said.
A close look at the other apparently abstract work, also large-scale, reveals that the 12 panels of oil on canvas actually depicts a view of winter, minimal and stark.
"In all of these artworks, the artists are using storms or weather or environmental conditions as an element of what they are showing us of nature, and we are at a point now where we are understanding a bit of how humans are playing a role in that," Harris said. "So as the artist represents nature, that comes from a human hand, and it calls up the consideration of how the human hand is represented here."
Harris summed it up as being a collection of individual voices that, without their knowing at the time, would one day form a chorus on this topic.
"The land in which we live is ephemeral," Harris said. "It is always changing: greening in the spring and in the summertime, turning yellow and gold in the autumn and white in the winter. However, this summer's forest fires reminded us of how the land is subject to more than just seasonal forces."
It is a rare glimpse at some of the public treasures in the keep of the city's premier art collection. There is a comprehensive online database of the permanent collection at the 2RG website, but it is infrequent that any particular ones are on the walls to regard and contemplate in full personal force.
Many of these artists are or were residents of Prince George, many have been exhibited at the 2RG over the years, and Harris said "a show like this succeeds in hearing a diversity of those voices who've spoken into the conversation about Prince George's art."
The show will be officially unveiled at a reception on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in conjunction with the opening of another 2RG exhibition, that of artist Colin Lyons entitled Prototypes For The Preservation of Degradation. Lyons will be at the reception to personally discuss his show as well.
