Shurniak Art Gallery

The Arts Matter

Shurniak

TREK THE OUTBACK

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Beginning June 10, 2021

TREK THE OUTBACK….without leaving Saskatchewan!

Over 50 Australian art pieces from the Shurniak permanent collection are on display this summer! 

Large-scale aboriginal dot paintings from the Australian outback show a unique world view. Dreamtime storytelling teaches lessons about life, such as birth, hunting, love, food gathering, and death.  These “Stories of the Dreaming” are handed down through generations by Elders, and explain life, and how the world was created.

 

  In aboriginal artwork, traditional symbols keep this ancient culture alive.  A carved didgeridoo, decorated boomerang, and many other wooden items used in daily life in the desert are also available to view.  These authentic Australian aboriginal items were purchased by Bill Shurniak during a trip to remote Alice Springs, Northern Territory, in 2003. 

Bill resided in Australia for approximately 5 years before his return to Canada in 2005.   His home base in Adelaide, South Australia, allowed him to experience the thriving urban lifestyle of modern Australia, and to frequent many art galleries.  The remainder of this Australian exhibition is comprised of beautiful rural landscapes of purple hills and red soil, thought-provoking abstracts, and stunning portraits.

Bill Shurniak’s Australian collection was compiled as the Shurniak Art Gallery was being built back in Canada.  Bill collected this Australian artwork specifically for inclusion in his new gallery.  We are proud to showcase this exciting body of cultural work!

FAMILY TIES

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Part of OSAC’S “Arts on the Move”

Family Ties explores familial bonds through the medium of embroidery. …

June 1 – July 23, 2021

Halifax based artist Elizabeth Munro creates embroidered and surface manipulated non-objective ‘portraits’ of her parents that include audio elements to convey impressions of her parents from childhood; providing a nuanced concept of a portrait filtered through the subjective experience of one person’s memory.

Regina artist Belinda Harrow reproduces photographs of her maternal grandmother at different ages into embroideries. Floating within the outlines of the human figure are colourful depictions of animals. The outlines of the humans are black thread on a cream felt background while the animals are vibrantly hued.

Moose Jaw based artist Jennifer McRorie reimagines her daughters’ drawings in ‘whitework’; a type of embroidery where the colour of embroidery threads are the same colour as the fabric on which they are embroidered. McRorie states that “I was compelled to make this series of work as I wanted to honour my daughter, who was born with a genetic disorder, to recognize her voice, abilities and creativity. I love her drawings, her wonderful expression of line and so by embroidering her drawings, I’m acknowledging that even though she is marked by her genetics or biology, she will make her own mark, hence the title of the series.”

Wendy Winter is a Regina  artist that uses embroidery on vintage and upcycled fabrics to interpret her daily life and personal philosophy. 

The artists in this exhibition use embroidery in different ways to consider the complexities of the bonds with our families.

Diana Chabros

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The land is made up of the bones of my ancestors…

26
April2021
Diana Chabros Diana Chabros gallery exhibition
to
28
May2021
16:00-17:00

Known to biologists, artists, photographers, tourism operators, ranchers and other locals as ‘grasslands’, and to the Lakota as ‘maka tatanka’ or nehiyawewin/Cree as ’buffalo-land’, or ‘paskwaw mostos askiy’, the southwest and its natural inhabitants are celebrated for their beauty and resiliency to survive under extremely harsh weather conditions.

Compromised by accelerated human intervention, the lives of these inhabitants, (many of them considered species at risk), are compromised to the point that even the soil has become a ‘species at risk’. As an artist and yoga practitioner, Diana’s visual fascination with life in southwest Saskatchewan leads her to explore forms of energy, archetypal cycles of life and death, and authentic lives and relationships as a means to understand her interdependence with the land.

The Sanskrit yoga term, samskāra refers to the decisions, patterns and habits of thought, action and speech we all develop throughout our lives, with karmic results. Each painting examines her own samskāras, and/or those she encounters in the Southwest on coffee row or elsewhere. Inspired by contemporary visual artists Marsha Kennedy, photographers Edward Burtynsky and James Page, and Métis and nehiyaw/Cree interdisciplinary artists Madonna Hamel, Moe Clark and Joseph Naytowhow, the act of painting for Diana yields a visual health record or ‘temperature gauge’ of the land and its inhabitants. Painting is how she stays in touch with her subject matter while she is away from ‘the field’. It is both her act of agency and her medicine.

Bio

Diana Chabros

Raised in Regina, Diana moved to Val Marie, near Grasslands National Park, almost a decade ago to focus on her art practice. Following her enjoyable public library and arts related career path she is exceedingly happy to explore, paint and converse with the land and its resident beings. Having studied with visual artists Leesa Streifler, Ted Godwin, Art MacKay, Lynn Hughes and more recently, George Glenn and Marsha Kennedy, her work is further informed by the industrial photography of Edward Burtynsky, studies of nehiyaw/Cree worldview with knowledge keeper/life partner, Joseph Naytowhow, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy/psychology. In addition to her art practice, Diana manages a small bed & breakfast, holds intuitive painting retreats and is known as the local cat whisperer.