In November of 1849, French painter Gustave Courbet wrote the following account in a note to  two of his friends.  

“I had taken our carriage to go to the Chateau of Saint-Denis to paint a landscape. Near  Maisières I stopped to consider two men breaking stones on the road. One rarely encounters  the most complete expression of poverty, so right there on the spot I got an idea for a painting. I  made a date to meet them in my studio the following morning, and since then I have painted  my picture. On one side is an old man of seventy, bent over his work, his sledgehammer raised,  his skin parched by the sun, his head shaded by a straw hat; his trousers, of coarse material,  are completely patched; and in his cracked sabots you can see his bare heels sticking out of  socks that were once blue. On the other side is a young man with swarthy skin, his head  covered with dust; his disgusting shirt all in tatters reveals his arms and parts of his back; a  leather suspender holds up what is left of his trousers, and his mud-caked leather boots show  gaping holes on every side. The old man is kneeling, the young man is standing behind him  energetically carrying a basket of broken rocks. Alas! In this class, this is how one begins, and  that is how one ends”. 

Cited in Albert Boime, Art in an Age of Civil Struggle 1848-1871 (Chicago-London: The  University of Chicago Press, 2007), 158-9.  

Before the Stones Were Broken is a series of oil paintings completed by 2nd year painting students at UBC Okanagan under the instruction of Connor Charlesworth. Introduced through ecologist/ philosopher Timothy Morton’s  concept of hyperobjects, and Gustave Courbet’s painting “The Stone Breakers”, students were tasked to compose small oil paintings that consider elements of time, composition, and land.  In an effort to draw distinction between the real and the sensual, students were encouraged to  approach these forms through Rudolph Arnheim’s compositional notions of centres, gravity,  and weight, in combination with sensual considerations of surface, colour, and material. 

Participating artists include Connor Charlesworth, Rain Doody, Mackenzie Fleetwood-Anderson, Meg Furlot, Talia Gagnon, Dawn Haywood, Neha Iyer, Sheilina John, Hailey Johnson, Madi May, Emily Mills, Phil Patrick, Sarah Prentice, Maya Taki, Amelia Vegt, Wenjing Wang, Peony Wong, and Bernice Yam. 

Before the Stones Were Broken will be on view in the Members’ Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from March 15 - April 6 2024.

Familiar places, objects, images and scents can transport us to other times and versions of ourselves. In this way, our memories are held by the land and our embodied experiences within it. But how does this memory translocate across geographies? For diasporic peoples, where do our memories belong?

How does memory inform geography and provide an alternate way of knowing and imagining the world? 

In embalmed funks, Michaela Bridgemohan draws on her inherited Afro-Caribbean cultural practices to explore this question, inviting viewers into this archive of intimate Black Canadian home life. This methodology is informed by generative and reciprocal forms of care—prioritizing self-sustenance, futurity and creative power. In this austere gallery space, everyday domestic items like silk pillowcases, end tables and wide-tooth combs are recontextualized—here, we are reverent and attentive: these objects are sacred. But this sacredness does not exist out of time and place; it is situated within Syilx and Caribbean lands and holds those relationships with their people and living things. Sculptures are infused with local plant life, while artistic methods incorporate practices of Afro-Caribbean care—oil is massaged into hair and wood; we make salves from the land to moisten our bodies; beeswax forms a comb. By conflating these practices of caring for the body with those of caring for the land, can memory take root here, too?

Bridgemohan responds to scholarly work by Canadian scholar Dr. Katherine McKittrick; Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle, which explores how the practice of resistance to racial domination intensifies Black women’s relationship with land. Bringing attention to spatial acts as forms of poetic expression, resistance and naturalization. In this way, “understanding blackness has been twinned by the practice of placing blackness and rendering body-space integral to the production of space.” Dispossessed bodies and prairie scapes are not passive. Spatial domination is dismissed here, so actions become poetically expressive and remembered as home. The combination of materials, landscape photographs and performances are to “unfix” the one-dimensional perception of black women’s geographic positioning. Embalmed funks insist upon this, recognizing land as home, which insists on naming one’s self and self-history.  

The objects of embalmed funks are representational, but their applications are abstracted: both artifacts of the everyday and relics of distant land/memory; a testament to Afro-Caribbean dispossession and a tribute to Syilx land; an act of cultural persistence and a spectre of what was once remembered.

Michaela Bridgemohan’s exhibition embalmed funks will be on view in the Main Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from March 15 - April 27 2024.

Michaela Bridgemohan is an interdisciplinary artist of Jamaican and Australian descent who grew up in Mohkinstsis, also known as Calgary, but now gratefully resides on Syilx territory, Kelowna, B.C. She holds an MFA in Visual Arts from the University of British Columbia—Okanagan and received her BFA in Drawing (with Distinction) from the Alberta University of the Arts in 2017. Through her paternal Caribbean heritage, Bridgemohan's artistic research is driven to reinscribe new notions of multiplicity and multi-dimensionality within Black identity in Canada. She includes cultural ways of making as a legitimate form of artistic expression and creative power. Wood, Indigo and familial objects materialize these immaterial anecdotal memories—a corporeal shadow in the shape of domestic spaces, brown bodies and fertile terrain. Theoretical and contemporary writings on Caribbean-Canadian thought, Black Feminism, Hauntology, Relationality, Indigenous Knowledge and Land-based practices inform these conversations. 

Bridgemohan’s art practice wouldn’t be possible without the gracious support of the British Columbia Arts Council, Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art and Canada Council for the Arts, whose work has been exhibited across Canada and Australia. Exhibitions include but limited to Grunt Gallery-Mount Pleasant Community Art Screen (Vancouver BC), Fort Gallery (Fort Langley BC), Lake Country Art Gallery (Lake Country, BC), Feminist Art Collective (Toronto ON), Diasporic Futurisms (Toronto ON), Art Gallery of Alberta (Edmonton AB), Stride Gallery (Calgary AB), The Marion Nicoll Gallery (Calgary AB), Whitebox Gallery (Brisbane QLD) and Jugglers Art Space (Brisbane QLD).

Heather Savard’s artistic practice is responsive and a process-based exploration of household objects and structures. She makes use of sculpture, installation, drawing, and expanded forms of printmaking to explore how value is assigned in material culture. Her previous research questions have revolved around what it means to be good and what it means for something to hold value.

Savard’s work comprises recurring themes, such as the origins of middle-class objects of luxury, the tension between the duty of safekeeping and the guilt of discarding, and the current overwhelming, abundant need to buy as a form of self-improvement and optimization marketed in consumer culture. The experience of examining what is valuable to them personally has furthered her curiosity into the connection between the individual and societal drive to pursue valuable objects as both an act of living better and a signal to others.

Ethical philosopher Agnes Callard, in her essay 'Who Wants to Play the Status Game,' describes three games played: (1) The Basic Game, (2) Importance Game, and (3) Leveling Game. In the Basic Game, 'you are looking for common ground on the basis of which your conversation might proceed,' and it is a straightforward assessment of your conversational counterpart. She details the more advanced games of determining status via the Importance Game, where 'participants jockey for position,' dropping hints of wealth, connections, or affluence. The Leveling game 'uses empathy to equalize players' and 'reaches down low to achieve common ground' (Callard). Savard is interested in how objects can be used to 'signal enough power to establish a hierarchy' and fit within the Importance Game as described by Callard.

In his collection of essays, 'The Anthropocene Reviewed,' John Green briefly charts the evolution of the American Lawn, where he describes how the 'quality of lawns in the neighborhood began to be seen as a proxy for the quality of the neighborhood itself' (83). Savard’s work in this exhibition explores this relationship using the language of the formal French Garden, with its orderly and hierarchical representations of rules and governance over nature, in combination with contemporary materials used in current home and landscape design. How does the idealized version of the North American lawn fit into the Importance Game played between neighbors while being wrapped up, for Savard at least, inside of the ever-seemingly untenable goal of homeownership?

Heather Savard’s exhibition Greens will be on view in the Project Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from March 15 - April 27 2024.

The overarching theme of Bree Apperley’s work is notions of the feminine within our late-capitalist era. This includes ideas of the female body and motherhood, craft in the form of handwork and textiles, domiciles and lifestyles. Sculptural pieces she has created are centered around the idea of a primordial suburbia, something like a display that a future cave-woman would place on her mantel or use as a shrine. The drawings are totemic symbols that could serve as pre-historic logos or branding from an ancient civilization. Simple black ink characters on paper enable the viewer to freely associate meaning based on the shapes and symbols represented. Apperley’s photography work is based firmly in the post-digital world, embracing and exploiting a new visual language concerned with ideas of intersection and reflection. The photos attempt to bring space and depth into a flat surface, expressing an intimate viewpoint. 

In her work, Bree focuses on the things around us that we throw away and things we look at but no longer see. Old and thin towels, a trail of doilies, a length of chain, wadded up hosiery and clip art, but also silken wool, a humble coconut and light shining through a garden tulip brings a flashing moment of flawlessness. Beauty is witnessed from an oblique angle, and an abstracted spiritual space emanates.

