All posts in Opening Reception

The Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is pleased to announce its latest exhibition, Drink from the River, featuring the work of Edmonton-based artist Brenda Draney.

A previous winner of the RBC Painting Competition and an artist short-listed for the 2016 Sobey Art Award, Brenda Draney’s exhibition, Drink from the River, features work that delve into the complex questions around the notion of intimacy and vulnerability.

“The soft images in her paintings are familiar, like cars, people, and rooms with furniture, but it’s clear the people and places are close to the maker’s memory,” shared Jessica Groome, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.

Sifting through images culled from her own personal archive, her memory, and the Internet, Draney refers to figures and moments that have shaped her lived experiences.

Throughout the exhibition, Drink from the River, suggests that what is truly intimate can also be truly horrific; that what is buried away can be agonizing. Oftentimes, these hauntings and sufferings can lead to a private understanding of oneself, independent of any cultural code. But to begin healing, we must be willing to drink from the river.

Draney hopes her exhibition “invites viewers to constantly reconsider what we think we know and what we remember.”

Brenda Draney: Drink from the River
Thursday, July 25th, 2024
Virtual Artist Talk at 5:00 pm (view in person at the Gallery)
Opening Reception with refreshments from 6:00 – 8:00pm.
Location: Art Gallery of Grande Prairie
Both events are free and open to the public.

Drink from the River will be on view until Sunday, January 5th, 2025. LEARN MORE about Drink from the River.

Exhibition Generously Supported by Christine and Murray Quinn.

The exhibition was curated by Jacqueline Kok.

Jacqueline Kok is the 2021–23 Nancy McCain & Bill Morneau Curatorial Fellow at The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery. Kok’s curatorial research pursues the political and social potentials of space through a deep exploration of the dialectical relationship among the bodies within it.

Brenda Draney: Drink from the River is initiated, organized, and circulated by The Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery (Toronto) in collaboration with The Arts Club of Chicago; Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton); and the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie.

Next week we will begin installing  ᖃᓪᓗᓈᖅᑕᐃᑦ ᓯᑯᓯᓛᕐᒥᑦ Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios.

The exhibition presents the story of a group of Inuit artists and printmakers who produced a collection of graphic textiles in Kinngait, (Cape Dorset, Nunavut) in the 1950s and 60s. The Printed Textiles from Kinngait Studios includes over 60 printed textiles artworks from different Inuit artists and printmakers, and it depicts legends, stories, and traditional ways of life of Inuit community.

This exhibition will open on May 26, 2022.
Check the exhibition page for updates here.

Curatorial Lead: Roxane Shaughnessy
Project Partner: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative
Project Advisor: West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative Art Committee and Dr. heather IgIoliorte.

Organized and circulated by the Textile Museum of Canada with the support of the Museum Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage. Reproduced with the permission of Dorset Fine Arts.

Next week we will begin installing Fantastic Worlds, a group exhibition from 16 artists, with 20 works from the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

Fantastic Worlds asks us: how do we imagine the future? What other kinds of realities are possible? What would happen if time and space could bend, stop, or fast-forward?

Each of the works is a playful invitation to imagine and build worlds, new experiences, and ways of seeing. This generative and exploratory aspect of the fantastic is why historically, especially during challenging times of economic crisis and war, these artistic strategies have often surged to grapple with uncertainty, change, and the large, complicated question of the future. By offering an outlet of creative investigation that does not conform to the boundaries of our surroundings, the works in Fantastic Worlds express both the desire and potential to construct new pathways forward and challenge existing assumptions or barriers.

Check the exhibition page for updates here.

This exhibition was curated by Robin Lynch, Curator/Manager of Travelling Exhibitions Northwest

Featured artwork: Inflow, Alice Mansell, pencil on paper, 1978. From the collection of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

The Travelling Exhibitions Program Northwest is sponsored by KMSC Law LLP

Fantastic Worlds was sponsored by Canadian Tire, Grande Prairie

In response to the temporary closure of the exhibition spaces due to the global health pandemic, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is pleased to launch its first online exhibition Ten-Four, a group exhibition presenting work created by students in the Special Projects in Art program at Grande Prairie Regional College. Through painting, sculpture, installation, and illustration, each artist presents in extraordinary ways their unique exploration of themes, narrative, and technique. We congratulate the artists for their capacity to explore alternative and unique solutions for the presentation of their work during these challenging times.

