Alternator exhibition essays respond to the artworks presented through our Main Gallery exhibition series, and add another layer of interpretation to the exhibitions on view. These essays take a variety of forms: formal essays, Q&As with the artist, interpretive responses, and other types of creative writing pieces.
Read the essay supporting our current exhibition below, or review the essay archive going back to 2019.
Interested in writing for us? Learn how to join our roster of writers here.
'(un)resolving liminality', an interpretive essay on Jordan Hill’s exhibition, The Missing Distance, written by Aly K. Benson.
In an evergrowing world, with each passing chance for advances to take over, we as a people expand our abilities, and our minds have no option but to choose a narrowed lane of focus. To better state, yet paradoxically: as the world gets bigger, it gets smaller.
Read MoreAs part of a new series of essays taking inspiration from the Alternator archive, Erin Scott explores the ever-evolving community-based arts practice of Mariel Belanger.
Read MoreAs part of a new series of essays taking inspiration from the Alternator archive and activities, Andrea Routley considers Community Partnerships, and the value of creating a welcoming space.
Read MoreAs part of a new series of essays taking inspiration from the Alternator archive, Erin Stodola explores the work of Julie Oakes, founding member of the Okanagan Artists Alternative Association, the society that runs the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art.
Read More“Maybe we should stop trying to understand the world and instead trust the wisdom of algorithms”
(Megan O’Gieblyn, 2024, pg. 100)
CGish amalgamates the digital with the analog, using custom generative algorithms to splice together objects into perplexing, yet believable, forms. Heather Savard, writes on the state of AI and the future of art.
Read MoreMichaela brings her own diasporic Afro-Carribean heritage forward with such sincerity. The scents in the salves of hair picks also pull from the landscapes of Kelowna. Patchouli, fir, and charcoal mix with black pepper, allspice, and shea butter. Scent mimics self as an olfactory Blackness is brought into this space.
Read MoreDissonance in music is nothing new. No one cares. It's not a question of “right or wrong”. It's just a single aspect of a greater whole. Like silence. When exploited properly it serves to enhance the other components of the composition. If it works, it's valid.
Read MoreNatasha Harvey’s exhibit of five works expresses the desire and sorrow of her lifelong relationship with the unceded land of the Syilx Okanagan territory. A mixture of acrylic painting, spray paint, collage of found building materials, linocut print, drawing, and photography, her layered, complex, airy canvases create a ghostly landscape of lost forests, half-built wooden houses, patchy snow, torn fences, and oversized undergrowth.
Rather than romanticising houses in the woods, these works draw attention to the vulgarity of wooden houses built over the scraps of a razed forest. Rather than hiding the process of clear-cutting, excavation, and construction, Harvey’s compositions seem to peel the skin from the body of built suburbia, showing the violence of ongoing colonial land capture.
Read MoreThe Devil came to me in the form of a tomcat. He was big and orange, short-haired, proud chest, smiling mouth. He had lovely pink satin ribbons tied round his throat, ankles, and the tip of his tail. I’d opened the door for my gray tabby, Misty, and in he came behind her.
Read MoreBut what did you come here for?
I’m often asked.
Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine…
You mean?
Well, it must be for the nature; the remoteness, the space, the experience, the beauty.
Read MoreOn December 3rd, 2022, Katherine Pickering met with M.E. Sparks over Zoom to discuss her exhibition of new work at the Alternator Center for Contemporary Art. This is an excerpt of that conversation.
Read MoreI swear I saw something. It was right there, in front me. Nothing scary, nothing bizarre, I think. More like a form, something that has a presence, a form. It was tall. Not that tall. A bit shorter than that maybe. It was right there. I say a form but that might be misleading.
Read MoreWhat is time, and how do we experience it? Recent and ongoing events have made us all aware that
time is as fragile as it is precious. If the order of time were to collapse, for whom would it matter?
Read More“There can be no repetition,” wrote Gertrude Stein, “because the essence of that expression is insistence, and if you insist you must each time use emphasis and if you use emphasis it is not possible while anybody is alive that they should use exactly the same emphasis.” Here, in Figure as Index, images repeat.
Read MoreOur current archeological record suggests that the earliest human-made mirrors were created approximately 8,000 years ago in southern Anatolia, or what is now south-central Turkey. These Neolithic mirrors, unearthed in the settlement of Çatalhöyük, are round or ovoid, approximately palm-sized, and were painstakingly crafted from obsidian, a deep black volcanic glass, with very finely polished, slightly convex surfaces.
Read More“Construction and infrastructure development is our most impactful human activity. We must learn to alter our approach so that we ‘Design for Life, not Machines’.”
Teresa Cody reflects on the exhibition This is a Love Story, by artist Lindsay Kirker.
It is essential to the understanding of S.C. Jean’s work to acknowledge that she is a self-taught artist. This is to say, that she did not go to art school or university to study art, but instead picked it up independently and found her own way to create. Because of this, she has developed a unique language, and consequently, her work may not tick every box of what you expect to see from a “schooled” painter. Yet if you are willing to spend time with her paintings, you find that they stand on their own merits and offer a rewarding viewing experience. I would go on to say that it is precisely through this lack of training that she has developed a distinct voice that transcends many of the derivative works that have been spawned by the academy.
Read MoreArtist Holly Ward makes work that has run a course through a retro optimism towards a darker, more anxious meditation on our collective future. Ward’s pieces are constructed across mediums, using sculpture, multi-media installation, architecture, video and drawing.
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