These reconfigured objects and symbols come together in this exhibition to celebrate signifiers of femininity as well as to raise protest at their continued oppression. A beautiful flare of ecstatic feminine energy sent up that also signals a warning that if we neglect to articulate our unique worldview, things will slip back to their default position.

Shrine On will be on view in the Members’ Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from February 16 to March 9, 2024. You can see more of Bree Apperley's work on her Instagram @flowers_for_mom or her website.

In Search of Lost Memories by Ziv Wei deconstructs and reimagines nostalgia by providing new contexts for found vernacular family photos and frames. Central to this series is the intriguing concept of crafting narratives from items whose original stories have been lost to time. These artworks, presented outside of their original context, encourage viewers to engage in a dialogue that bridges the temporal gap, evoking a blend of emotions and recollections. 

Each composition in the series juxtaposes found items with either modern landscapes or curated photographs, creating a narrative mosaic. This approach turns historical items into gateways to a past, one that is simultaneously re-envisioned by the viewer and anchored in an irretrievable past. The act of reimagination breathes new life into these items, crafting a distinct experience that is unique to each viewer. Furthermore, this technique underscores the artist’s fascination with the evolution and persistence of artwork beyond the creator’s presence. 

In Search of Lost Memories stands as a commentary on the dynamic interplay of art and memory in our collective consciousness. It invites viewers into a realm where the lack of definitive stories paves the way for an introspective journey encompassing not just life-altering events, but also the mundane moments that collectively define our human experience. 

Ziv Wei’s exhibition In Search of Lost Memories will be on view in the Members’ Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from January 19 to February 10, 2024. Join us and the artists for a triple opening reception on January 19, 6-8pm to celebrate their exhibition alongside Puppets Forsaken’s The Noisebau in the Main Gallery and Erin Scott’s 9/3 in the Project Gallery. This receptions is free and open to the public. Light refreshments will be provided. Pre-registration for attendance is encouraged; please register here!

Learn more about Ziv Wei’s practice by visiting his Instagram: @ziv__wei  and website: www.zivwei.com.

I invite you into my private world, but you are also not welcome there. We can meet at the top of the hour and make love to the land but you won’t understand the language I speak, and so, don’t expect to cum. When you come over, be certain that you know I have children and they are both mine and not mine and when I ask you not to touch them, I mean it, but also can you please love them in ways that allow them to survive? I am unsure of what 9 and 3 mean exactly but I understand that numerologically 9 is sacred and 3 is really just 9’s children divided out of its body and into their own existence, but when combined, they once again become 9. If you follow my live stream, you’ll know what I mean with all of this, and so like, subscribe, and follow to learn more. Also, there is a password and some of the images aren’t mine and so I blur them and the children, who are still not mine, but I get their consent as they pass through my body. And you should know, this is not the real me. 

9/3 is a feminist intervention, digital reimagining, and 21st century meditation by Erin Scott inspired by Allan Kaprow’s 18 Happenings in 6 parts which was presented at the New York Reuben Gallery in 1959. For Kaprow, the original showing of this work is considered an artistic failure. What is often misunderstood about this body of work is the exhaustive textual component which held diagrams, directions, poems, essays, random lists, transcribed conversations, and more. This textual body is much more substantial than what was presented as the 18/6, and lives on as archived documentation. It is this documentation that more actively engages the thin line between art and life, which Kaprow’s happenings would continually seek to dismantle or reveal throughout the 1960-70’s.

9/3 is a videopoem sequence and a series of interactive occurrences that inhabit the often-invisible space between art and life, creating a voyeuristic moment for the viewer as they watch the intimate and every day of children, bodies, land, languages, and personhood. At once elevated in language, images, and metaphor, the poems are also deeply personal and biographic, playing off elements found in documentaries, home movies, and social media content creation. We feel the real and yet see the contrived and we want it all to last, but inevitably, everything fades into a memory or a story we hope our children will tell their children about how we tried to live and when we failed, what we did in the aftermath. 

Every piece in the exhibition appears multiple times across the different mediums. Scott invites viewers to find the interconnections across form, content, and time, and to build the story for yourself. On January 20, January 27, February 3 from 11am-4pm, join Erin Scott in the project gallery to play! Erin will be set up in the gallery with video equipment, projectors, writing materials, an orange shroud, and a kaleidoscope, and opens a generous invitation for anyone to join them to make your own videopoem. This age inclusive event allows anyone visiting the gallery to write, record, and edit your own video with assistance from Erin. Using elements of Erin’s exhibition, such as the projector and orange shroud, participants will make new videos which poetically and visually respond to and play with the ongoing exhibitions in both the main and project gallery.

Come as you are and plan to spend a half hour (or more, or less) playing in this process-led making experience. Dependent on how participants feel, the final product can be emailed to them for private viewing, or they can contribute their videopoem to be edited into the ongoing public exhibition 9/3.

Erin Scott’s exhibition 9/3 will be on view in the Project Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from January 19 to March 2 2024.

Puppets Forsaken is an acoustic noise band comprised of David Gifford and Natali Leduc. 

Puppets Forsaken started to collaborate on a sculpture/sound project in 2019 that they called Nostalgia for Futurism. Inspired by the Intonarumori of Futurist Luigi Russolo, author of the manifesto Art of Noises (1913), they built some acoustic noise generators that they used for performances. These machines contrast with our digital age, and allude to the mechanical age. They produce sounds reminiscent of factories, gears, and machines, which, according to Russolo, correspond to our everyday lives and resonate with our bodies more accurately than music.

Through this investigation, Puppets Forsaken have developed an audience in the regional “Noise” circuit, they have performed for old growth trees that are no longer there, engaged their work in a theory symposium, interloped in a Visual Art Performance and entered a telekinesis competition. They even recorded an album (Greatest Hits). 

While they had a terrific experience building their noise generators and playing them in public, Puppets Forsaken felt that the audience was missing a big part of the experience, since they could only listen, and not play the instruments. For this reason, they decided to build The Noisebau, an interactive and immersive architectural sound envelope, which is the project they are presenting at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art.

When visitors produce sounds emanating from The Noisebau, these become an extension of the participant, who has a certain control over their rhythm, pitch and intensity. There is an implied resonance between the participant’s interior and what is behind the walls (the mechanism). By building an immersive installation, they want the audience to feel they are part of the work. Being inside the noise generators is not meant as an act of transgression by the designers, or to aggravate or cause discomfort, but for the audience to pause and reflect on those noises that are usually forgotten in the background. Producing the sound themselves, the visitors will feel the noises at a more personal and visceral level. 

Beside being experiments with acoustic noise, Puppets Forsaken’s projects are imbibed with their deep love for trees and their positive impact on the planet. They are preoccupied by facts such as the disappearance of old growth trees. On Vancouver Island, only 2% of the old growth forest still remain. They wanted to pay homage to the ones that fell to humans, and decided to serenade them. In this spirit, they did two concerts and 2 videos in a clear-cut area meant solely for trees that are no longer there (one with our first set of instruments, and another one with The Noisebau). No humans were invited to these concerts. There is in this act some nostalgia for trees that have disappeared, and the anticipation of a greater loss. It is likely only when these remaining ecosystems have been erased that their true meaning and loss to us will be revealed. This is amplified by some of the noises coming from their modular noise generators that allude to saws and other tools used to cut trees. 

Puppets Forsaken are currently working on a new instrument, called Knock-Knock, that mimics sounds of endangered species. 

Puppet Forsaken’s exhibition The Noisebau will be on view in the Main Gallery of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art from January 19 to March 2, 2024.

The Noisebau received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts & the BC Arts Council. 

Knock-Knock received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.

Katya Meehalchan, born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, now residing in Kelowna, British Columbia (on the traditional unceded territory of the Okanagan syilx people), is an artist  whose work resonates with the intersection of printmaking, multimedia collage, and  installation art. Her creative journey commenced with a profound sense of curiosity,  leading her to explore the vast spectrum of human expression. 

Graduating from the University of British Columbia in 2023 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts, Meehalchan's academic journey played a pivotal role in shaping her artistic identity. Her  studies not only honed her technical skills but also deepened her conceptual  understanding of art's potential to communicate complex ideas. 

Meehalchan's work captivates through its interplay of mediums. Her prints evoke a sense of nostalgia, bridging the past and present, while her multimedia collages challenge the  boundaries of traditional artistic forms. Her installations immerse viewers in thought provoking environments, inviting them to engage with her narrative in a tangible way. 

In her artistic practice, Meehalchan’s art invites viewers to question their own perceptions, exploring the boundaries between reality and imagination, and inviting contemplation on the interconnectedness of humanity and the world. Through her art, Meehalchan seeks to ignite a dialogue between the viewer and the work,  prompting introspection and reflection.  

Meehalchan seeks to create an environment packed with delicate details that allows for  many access points for the viewer to relate to through the sense of nostalgia or curiosity. Her work is representative of the feeling of going through a vintage store, or estate sale and experiencing a sense of wonder or curiosity that lies in objects that hold  a personalized history.