Artists participating in this show include Ali Boychuk, Akarkz, Alysoun Wells, Blake Morabito, Carol Bromley Meeres, Erika Stamp, Katherine Moe, Kendra Miskolczi, Lonna Nohnychuz, and Rosemary Kay.

Click here to view GPRC Independent Studies: Ten-Four exhibition online.

Thank you to this exhibition’s sponsors:

Experience a sound art performance from Parker Theissen during the opening reception of his exhibition, ‘Mercury’ and the opening reception of ‘Glamour & Vapours’ by Lorna Mills and Karilynn Ming Ho.

This event is on March 7th at 7:00pm, and is free and open to the public.

Parker Thiessen is a filmmaker, sound artist/musician and designer originally from Beaverlodge, Alberta, with an interest in collaboration, experimentation and DIY. Through his work, Thiessen has explored and propelled the growth of the experimental music scene in Edmonton, initiating the Ramshackle Day Parade noise collective and label, co-founding Pseudo Laboratories cassette label, and performing in Zebra Pulse, Private Investigators, and solo. His film work includes experimental shorts, live projections, music videos and video glitch experimentation.

Photograph by Levi Manchak

The Grande Prairie Museum, Heritage Discovery Centre and The Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum are joining together to celebrate in Grande Prairie and Wembley. ALL facilities are offering FREE admission for the day.

Each facility is open for their regular hours and hosting free activities and events for the whole community from 11:00 a.m.- 4:00 p.m. to celebrate the occasion. This will also mark the annual opening of the Grande Prairie Museum’s Heritage Village for the 2018 summer season.

It’s also a Professional Development Day, so with kid’s out of school – Make it a family day and bring your kids out to each of the participating local museums and complete the IMD2018 Passport! Have fun learning about your community history!

A special cake cutting commemorating International Museum Day and the opening of the Heritage Village will take place at 11am on Friday, May 18; cake will also be available at all three locations.

City of Grande Prairie Transit and the Philip J. Currie Dinosaur Museum will each be providing a free shuttle service between each location. Pick a location to park, and take the FREE museum bus(es) on your journey!

Guests and participants can pick up a special passport at the beginning of their museum journey. Visit and collect stamps at each of the museums during the day and submit it at any one of the three locations to receive a special commemorative button.

On May 18th at 7 pm, the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie is hosting an opening reception for our latest exhibition, When Raven Became Spider. The exhibition features work by six contemporary Indigenous artists and storytellers whose work blurs the line between modern oral stories and contemporary pop art. This event is free and open to the public.

#IMD2018 #MuseumDay #GPAB

Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (AGGP) is proud to announce a new exhibition opening April 20, 2018, The Aunties are Listening.  Curated by Tanya Harnett, the exhibition includes some of the most important female Indigenous artists in the country.

Aunties are on the frontlines. They carry forward our complex history, the wisdom of survival and the fortitude to protect the future. The Aunties are Listening exhibition celebrates the resilience of women who have given way for change. The artists celebrated in this exhibition are Christi Belcourt, Rebecca Belmore, Joane Cardinal-Schubert, Rosalie Favell, Faye HeavyShield, Jane Ash Poitras, Lauren I. Wuttunee and those men that honour women: George Littlechild, Kimowan Metchewais and Isaac Murdoch.

“We’re so grateful and lucky to have had the opportunity to work with Tanya and to present this exhibition in our community”, says Executive Director of AGGP, Jeff Erbach.

Included in the exhibition is artwork from the former Alberta Indian Arts and Crafts Society collection now housed at the Department of Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada – Indigenous Art Centre. This collection was rescued by the artists included in this show.

Curator Tanya Harnett is a member of the Carry-The-Kettle First Nations in Saskatchewan. She is an artist and an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta in a joint appointment with the Department of Art and Design and the Faculty of Native Studies. She has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally. In 2015, Tanya was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and she was also awarded the Queen’s Jubilee Medal by the Lt. Governor General of Alberta.

The Aunties are Listening opening reception is Friday, April 20, 2018 from 7 – 9 pm. The event is free and open to the public. The exhibition is on view until May 30, 2018.