The View From Here

The View From Here

March 30 – June 16, 2023

Curated by Jennie Kraehling

Image: Bernice Vincent, In July the Sun Sets Thirty One Times  1978. Acrylic, graphite, and paper mounted on board. McIntosh Gallery Collection, Western University Gift of the artist, 1998.

The View From Here brings together artworks from the McIntosh Gallery permanent collection that evoke a particular perspective, moment in time, landscape, or space. Whether painting, photograph, sculpture, projection or video, each artwork becomes a window through which the artist transports you to a specific place, focusing your attention on their particular way of looking to create a unique narrative that provides valuable insight into their creative process.

Michael Snow’s Condensation (A Cove Story), a 10-minute DVD projection using time lapse photography, was the spark that initiated guest curator Jennie Kraehling's thematic connections across the collection. What began as a search for portraiture and still life paintings quickly became an obsessive collecting of artworks inspired by Michael Snow’s meditation on a specific place. Kraehling sought to find the portrait in each landscape, the life stilled in each view from “here”, both literally and metaphorically.

“Here,” in Snow’s case, refers to both the temporal and meteorological conditions recorded at his cabin off the west coast of Newfoundland. The work is a compressed, condensed recording of an evolving series of weather-events and the resulting shifts of light and colour. The concept of capturing evolutions in the changing of seasons and time are also present in Roly Fenwick’s four seasonal canvases The Road to Big Bay - Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter and in Bernice Vincent’s In July the Sun Sets Thirty-One Times, a painting configured like a page from a calendar.

Themes of simple moments from everyday life also emerge, often represented by the image of a window. William Kurelek’s intimate painting, On the West Outside Wall, is a still life of a hanging bucket, the handle of a tool, and a sliver of a paned window. With three shapes painted in just three colours, Kurelek provides us with a glimpse of daily life, a simple, still, quiet moment, a window back in time.

The View From Here not only highlights the breadth of the McIntosh Gallery collection but also honours its strong regional focus.

About the curator:
Jennie Kraehling is the Associate Director of the Michael Gibson Gallery in London, Ontario. She has worked at the gallery since 2001 after receiving her honours Art History / English degree from Queen’s University. Since 2018, she has volunteered as a member of the curatorial art committee for Art with Heart, an annual art auction in support of Casey House in Toronto, ON. In 2022 she was named the inaugural Curator in Residence generously funded by the Flora J. Tripp Memorial Fund.

Related Programming:

Opening Reception
Sunday, April 2, 2:00-4:00 PM
Remarks at 2:30 PM

Join us at the public opening reception of The View From Here on Sunday, April 2. All are welcome to attend this free event. Exhibition curator Jennie Kraehling and Sheri Cole, Director of Legacy Giving at Western University, will provide opening remarks. 

Curator-led Exhibition Tour
Saturday, April 29, 2:00 PM

Join exhibition curator Jennie Kraehling for a guided tour of The View From Here at McIntosh Gallery on Saturday, April 29 at 2:00 p.m. All are welcome to attend this free event. 

Please note that parking in attended lots at Western University is complimentary on weekends except when special event rates apply. Refer to Western University's Parking Services website for more information. We regret that McIntosh Gallery is not wheelchair accessible.