In their exhibition Wander, Meehalchan creates depth and dimension through the layering of different mediums and collaged materials. Through the combination of various materials such as paint, found objects, and photographic elements, she aims to create a visual narrative that speaks to the complexities of the human experience. Each included layer serves as a symbol or representation of a different aspect of this narrative, inviting the viewer to engage with the work on multiple levels. The layers serve as a metaphor for the way we perceive and process information in our daily lives, highlighting the idea that there is always more to discover and understand. In this way, Meehalchan’s work encourages the viewer to take a closer look and consider the many layers of possible connections and coincidences embedded into the work. 

Katya Meehalchan’s multimedia installation Wander will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from December 1, 2023 – January 6, 2024.

Natasha Harvey’s artwork consists of a series of collaged landscape paintings and linocut prints, which seek to represent and communicate the effects of human interference on the environment while evoking the participatory spirit of love and beauty of nature. Harvey spends time deepening her connection with the land in the Syilx peoples' unceded territories, walking and connecting through place-based research. Over time, during these walks, she has found the expansion of dwellings, homes pushing up the mountainsides around and over wetlands, impacting wildlife habitat and ecology. Construction cuts into the land. Culture and economy reshape the horizon, thus rendering 'space' as politically complex. Therefore, achieving the colonial sublime is not a simple image of beauty without erasure. Harvey questions whether her depictions of the landscape illustrate this complexity and thus encourage a conversation about our expanding contribution to the detriment of the land.

The beautiful, wild landscapes of the Group of Seven contribute to the Canadian identity. The most well-known paintings by this group depict a pristine land, devoid of human evidence. This interpretation and representation of landscape omit industry and human interaction. As an artist, Harvey feels an urgency to try to depict a comprehensive version of landscape art in this time of climate crisis and environmental emergency. This version of landscape depiction illustrates a vista that is manipulated and used for human development. It emphasizes land commodification and colonial capitalism to encourage discussion about our impact on natural spaces.

Harvey’s family has a local construction business. They participate in manicuring and manipulating the landscape. Green grass, geometric ponds and infinity pools replace indigenous habitat. Her family’s livelihood comes from the commodification and development of the landscape. At the same time, Harvey observes the detrimental construction management and practices happening in the Okanagan and recognizes her part in it. Harvey’s position within the construction industry is difficult. Her love for the environment and local landscape has always been sincere however she recognizes the paradox.

Juxtaposing images and attempting to combine found materials, photographs and painting techniques is endless play, exploration and discovery; moments of tight and linear alongside messy and chaotic to construct or weave a layered poetic narrative. Collaged layers are built up and create meaning. She intends to illustrate the many contextual layers within a landscape. She uses found construction materials that have been salvaged from worksites encroaching and overtaking the forest trails where she walks. The construction materials are juxtaposed with the photographic images of forests and living things she has documented during such walks. Building her paintings is laborious. It is physical work that mimics the labour involved when constructing a home. The paintings reflect industry with their large scale and overbearing proportion. These constructed landscape paintings are large in scale. It is meant to feel both encompassing and obstructive. A push and pull, as though you could physically enter the landscape however, it may also feel like a barrier. This implied barrier operates when the recognizable elements of the landscape are interrupted with abstraction and collaged found materials. The linocut prints depict a forested wild landscape. The trees illustrated no longer exist, in their place, houses have been built or are in the process of construction. The prints are large and detailed. The process is meticulous, it takes time, love and care. Documenting forests that have been clear-cut through the slow process of relief printmaking is like a memorial of sorts.

Veneration is created to motivate discussion and awareness concerning our impact on ecology. This discourse could potentially encourage choices of care and contingency towards the environment. Rather than seeing the environment as a resource to be used, love and connection could alter this perception from resource to relative, as we are all elemental.

Natasha Harvey’s exhibition Layered Landscapes: Landscape Art, Politics and Love is on view in the Main Gallery from November 3 - December 16, 2023.

Cameron Gelderman is a self-taught emerging, interdisciplinary artist currently living in Kelowna, BC. His process-based practice embraces spontaneity, breaking through one's inhibitions, worry, and self-doubt to enter an intuition-driven state. The result of this process is large webs of woven textile installations and artworks. While considering themes of mental health, Gelderman creates an immersive environment using yarn and thread in his exhibition Yarnlandia. 

Following his instincts, Gelderman creates site-specific installations as a means of working through depression and anxiety by entering a flow state of creation. These transformed spaces, while chaotic, create an intimate space that invites viewers to engage and collaborate. Yarnlandia fosters an exchange between artist and viewer by inviting guests to add their own knots and weaves into the large-scale web of yarn, thread, and textiles, and attempts to empower gallery guests to work through inhibitions, worry, and self-doubt by embracing their creative instincts. 

Through scale, the installation invites visitors to move around the work, experience the works through touch, and to contribute to the installation. Through playful creation, curiosity, and experimentation, Gelderman encourages audiences to trust the process and trust in themselves. As he explains, “these works are there to be touched, satisfy the sense of curiosity, and connect the visual stimulant with the sense of feel. Enter Yarnlandia enthusiastically yourself and if you care to tie a knot, add some yarn, there are pieces highlighted for you to do so.”

Through the artist's experimental approach, Yarnlandia encourages exchange with audiences, and highlights the beauty of the unpredictable and spontaneity. Over time, the installation will evolve with each unique contribution of gallery guests, reflecting the impact community and collaboration can have on one’s individual growth.

Cameron Gelderman’s exhibition Yarnlandia is on view in the Project Gallery from November 3 - December 16, 2023.

It’s a world where vanity and self-obsession obscure our genuine selves, and where we are lost in the mundanities of media, commerce, and the uncertainties of our daily lives. Stacy Lundeen makes work that attempts to offer a candid reflection of and reaction to our shared humanity. He entices the viewer to engage with both fundamental and minute aspects of human nature, embracing our vulnerabilities and imperfections as the unique complexities they are. Imperfections are interesting. Perfection is not, it’s boring and it doesn't exist. Lundeen’s paintings are a tribute to all the little complexities of existence, weaving humor and narratives that delve into the abstract and subjective themes of human frailty, failure, guilt, shame, and vanity.

The paintings are created with loose, loopy, gestural mark-making, where he hopes to capture the essence of moments and emotions and render them quickly and with little preplanning. Each work is a new exploration, not only of a new subject or object or situation, but in a sense, how to even paint. As Lundeen describes, he feels like every time he approaches a new work he’s learning how to paint again, and learning to like and appreciate the imperfections he produces.

Lundeen largely uses vibrant pastel colors. Sometimes this is a deliberate choice in an attempt to infuse the compositions with a sense of optimism and attractiveness, even when he’s dealing with heavy or grotesque subjects. Subconsciously it may be that he lives and works in Vancouver BC, a frequently dark, gray, and rainy city, and that bright palette is a coping mechanism to battle his S.A.D.’s.

Making a painting or any work of art is an effort to offer viewers an opportunity for introspection and self-discovery. Lundeen often thinks of one specific person or people he knows who he wants to respond to his paintings in an ongoing, imaginary and inconclusive conversation. His hope is that whoever views his work will turn into that person, get the joke, relate to the shame, feel the guilt or at least empathize with it, and all become friends and help each other. 

Lundeen’s paintings are a reminder that it's our flaws that make us beautifully human. Let's bridge the gap between the mundane and the profound, and embrace the complexities of life with a smile and an understanding heart.

Stacy Lundeen’s exhibition Keep it Together, Man is on view in the Members’ Gallery from October 20 - November 25, 2023.

Stacy Lundeen Born 1979  is a contemporary artist who lives and works In Vancouver, Canada. Lundeen moved to Montreal in the early 2000s and studied at Concordia University working toward a BFA and spending much of his 20s and 30s working in and around Montreal's Art community . Lundeen had his first solo Exhibition in 2010 at the Khyber In Halifax, NS. and has exhibited at multiple venues throughout Canada. Currently a prolific artist who deals with humor, failure, and themes of empathy in his colorful paintings, Lundeen is also the director of SLENDER, a contemporary art space in Vancouver, BC dedicated to group exhibitions with themes and work centered around the idea of Levity.

Learn more about Stacy Lundeen by visiting their Instagram.

Through her work, Christine D’Ornofrio negotiates the tensions and promises of power found in acts of humour, virtue, narcissism, humiliation, desire, technology and community. The moments she exploits point to intuitive effects and ideologies, sometimes seen as ‘accidents’ to reveal characteristics of mediation that tie personal and political agency.

A focus of her practice is to build dialogue between subject position and the histories, achievements and fallacies of feminist art via mediation and technology. In former works, she has implied that a change in perspective can present an alternative to a rigid systematic structure, or she has confronted her fear of depicting the female body in the conditions of representation by utilizing the gesture of falling that carries both potential and failure. D’Onofrio revealed the contradictions between subversive and derogatory effects of humour, and revealed the power of codes as attributed to tears as simultaneously material and simulated existing within the same referent, or the generative nature of intuitive and tacit connections that influence and are foundational to a creative community.

