until September 5, 2010

Cal Lane Sweet Crude
June 25 – September 5, 2010

Contrast is integral to Lane’s sculpture, as evident in Sweet Crude, where raw industrial objects from jerry cans to 45-gallon oil drums are incised with ornate and intricate imagery. From the immediacy of this unexpected juxtaposition the viewer is compelled to linger through further oppositions - hard and soft, strong and fragile, masculine and feminine, fine art and craft, inside and outside, ancient and contemporary. Equally present in the work are layers of political, economic, historic and allegorical narrative. Consider the exhibition’s title: “Sweet Crude” refers to that most sought-after form of petroleum, at once a source of treasured conveniences and the grim catalyst of international conflict, economic collapse and environmental distress. Lane’s cuttings of world maps evoke both war room computer monitors and historical colonial maps where corporations and governments alike divvy up territories for global domination. Yet, one also finds religious symbols, heraldry, suburban houses, pastoral scenes and mythological trysts transforming the maps into tapestries and making any interpretation of its tangled iconography seductively elusive.

Sweet Crude is organized and circulated by Art Mûr, Montréal, in partnership with the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of Mississauga. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.

Trudi Lynn Smith finding aid
June 25 – September 5, 2010

Operating as an archive, social workspace, expedition and field guide, Trudi Lynn Smith’s project finding aid is a multi-faceted approach to the intensely imagined visual legacy of Waterton Lakes National Park. A profusion of postcards, snapshots, advertisements and scientific photographs have, over the past century, formed a deeply embedded lexicon of nature that continues to shape the way we see and encounter Canada’s parks. Smith, as much tracker as artist, revisits these photographic records to trace the mythical and multiple forms of nature and pose a deceptively simple question: What happens when we try to re-enact a photographic moment? Using repeat photography as her method on inquiry, Smith’s describes her process as, “taking archival photographs on a walk and treating them not only as images of something or objects we can hold, but acts grounded in place.”

finding aid is organized by the Southern Alberta Art Gallery and curated by Ryan Doherty. Funding assistance from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts and the City of Lethbridge.

Contact: Christina Cuthbertson
Public Relations Manager
T: 403 327 8770 ext 4
Email: ccuthbertson [at] saag [dot] ca