Art Gallery of Greater Victoria - January 19, 2010
Glimpses of Japan: Recent Print Aquisitions
December 18, 2009 to April 11, 2010
Great New Wave: Contemporary Art From Japan - January 29 – May 30, 2010
In the twenty-first century art museums will act as bridges, between the local and the global and between the past and the present. A bridge has two ends, two fixed points, one is here and the other is there, one is then and the other is now. This is a metaphor for how visitors travel between works in an exhibition and between exhibitions in an art gallery.
Two exhibitions currently at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria illustrate how this is taking form. The exhibition Glimpses of Japan is made up of over 100 mostly historical prints from Japan. The exhibition spans 200 years of fine art periods and documents a number of styles and genres including landscape, historical scenes, portraiture and scenes from everyday life. It’s contrasted, or complimented depending on you viewpoint, with an exhibition entitled Great New Wave which is made up of work by 6 contemporary artists from Japan who make up a new generation of cultural investigators. The artists in this exhibition are each exploring the possibility of personal and cultural identity in a globalized world.
As we travel across the chronological bridge between these two shows we don’t necessarily see huge differences instead we see nuanced similarities in how artists choose to address the important issues of their day. Crossing the geographical bridge from works produced in Japan to Victoria, Canada where curators make a selection which will speak to their audiences.
Submitted January 19, 2010
by J. Tupper, AGGV
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria
1040 Moss Street
Victoria
250.384.4101