D’Onofrio struggles with the notion of liberty and its limitations within structures, whether; representational, conceptual, social, economic, political. She reveals the forces of capitalist patriarchy, individualistic neoliberalism and colonial practices that ultimately direct and exploit potential fluid ‘grey zones’, and expose what further facilitates and perpetuates power. Since we working within the system, how can one imagine the potential act of liberty? How can new meaning be created, produced and organized or how can one erupt the production of meaning altogether -and still survive? For subjects to not belong to something, free of titles, codes and limitations, it would exist in crisis. In her work she asks for some concept of liberation to be realized, but liberation only exists when it does not know its end.

At the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art, D’Onofrio exhibits a new work that critiques agency as it ‘belongs to’ representational systems, in this case a white female spinster, crazy “cat lady”, pseudo-feminist icon. Her inquiry into the function of social and cultural oppressions to ensure perpetuating power structures perform themselves is to discover new portrayals of the ageing white female embodiment and privilege. Because co-opted depictions of rebellion make revolutionary actions defunct of their power, she questions our place in an intersectional self-aware social, cultural and political theory and deliberately engage both the triumphs and perils of feminist art practice, history and visual culture.

cat cat cat will be on view in our Main Gallery from September 8th - October 20th, 2023.

Christine D’Onofrio (she/her/they) is an uninvited and grateful guest on the unceded ancestral territories of šxʷməθkʷəy̓əmaɁɬ təməxʷ (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ təməxʷ (Tsleil-Waaututh), Skwxwú7mesh-ulh Temíx̱w (Squamish), and S’ólh Téméxw (Stó:lō) nations that some refer to as Vancouver.  She has exhibited work across Canada, including; Eyelevel, Modern Fuel, deluge, Gallery 44, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and La Centrale. She has given artist talks and served on panels in various institutions, including the Vancouver Art Gallery and “Art Now” lectures at the University of Lethbridge.

Active in her art community, she has served on the Board for Access Gallery and set up over a hundred engaged learning placements for students. As the second generation of European immigrants, she was raised as a guest on the traditional land of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinabewaki and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nations. D’Onofrio has a BFA from York University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia where she currently teaches.

 Learn more about D’Onofrio’s work by visiting her website.

I could just take you. And I become you. And you become me

-Breyer P-Orridge

Becoming a medium—a setting, a subject, an object has enfranchised artist Wilson S. Wilson from the discomfort and alienation of gender, sex and script. The Pandrogyny Project offers a personal realisation of pandrogyny as Wilson takes in the materials of objects and furniture around them, and begins to not only become these items, but to replace them, forming a third entity which is neither furniture nor individual, but a pandrogyne of domestic subjects. This concept of pandrogyny has evolved from the work of Genesis and Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge and their decades long Pandrogeny Project in which two people make surgical changes to their body, appearances and identities, becoming one unique, shared self.

Romantic and uncanny, The Pandrogeny Project is a body of work that explores the shifting of identity occurring as one comes to resemble and even function as an object of their space—as a pandrogyne of object/self—in distinguishing the object-subject and the human-object. In the exhibition, the pandrogyne materialises as a collection of furniture chimaera pieces and performance documents: an artist's publication that takes the form of a magazine spread, and a non-linear film where intimate gestures are captured in a series of surreal, pseudo-erotic scenes.

The Pandrogyny Project will be on view in our Project Gallery from September 8th - October 20th, 2023.

Hana Hamaguchi is a second generation Japanese artist born in Banff and currently based in the Okanagan. She completed her BFA at UBCO in 2022, with a focus on printmaking and painting. Hana is interested in themes of maliciousness hidden in the mundane. Her work often takes her throughout her own personal journey, navigating her childhood within a family that never grew up within Canada.

Entwined is a mural highlighting her experience with her hair while growing up within such a household. Growing up Hamaguchi was often mocked for her hair, it was always too messy, dry or frizzy. She had a nickname at home which translated to “messy head” but she internalized that it was purely a language and cultural difference at home to call her by that nickname. It took a long time for Hamaguchi to realize that being mocked for her hair was not fair nor was it justifiable within the means of differing cultures and languages. She grew up around peers that had a different hair texture than she did, and she did not have the support at home to navigate her thick Asian hair. This experience is an extremely isolating one, as it is very difficult to have someone understand both the nuances of her language and culture within the same context of being second generation to first generation parents.

Hamaguchi’s mural piece Entwined will be on view in the Members Gallery from September 8 to 30, 2023.

Once again the Alternator is celebrating our diverse creative community through our Annual Members’ Exhibition, The Postcard Project & Studio Sale. To commemorate our 34th year in the Kelowna arts community we invited our members to fill the walls of the gallery salon-style with original artworks and postcards.

 The Postcard Project & Studio Sale is an opportunity for local artists to exhibit their work in the Alternator’s professional gallery space, creating a grand mosaic that showcased both the people involved with the gallery and the work they produce. This annual members’ exhibition doubles as an exhibition and sale where visitors could take home (or gift!) a part of the Okanagan’s rich arts community. Artists will take home 75% of sales while the remaining 25% supports the Alternator’s programming.

Similar to last year, we invited 34 Alternator members (one for each year of our existence!) to create 10 unique postcards in any visual medium to be sold at $10 each. As part of the Studio Sale, gallery visitors will be sure to find something that speaks to them. With over 50 participating artists, and works ranging from paintings to ceramics, lino prints to bleach designed T-shirts, there is something here for everyone. All artworks in the exhibition are unique originals and available for sale with prices ranging as low as $10.00 and up. People are encouraged to visit early, however, as works in the exhibition are sold, they will be removed from the wall and taken home with their new owners.

SAVE THE DATE! on July 28, from 6-9pm we will be hosting a fundraising party to celebrate the launch of this exhibition and our 34th Birthday. Joins us for food, desserts, door prizes and more. Click here for all the details!

The exhibition will be on from July 7 to August 12 and will utilize all 3 of our exhibition spaces; the Main Gallery, Project Gallery, and Members’ Gallery.

Artists participating in the exhibition included: Fredrik Thacker, Jaine Buse, Beverly Thacker, Vanessa Arcana, Marguerite MacIntosh, Sharon Duguay, Wynne Leung, Paige Gagnon, Katya Meehalchan, Mariah Miguel-Juan, Maud Besson, Shauna Oddleifson, Susan Bizecki, Bailey Ennig, Bramble Lee Pryde, Nathalie Coulombe, Annie Zalezsak, Angel Mamaril, Bonnie Anderson, Moira Roberts, Jesse Roode, Brandon Teigland, Shirley Addams, Patty Leinemann, Joanne Gervais, Eric Macnaughton, Sandra Cook, John Leinemann, Carrie Mitchell, Stacy Crane, Kimberly Crane, Paul Lewendon, Christina Knittel, Connor Charlesworth, Laura McCarthy, Madison Bohnet, Carly Sivasankar, Lesley Dalin, Peyton Lynch, Wanda Lock, Amy Van Dongen, Isabella Ford, Michelle Woods, Ceren McKay, Jolene Mackie, Chandler Burnett, Dawn Brauer, Angela Hansen, Avery Ullyot-Comrie, Asahna Hughes, Moozhan Ahmadzadegan, Hana Hamaguchi, Arianne, Tubman, Celeste Jackson, Alexa Tozer, Paula Schneider, Claudia Paquette, Elisa Roth, James Bergan, John Roberts, Jordan Lige, Kassidy Rutledge, Kat Gerhardt, Kathryn Pooley, Kathy Townsend, Kellen Grayston, Kirby, Lisa, Lucy Long, Matt Nakayama, Ricky, Robert Farley, Sam Mayer, Scott Gould, and Walid Waitkus.

Mariah Miguel-Juan is a Kelowna-born artist residing on the traditional land of the Syilx  Okanagan People, and a student of UBC Okanagan's BFA program. Her artistic practice delves into the depths of memory and personal connection. Through her art, she explores the transformative power of fragmented narratives and invites the viewer to find familiarity within.  

Remnants by Miguel-Juan includes multiple collage-based screen prints that use layering and translucent elements to mimic the elusive nature of memories. Her artwork is infused with personal significance as it references moments in her life and offers a glimpse into her own imaginative realm. This series has become a way for Miguel-Juan to create a map of where she has been and the paths she has walked. Through the incorporation of distorted images depicting windows, hallways, and street views, Remnants presents a captivating challenge to the viewer,  urging them to unravel the meaning and forge personal connections that resonate with their own lives.  

Miguel-Juan’s creative process includes digitally collaging found imagery from magazines and her own photography. During the screen printing process, she works intuitively to create a series of prints that embrace spontaneity and result in unique qualities and compositions. To push the boundaries of her art, she experiments with various printing surfaces, including fabric, silkscreen mesh, and different types of paper. By layering images and incorporating translucent elements,  she creates veils that capture the ephemeral essence of memories. 

Remnants will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from June 16 to July 5, 2023.

The Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art’s Annual Members’ Show and Sale is back with the third edition of the Postcard Project and Studio Sale! This year we invite you to celebrate the Alternator’s 34th Birthday with this community-centered exhibition and sale taking place from July 7 - August 12, 2023.

Similar to previous years, the Annual Members’ Exhibition: Postcard Project & Studio Sale, will take on two distinct components. Artists will have the option to participate in either the Postcard Project, Studio Sale, or both.

Like last year, we will be hosting an event to accompany the exhibition in celebration of our 34th Birthday and our creative community, stay tuned for upcoming details!

The Postcard Project invites 34 Alternator member artists (one for each year of our existence!) to create 10 original postcards. The works may be watercolour, collage, photographs or any other 2D media that will fit on the 4x6” postcard substrate (postcard blanks will be provided by the Alternator). In the spirit of the Alternator mandate, we welcome experimental interpretations of this project. A grocery list? Instructions for performance art? A map leading to a buried treasure? We love it!! This will be a limited run of 340 unique postcards so don’t delay in registering as spots are limited, first come, first served! 

The numbered, limited edition postcards will be exhibited in-gallery and offered for sale to our visitors for $10 each with 75% of proceeds going directly to the artist, and the remaining 25% to the gallery to support the Alternator’s programming. The public will be encouraged to send their purchased postcard out to friends or family, keep it for themselves, or have the Alternator mail the postcard on their behalf (within Canada; address to be provided by purchaser).

The Studio Sale is an open call for submissions for Members to submit up to two guaranteed artworks and one juried artwork (any medium / theme) for inclusion in an exhibition taking place in the Main and Project Gallery. The maximum artwork size is 36”x36”. Artworks may be offered for sale at any price with 75% of proceeds going directly to the artist, and the remaining 25% to the gallery to support the Alternator’s programming. Works will be removed from the wall as they are sold so buyers can walk away with their newly purchased art.

How​ ​to​ ​Participate:

Step​ ​1:​ ​Membership

Sign​ ​up​ ​for​ ​or​ ​renew​ ​your​ ​Alternator​ ​membership.​ ​You​ ​can​ ​sign-up​ ​online​ ​​or​ ​in​ ​person​ ​at​ ​the​ ​gallery.​ ​

Not​ ​sure​ if your Alternator membership is still active? ​ ​Contact​ ​us​ ​at​ ​250 868 2298​ ​or​ ​at​ ​info@alternatorcentre.com and we can help you out!

Step​ ​2:​ ​Register​ ​to​ ​Exhibit​ by: Saturday, June 24, 11:59 p.m.

Complete and submit the registration form either through the Alternator website or by completing a printed form that can​ ​then​ ​be​ ​submitted​ ​in​ ​person or​ ​emailed to​ ​info@alternatorcentre.com. Artists can sign up for either the Postcard Project, Studio Sale, or both.

Postcard Project & Studio Sale Registration Form (Online)
Postcard Project & Studio Sale Registration Form (PDF) 

Step​ ​3:​ ​Label​ ​and​ ​drop​ ​off​ ​your​ ​artwork

POSTCARD PROJECT
Pick up your blank postcards (if applicable)

Artists participating in the Postcard Project will be provided with 10 4x6” blank postcards. Cards may be picked up at the Alternator between May 27 - June 24. Any medium is welcome as long as the piece remains 2D and limited to 4x6”.

Completed postcards should be returned to the Alternator on Saturday, June 24, or between Tuesday - Friday, June 27 - 30 during gallery hours. If you are unable to drop off your completed postcards during these times, please email info@alternatorcentre.com to make alternate arrangements. Please identify your work by completing the following inventory form and return when dropping off artworks.

Postcard Project Inventory

STUDIO SALE

The public will take home purchased Studio Sale artwork with them immediately. As such, we ask that artwork is dropped off in good condition and ready to hang or install. For instance, artwork that is on warped frames or that does not have required hardware (i.e. wire) for hanging will not be accepted. 

Label​ ​and​ ​identify​ ​your​ ​artwork​ by filling out and attaching labels below.

Studio Sale Label Form (PDF)

Labelled artwork can be dropped off at the Alternator on Saturday, June 24, or between Tuesday - Friday, June 27 - 30 during regular gallery hours. If you are unable to drop off your work during these times, please email info@alternatorcentre.com to make alternate arrangements.

All​ ​artwork​ ​identification​ ​must​ ​be​ ​included and​ ​securely​ ​attached​ ​to​ ​your​ ​art​ ​at​ ​the​ ​time​ ​of​ ​drop-off. Please be sure to note which of your submitted pieces are your 2 guaranteed works, and which is an additional work submitted for jurying.

Important Dates

Exhibition dates: July 7 - August 12

Submissions open: May 22

Submissions close: June 24

Blank postcard pickup: May 27 - June 24

Postcard waitlist opens: June 27

Artwork dropoff: Saturday, June 24, Tuesday - Friday, June 27-30

Artwork pickup: August 15 - 19

Cheques sent out: September

Still need convincing? Take a look at exhibition photos from previous years!

The Aunties That Do explores personal and familial narratives with a consideration of Indigenous artistic processes. Michelle Sound's works explore cultural identities and histories by engaging materials and concepts within a contemporary context. Through utilizing such practices as drum making, caribou hair tufting, beadwork, and photography, her work highlights that acts of care and joy are situated in family and community. They work with traditional and contemporary materials and techniques to explore maternal labour, identity, cultural knowledge, and cultural inheritances. This exhibition is composed of four bodies of work: 

Holding It Together uses archival images that contain loss, grief, longing and memory. The ripped images exhibit the colonial violence that Sound’s family, and other Indigenous families, have experienced including residential school intergenerational trauma, loss of language, and displacement from territories. These losses can never be fully healed but these histories and realities can be processed through art, culture and stories. The materials of these large 4x3’ artworks include paper, beadwork, embroidery thread, porcupine quills and caribou tufting.

Nimama hates fish but worked in the cannery is informed by Sound’s mother who is Cree from Kinuso, in northern Alberta and a member of Wapsewsipi (Swan River) First Nation. Her parents became enfranchised in the forties so their children would not be forced to attend residential school as they did. They no longer lived on their reserve and moved around Alberta looking for work. Her mom moved out to BC in the seventies, before Sound was born, for better employment opportunities. She worked in the Richmond cannery, even though she hated fish, as it was a necessity for her family’s survival. Their family has had to navigate a transition into new roles as guests on this territory. They live with a sense of displacement and loss of their community and language. Sound was the first of her family born on the west coast and now raises her son in the traditional, unceded territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations. As Sound explains, “this piece explores how we relate to the land we live on and also acknowledges our presence as visitors”. Nimama hates fish but worked in the cannery consists of three works, each 2.5x4’, digital print on cloth vinyl.

80’s Brat is a series of drums that pay homage to the Aunties, a community of caretakers. As Sound explains, “our aunties are also our mothers, who take care of us, our 'cool' moms”. More often than not, the aunties are our first style icons, the loud aunties with the big laugh, who take us to the mall. This drum series is a tribute to their classic auntie style. Dimensions of this series vary, ranging from 8” - 22” in size.

HBC Trapline references the fur trade when beaver pelts were traded for one Hudson Bay Co. four-point blanket. These HBC blankets started to replace traditional blankets that were sewn together from rabbit furs. Indigenous women were vital to the fur trade and the preparation of furs. The four HBC colours of Blue, Yellow, Red, and Green acknowledge the ancestors who worked in the fur trade and the importance of the blanket and women's labour to the fur trade.

The Aunties That Do will be on view from May 19th - July 1st, 2023. Sound is also an artist in residence for this year’s Indigenous Art Intensive at the University Of British Columbia Okanagan. Learn more about the Intensive here.

“In collaboration with the Kelowna Métis Association , the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art invites you to join us for an evening of beading and crafting.

On June 28th, from 6-8 pm, we will be hosting a Beading Circle in our Main Gallery space. Participants can enjoy working on beading projects while surrounded by the work of Cree and Métis artist Michelle Sound.

This event is free to attend and open to anyone. Participants are encouraged to bring their own beading project. However, supplies will be available for first-time beaders to create a beaded pin. Folks of all skill levels are welcome.

Please RSVP by visiting https://www.alternatorcentre.com/events/beading-circle

Michelle Sound is a Cree and Métis artist, educator and mother. She is a member of Wapsewsipi/Swan River First Nation in Northern Alberta, her maternal side is Cree and her paternal side is Métis from central Alberta. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Simon Fraser University, School for the Contemporary Arts, and a Master of Applied Arts from Emily Carr University Art + Design. Michelle is a 2021 Salt Spring National Art Award Finalist and has had recent exhibitions at Daphne Art Centre (Montréal), Neutral Ground ARC (Regina) and grunt gallery(Vancouver).

Learn more about Sound and her work, here.

Curated by Victoria Jaenig, Looking at Ullus is an exhibition highlighting the individual artworks representing the different styles, backgrounds and artistry of Ullus Collective Artists. This exhibition features the work of Franchesca Bell, Ann Doyon, and Hayley Reagan.

ULLUS is a collective of professional Indigenous artists living, working or residing within the traditional territories of the Syilx or Secwépemc nations. ULLUS Artists are youth, emergent, mid-career and established indigenous artists practicing and developing their crafts.

ULLUS is a word translated from the nsyilxcən language and translated as “a gathering of people for a common purpose”. ULLUS originated in 1982 under the Okanagan Tribal Council as the Okanagan Indian Curriculum Project and was formally named ULLUS Collective in 1997. Ullus Collective recognizes the unique arts practices of Indigenous artists & artisans living as descendants or guests within the traditional syilx or secwepemc territories & beyond.

Looking at Ullus will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from May 19 to June 10, 2023.

Studio 9 Independent School of the Arts is a unique educational collective specializing in mentoring students through self-directed, project-based, collaborative learning, from Kindergarten to Grade 12. Through intergenerational connections, They’ve fostered a unique community where different ages and grades come together to support, guide, and lead, based on their own passions, abilities, interests, and ideas. Students are involved in numerous forms of creativity, from dance, theatre, and music, to digital, experimental, and fine art. 

Grade 6/7 Teacher and Artist, Jesse Roode, and Directors Michael Guzzi and Patricia Rockwell, have come together and initiated this installation to complement Studio9's production of “The Little Mermaid Jr.” They proposed to explore the theme of water and asked the students what they think is most important about our aquatic realms. Preservation and sustainability came forth. They imagined all the water in the world, where it is, where it came from and all its purposes. They then imagined the creatures and what their homes may look like. Considering the unique intelligence of these mystical animals, one specifically stood out, the majestic octopus. How stunning their gardens were and how sad their gardens have become. Making homes from trash and decorating the bleached coral with it. They realized that we must consider the well-being of those beyond ourselves. The worlds beyond human. Life not only on land, but below it, and how we’re all connected. The well-being of our waterways ultimately reflects and mirrors the well-being of ourselves. Water is life.

Under the Sea, Beyond Human utilizes upcycled materials such as cans, plastic bottles, video cassette tapes, and more to create a large sea-based installation in the Alternator’s Members’ Gallery. This collaborative installation features contributions from Akira Abaku, Enzo Abaku, Salem Adrian, Sarah Adrian, Matteo Alterio-Smith, Juliet Arango, Isaac Armer, Emmett Arnason, Freya Arnason, Kendell Azama, Sydney Azama, Keira Baker, Tavian Bessette, Brynlee Bishop, Elijah Bishop, Jersey Bloomfield, Emily Brolund, Becca Burr, Gemma Byrne, Cad Cameron, Noah Chapman, Eleorah Cipes, Calliana Coble, Aaliyah Cooper-Peel, Mateo Delgado Serna, Nixon Diduch, Tia Diduch, Jace Doucet, Harlow Elliot, Fletcher Fisher, Sawyer Fisher, Cali Flores, Leila Francis, Letty Francis, Ruby-Lynn Francis, Kevin Gheeraert, Enzo Guchardi, Andrew Gunning, Siena Hasler, Cailen Hobbs, Sabriel Hopkins, Starling Jude, Joseph Kalenchuk, Chloe Kershaw, Damon Kershaw, Elise Kershaw, Salvador King, Dominic Klingspon Hein, Daniel Komlos-Szilagyi, Noemi Komlos-Szilagyi, Khloe Kostiuk-Cates, Selena Kuhlen, Cheree Lisher, Sofia Locke, Carson Lusted, Aria Martinello, Molly Mason-Brown, Tayanna Meier, Alexa Miller, Julia O'Neill, Tyson Paley, Jantina Pollack, Ariana Preston, Tsaylah Preston-Walker, Arianna Prive, Owen Prive, Chloe Pulfer-Rempel, Sarah Rueda, Sebastian Rueda, Karsen Sampson, Liberty Sanderson, Itsuki Sato, Avital Shapiro, Odin Sherback, Emma Simpson, Jack Tober, Brooklyn Woodhall, Cole Wynsouw, Ari Zelickson, Layah Zelickson, and Zev Zelickson.

Under the Sea, Beyond Human will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from April 28 to May 13, 2023.

Gabrielle Desrosiers' practice navigates between performance and installation where she brings together mediums such as photography, sculpture, video and found objects. She approaches installation in a scenographic manner and is interested in the notion of reconfiguration of the panorama. Desrosiers reflects on how the manipulation of the image and the object contributes to the idea of simulation and control of a narrative. This relationship of transformation and deformation is expressed in a vision of the collective landscape as well as in a personal and intrinsic perspective. Tinged with humor, Desrosiers' work is colorful and explores the theme of legacy and the concept of self-construction highlighted in her work through collage and the assemblage of various materials. 

But What Did You Come Here For presented, primarily, 3D collages (micro-installations in model format) and a new series of sculptures in the form of assemblages where fragments of objects and materials collected by the artist are grouped together. In this exhibition, Desrosiers had invested herself in the creation of "false artifacts for the future". This research was inspired by a personal story experienced in 2013 during a trip to Italy. During a walk in the woods in the hills around Florence, she came across fake Greco-Roman ruins. These had been intentionally built by a landowner to showcase their estate and wealth, as simulated ruins made people look good at the time. If the disparity of this architecture had not been explained to her, she would have believed in this illusion, in a different history and chronology. 

In her assemblages, Desrosiers explored the artefact-object as a symbol of ruin, of a physical entity or of a bygone era. She also observed the rock as a metamorphosed material of the landscape where elements are accumulated, modified, or destroyed either by nature or human intervention. To simulate a process of sedimentation, the fragments collected by the artist are magnified and grouped together with the help of materials serving as a binder. This gesture of accumulation tends to create a new identity, to multiply the referents and the idea of decoy. Desrosiers questioned the reading of these objects. Are they imbued with a new character or rather with a form of erasure through addition? Are they tainted by our time or an illusion of it?

But What Did You Come Here For was on view in the Main Gallery from March 24 - May 6, 2023.

Born in Quebec City in 1986, Gabrielle Desrosiers currently resides in Magdalen Islands. She holds a diploma in scenography from Saint-Hyacinthe Theatre School (2007), a BFA from Concordia University in Montreal (2018) and from Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design in Jerusalem (2017). She is a recipient of the Irene F. Whittome Prize in Visual Arts (2018) as well as the Prix Relève from the Conseil de la culture de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue (2020).

Her work has been presented in Montreal at Skol (2016), at Circa (2018), at Fonderie Darling as part of RIPA (2019) as well as elsewhere in Quebec province such as the Performance Art Festival of Trois-Rivières (2019), at l'Écart in Rouyn-Noranda (2020), at Espace F in Matane (2020), at the Bas-Saint-Laurent Museum in Rivière-du-Loup (2021) as well as at AdMare in Magdalen Islands (2022).

Learn more about Desrosiers’ work on her website.

La pratique de Gabrielle Desrosiers navigue entre la performance et l'installation où elle réunit des médiums tels que la photographie, la sculpture, la vidéo et les objets trouvés. Elle aborde l'installation de manière scénographique et s'intéresse à la notion de reconfiguration du panorama. Desrosiers réfléchit, entre autres, à la façon dont la manipulation de l'image et de l’objet contribue à l'idée de simulation et de contrôle d’un narratif. Ce rapport de transformation et de déformation s’exprime dans une vision du paysage collectif ainsi que dans une perspective personnelle et intrinsèque. Teinté d’humour, le travail de Desrosiers est coloré et explore aussi le thème du legs et le concept d’auto-construction mis en évidence dans ses œuvres par le collage et l’assemblage de divers matériaux. 

Mais qu’est-ce que vous êtes venu faire icitte présente, principalement, des collages 3D (micro-installation en maquette) et une nouvelle série de sculptures sous forme d’assemblages où se regroupent des fragments d’objets et de matériaux récoltés par l’artiste. Dans cette exposition, Desrosiers s’est investie à la création de « faux artéfacts pour le futur ». Cette recherche a été inspiré par un récit personnel vécu en 2013 lors d’un voyage en Italie. Au cours d’une marche en forêt dans les collines autour de Florence, elle se retrouve face à de fausses ruines gréco-romaines. Celles-ci avaient intentionnellement été construites par un propriétaire terrien afin de mettre en valeur son domaine et sa richesse, la simulation de ruines faisant bonne apparence à l’époque. Si la disparité de cette architecture ne lui avait pas été expliquée, elle aurait cru à cette illusion, à une histoire et une chronologie différente. 

Dans ses assemblages, Desrosiers explore l’objet-artéfact tel un symbole de la ruine, d’une entité physique ou d’un temps révolu. Elle observe aussi la roche telle une matière métamorphosable du paysage où les éléments sont accumulés, modifiés ou détruits soit par la nature ou l’intervention humaine. De sorte à simuler un processus de sédimentation, les fragments collectionnés par l’artiste sont magnifiés et regroupés à l’aide de matériaux servant de liant. Ce geste d’accumulation tend à créer une nouvelle identité, à multiplier les référents et l’idée de leurre. Desrosiers questionne ici la lecture de ces objets. Sont-ils empreints d'un nouveau caractère ou plutôt d’une forme d'effacement par l’addition? Sont-ils teintés par notre époque ou une illusion de celle-ci?

Née à Québec en 1986, Gabrielle Desrosiers réside actuellement aux Îles-de-la-Madeleine. Elle est titulaire d'un diplôme en scénographie de l'École de théâtre de Saint-Hyacinthe (2007), d'un baccalauréat en arts visuels de l'Université Concordia à Montréal (2018) et de Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design à Jérusalem (2017). Elle est récipiendaire du prix Irene F. Whittome en arts plastiques (2018) ainsi que du Prix Relève du Conseil de la culture de l'Abitibi-Témiscamingue (2020).

Son travail a été présenté à Montréal, entre autres, au Centre des arts actuels Skol (2016), à Circa art actuel (2018), à la Fonderie Darling dans le cadre de la RIPA – Rencontre interuniversitaire de performance actuelle (2019) ainsi qu'ailleurs au Québec tel au Festival d’art performatif de Trois-Rivières (2019), au centre d'artistes l'Écart à Rouyn-Noranda (2020), à l'Espace F à Matane (2020), au Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent à Rivière-du-loup (2021) ainsi qu’au centre d’artistes AdMare aux Iles-de-la-Madeleine (2022).

COPY - CUT - PASTE was an exhibition that includes 44 UBC Okanagan painting students and their instructor, David Doody. Together they explored how Google Image Search and the ‘meme’ culture have impacted imagination, image making and storytelling in the post-digital era. 

Hito Steyerl's essay, ‘In Defence of the Poor Image’ was used as a reference point to guide the students’ search for value and meaning within the rising tide of imagery that subsequently submerges and defines contemporary culture.

Individuals were asked to collect 12 images from the internet. This collection of 528 digital images were then pooled together and rendered real by printing on paper. Students were then tasked to sift through the material of flotsam and jetsam of ‘poor images’ for a glimmer of inspiration. 

“Search for things wild, weird or whacky, search for things serious, scientific or sad…These images can be sampled from anywhere online whether photographic, digitally animated or artistically rendered sources. These images can be sampled from 90’s television shows, classic movies, famous paintings, AI generators or your favorite Memes…”  

Working intuitively by remixing these images and relying on the nature of collage, the group discovered dynamic constellations of narrative emerging from the shared pool of sampled images. Over 300 new and unexpected compositions were generated through this process. 

In the continued spirit of collaboration, and to further question notions of authorship and originality of the “poor images” of the internet, students were encouraged to choose any one of the group's 300+ collages as the basis to create a painting. Over the next three weeks students were guided through the painstaking process of constructing their paintings using thin veils of acrylic washes on watercolour paper.

Once the painting process was complete, students turned back to Hito Steyerl's written wisdom and compiled a series of fragmented excerpts from the text. The students worked  in tandem with the UBCO technicians and started experimenting with decoupage as they used a laser to directly cut out sections from their paintings. Textual voids were carved away from their painting compositions and once again new and unexpected sequences of value and meaning were born.

COPY - CUT - PASTE was on view in the Members’ Gallery from March 24 - April 22, 2023.

COPY - CUT - PASTE featured work by Audrey Allan, Serena Arsenault, Eunis Au, Abigail Wiens, Amy Bugera, Chandler Burnett, Faith Bye, Taylor Carpenter, Gabe Cipes, Paige Coleman, Emily Cornwall, Ella Cottier, Nadia Fracy, Cadence Gau, Hailey Gleboff, Elly Hadju, Asahna Huges, Stephen Ikesaka, Chloe Jenkins, Bella Jiang,  Lauren Jonhson, Rhea Kjargaard, Peyton Lynch, Connor McCleary, Sarah McNeil, Katya Meehalchan, Mariah Miguel-Jaun, Carrie Mitchelle, Karina Nardi, Grace Nascimento-Laverdiere, Kate Nicholson, Dama Ozkalay, Julia Pearson, John Prendas, Anna Semenoff, Nick Tai,  Fredrik Thacker, Katya Torin, Delainey Vogan, Christine Wakal, Odelle Walthers, and David Doody

Unsettling is home,
life is improvisation,
the present is not future enough to live with.

Flowing to Unsettle invites participants to explore the elasticity of experiential time through a durational performance that takes place over six weeks in the Project Gallery at the Alternator. 

As a Chinese media artist, performer, and researcher working in Canada, Gao Yujie uses time as a primary artistic material. Through performative actions such as drawing with different timeframes, her work delves into the essence of experiential temporality, both physically, digitally, and interculturally, examining how it can be stretched, compressed, and reconfigured in ways that challenge our taken-for-granted notion of time. Her research focuses on how performative computational art can inhabit and evoke different sensations of time, and how we can collectively hold space while experiencing individualized temporal perceptions. The central ideas are the concept of flow and a sense of wandering in relation to time and how these ‘states of being’ affect our perceptions.

Flowing to Unsettle is the final phase of a PhD research-creation project at UBC Okanagan initiated in 2020. In the previous phases Yujie has performed in a total of 72 livestreams, repeatedly implementing the same improvisation prompt ‘fill a canvas from empty to full’ with variables like duration, materials, platforms, and scales. For the first time ever, through her six-week-long performance at the Alternator, Yujie will use the exhibition space as her canvas, performing every day, collaborating with a variety of technologies and inviting participants to engage with their own temporal perceptions in an embodied experience where they are encouraged to slow down, reflect, and connect with the environment. The process of being – including thinking, wandering, playing, making, failing, problem-solving, and reflecting – forms the ‘whole’ of the work. The work itself is in the process. The performance will be broadcasted and recorded. By performing extensively for six weeks, she is also questioning what defines the boundaries between art time, machine time and life time and how they intertwine with each other.

The subthemes explored in Flowing to Unsettle include accumulation and decay, boredom and freedom, repetition and variation, rules and autonomy, endurance and intuition and how each aspect shapes our time perspective. By creating an open-ended live setting, Yujie invites multiple perceptions of time to coexist and foster meaningful shared experiences that celebrate uniqueness and differences. In doing so, she hopes to open up new possibilities for artistic expression of understanding and relating to time and to deliver this message for the audience:

“Take your time.”

Flowing to Unsettle will be on view in the Project Gallery from March 24 - May 6, 2023. You can view the live stream of Gao’s six-week-long durational performance below and view each previous day’s live stream here.

Gao Yujie is an interdisciplinary media artist and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia. Her generative participatory performance work studies the materiality of duration and explores the elasticity of space and time in rule-based interactive environments.

Learn more about Gao’s work on her website.

Sofie Lovelady is a British Columbia-born artist and recent BFA graduate from UBC Okanagan (traditional unceded territory of the Syilx), currently working out of Montreal (traditional unceded Tiohtià:ke territory).

Lovelady is interested in the representation of bodies in popular media, and the archival of found images from vintage and contemporary magazines/advertisements and mass-circulated graphics. Working with found images offers insight into evolving beauty ideals that are reflected through media, as well as the apparent objectification of female bodies for capitalist visual strategies. Combining images and text allows Lovelady to express her experience maturing during a highly digital age with overly-exploited public female figures. Re-appropriating images acts as a process of addressing the ideas of possession and gaze; while still expressing the ever-present discomfort and uncertainties that accompany navigating self-image in the hypersexualized world of popular media.

What’s Mine is Yours will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from February 24 - March 18, 2023.

From January 27 to March 11, 2023 in our Main Gallery was Moving Through Debris by Austin Clay Willis.

There are two main internal motivators which drive Austin Clay Willis’ art practice. Firstly, he is keenly interested in the bodily relationship to built and architectural environments. Secondly, he is also captivated by the tension between illusory and real space. To these ends Willis creates multimedia, abstract artwork through mediums including (but not limited to) painting, photography, sculpture, and installation. His paintings are primarily concerned with the balance between paint and canvas as physical material, and the notion of painting as a “window” or a representation of real space. The pictorial dimensions of the image oscillate between foreground and background as the combinations of lines, shapes, forms and colours produce illusionary aspects within the picture plane. The material of the painting is foregrounded through texture, drips, finishes, layers, and raw canvas.

In turn, Willis’ sculptures inform his paintings and photographs through material. Then the paintings and photographs are often incorporated back into sculptural installations. These installations relate to the pictorial space, but deal with real environments through material, form, and a conscious attention to the specific rooms they inhabit. Willis creates new structures like walls, ramps, stairs, and platforms to be occupied by the viewer, and bring attention to their physical relationship with space. The materials he uses are the familiar found scraps of dimensional lumber, plywood, discarded sheets of plastic, tarpaulin, textiles, lights, extension cords, and cans of mistinted house paint. Inspiration for his forms comes from a wide array of information, ranging from construction sites, to recycling centres, domestic furniture, DIY-style structures, and even backyard treehouses. In many of Willis’ works, he strives to create dynamic compositions with a charismatic configuration or visual balance.

Hockey enjoys a notional status almost akin to religion, especially here in Canada, but having never played anything more serious than childhood pond-hockey, Rylan Broadbent avoided the inculcation of organized sport. And yet still found himself drawn to play the game as an adult. Broadbents first chance to play in goalie equipment came in year one of art school, and the feeling was entirely new. The ritual of shedding street clothing, down to bare skin, and donning an armor of sorts, was all unfamiliar to him, but one that he has repeated hundreds of times since. More than the pleasure of competition and the comradery of team sports, he continues to be attracted to how the equipment makes him feel: not impervious, exactly, (pain is often part of the game) but capable, protected, and secure.

Why the goalie mask? Because this one piece of gear, more than any other, feels the most personal and intimate to Broadbent, but it can also act as a wider symbol for how we choose to veil ourselves. Everyone wears masks —some metaphorical, some physical— in order to present, project, or protect themselves. And while goalies at every level of the game customize their equipment to match the team, the mask remains a representation of the individual that often features highly detailed imagery and symbols. Broadbent is drawn to the unique combination of form, meaning, and function that sets the mask apart from the other equipment.

Broadbent began working through this installation by pressing clay into a plaster mold of one of his old goalie masks. The resulting object is close in form to the original, but offers a number of possibilities in which to modify the context and pose technical, material, and semiotic questions. Clay was selected as the primary vehicle for its materiality, proximity of local facilities, and deep heritage. The masks now reference a craft tradition that stretches back thousands of years, and like all ceramics, embody a unique combination of aesthetics and physical properties; they are both incredibly durable and astonishingly fragile.

Behind My Mask, I am Secure will be on view in the Project Gallery from January 27 to March 11, 2023.

Rylan Broadbent is a sculptor, designer, and fabricator, who resides and works out of the North Okanagan. Employing an array of techniques, ranging from traditional to digital, he is primarily interested in examining the interconnected relationships between object, form, material, and meaning.

Objects, like images and language, can hold information; they are utilitarian in their function and also symbols that reference bodies of meaning. And just as physical forms can be modified, so too can the semiotic attachments. Context can be skewed, shifting definitions, and complicating the interpretation. The objects he selects often speak towards notions of masculine identity, relationship to violence, and social fragmentation.

Broadbent holds a BFA from the University of Calgary, and a MFA from University of British Columbia Okanagan.

Through the Rush depicts a dichotomous view of public everyday life by local photographer Mike Lennon. This installation is a collection of 40 photographs divided into two parts: 13 colour prints framed on the gallery wall and 27 black and white translucent vinyl prints installed on the enclosing glass. These documentary-style photographs were taken on the street in the heart of downtown Kelowna from October 2020–August 2022. 

How Lennon creates his work mirrors the classic method of candid street photography. Throughout history, capturing public life in this way has produced some of the most influential and widely reproduced images of all time. These iconic photos and the method of capturing them has steadily fueled Lennon's work to capture life at its most delicate and raw. While there is an acknowledgement between photographer and subject that their images are being taken, there is an understanding that Lennon is on the peripheral. As an observer, Lennon engages his subjects but is careful not to disturb the moment in time he aims to capture.

The two sets of photos contrast each other in printed material, visual aesthetic, and conceptual content. Thus, forcing viewers to examine the work closely and (literally) from different angles to see clearly. The work attempts to act as a vehicle for self-reflection, contemplating how we live our lives in the present moment and where happiness lies.

Through The Rush will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from January 27 to February 18, 2023.

Mike Lennon is a street & documentary-style photographer based in Kelowna, BC, Canada. Since 2018 his work has focused on capturing candid portraits, serendipitous everyday moments, and landscapes all within the downtown core. Photographing on film and digital, he works to create striking and intriguing images that document his fascination with public everyday life. For more about Mike and his work, visit mikelennon.myportfolio.com or his Instagram.

Chandler Burnett, also known as Strawberry Juice, is an Ontario-born artist, UBCO student, and tattoo artist, currently based out of Kelowna, BC. Strawberries' artistic practice is influenced by the artwork of traditional tattoo flash and vintage prison artwork. He has always taken an interest in the illustrative techniques associated with tattoos including the notable line work, compositions, simplistic imagery, and intricate shading methods. Strawberry incorporates his own style into this work to create new and unique compositions and continue the tradition of vintage tattoo art and design.

Strawberry is largely inspired by artists such as Briar Gates, Ed hardy, Huck Spaulding,  Paul Rogers, Prof Zeis, and Thomas Kirschner. While influenced by the rich history of the medium, Strawberry does not attempt to create a singular narrative, but rather opens up space for diverse interpretation for viewers. In addition to this, he attempts to achieve his goal of  “putting his personality onto paper”, to explore and create the subject matter and style that inspires him, and hopefully leave an impact on viewers.

Strawberry Juice, the artist's first solo exhibition, will be on view in the Alternator’s Members’ Gallery from November 25, 2022, to January 19, 2023. Learn more about Chandler Burnetts practice by visiting his Instagram at @strawb3rryjuic3

“Most of us move now in such a thicket of excess that we can no longer make out the real contour of things.” 

- John O’Donohue

Closet Meditations emerged as a project following Marguerite MacIntosh’s participation in the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art’s online exhibition The Assembly: Sustainability earlier this year and her reading of The Journal of John Woolman. Woolman was an eighteenth-century Quaker whose writings challenged issues of his day that continue to plague contemporary life, often speaking of how the lure of luxury manifested in possessions, clothing, and travel can so easily override sound judgment. Black clothing is historically related to the Quakers and other Christian religious orders and is also symbolic of death and mourning. Closet Meditations follows the seventeenth-century Dutch still-life vanitas tradition in which artists remind viewers of the imminence of death and the futility of worldly possessions.

In this installation, MacIntosh examines the contents of her own closet and its preponderance of black clothing.  She considers how she uses the clothes she buys and wears to inform her identity in myriad ways, usually distracted and detached from the implications of this consumption in terms of environmental destruction and worker exploitation.  For MacIntosh, the process of inventorying these clothes with photography and documenting them through pencil drawings was an experience of embodied contemplation. In presentation, the drawings are arranged in a grid formation, a recurrent device in her work that relates to her architectural and spiritual sensibilities.  The clothes themselves are also displayed, the folded favourites versus the overflowing excess, necessitating the artist’s fast from wearing black during the exhibition.

Closet Mediations will be on view in the Members’ Gallery from October 28 to November 19.

Marguerite MacIntosh is an artist and retired architect in addition to being a wife, mother, and grandmother.  Her works in acrylic, pencil and mixed media contemplate her own experiences of time and place and point to an awareness of the present moment and the liminal spaces in which we find ourselves.  She lives with her husband and their dog Beau in Summerland, British Columbia.

and a Rag in the Other presented a series of draped canvas paintings by M.E. Sparks. This work explored the tension between pictorial representation and the material conditions of painting.

Working primarily with un-stretched canvas, Sparks cuts images from art history to bring them into her own line of vision. Through a process of quotation, deconstruction and collage, the paintings in this exhibition feel somewhat like incomplete sentences. Modular and layered, they resist a finished state while implying the possibility of future reorganization.

In her practice, Sparks pulls apart and rearranges borrowed forms, many of which are taken from historical depictions of youth and femininity within the prickly territory of modernist painting. Rather than present a linear narrative, this mode of reassembly aims to temper expectations of legibility and interrupt an immediate reading of the image. The paintings become more about not knowing, of not being able to pin down or define, and of both the vulnerability and transformative potential that emerge when there is no clear image and no clear answer.

Through layers, curling edges, and a revealing of the painting’s underside, the work in this exhibition confronted the presumed fixedness and solidity of the flat picture plane. Sparks explored the material possibilities of draped canvas as a way to call into question painting’s limiting dichotomies (front vs. back, abstraction vs. figuration, image vs. object) while introducing a softness and provisionality to the painted image.

Included in the exhibition was a printed booklet with a link to one of the artist's recent web-based artworks, titled in_your_painting. This piece belonged to a series of digital works exploring quotation, collage, and language. Drawing from the history of Dada poetry, in_your_painting used a hand-coded computer program to generate a series of phrases, which seemed to lead us through someone else’s space. The narrative was partially constructed through a random sampling of titles from the mid-twentieth-century paintings of Balthus, all of which depicted the young female body. Access in_your_painting by visiting Sparks’ website.

and a Rag in the Other was on view in the Main Gallery from October 28 to December 10, 2022.

M.E. Sparks is an artist and educator currently living in Winnipeg, MB, Treaty 1 Territory. Her studio practice is rooted in mixed emotions: an unrelenting infatuation with painting and a critical distrust of its dominant history. As an inheritor and perpetuator of this history, she considers this internal conflict a generative place to begin. Recent exhibitions include We can only hint at this with words at the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art (North Vancouver, 2022) and a A Fine Line at Trapp Projects (Vancouver, 2021). She holds an MFA from Emily Carr University and BFA from NSCAD University. Sparks gratefully acknowledges the support of Canada Council for the Arts and BC Arts Council.