September is a busy month for The Banff Centre’s Walter Phillips Gallery with the opening reception of two solo exhibitions, The Calling, by Australian artist Angelica Mesiti, and Without, within, the first Canadian solo exhibition by San-Francisco based artist Elisheva Biernoff.
A new public artwork called held above our heads in stone (2015) by Calgary-based artist Tyler Los-Jones will also be unveiled on Sept. 18. The piece consists of five fibreglass boulders based on the geology of Tunnel Mountain in Banff, and will be installed in the archway outside Walter Phillips Gallery.
The opening reception for the exhibition is slated for Friday, (Sept. 18) from 5-8 p.m. at the Walter Phillips Gallery, followed by an after-party in The Banff Centre’s The Club from 8 p.m. to 12:30 a.m.
“We have the two solo exhibitions opening in the gallery. Without, within, is the largest presentation of Biernoff’s work to date,” said Walter Phillips Gallery curator Peta Rake. “It’s a full painting show, which is something quite strange for the Walter Phillips Gallery, but it comes with quite a twist because she uses a lot of optical illusions.”
According to the Walter Phillips Gallery, “Without, within questions both the grandiose and less spectacular moments of human experience. The exhibition centres on Biernoff’s They Were Here (2009), a scenic painting installation activated by its accompanying sculpture – an MDF reconstruction of a set of mounted binoculars.” When viewers look through the binoculars they are shown a stereoscopic photo of open ocean, suggesting the island has disappeared.
Artist Angelica Mesiti’s video work titled, The Calling (2014) is a three-channel film about alternative structures of language that connect at times disparate and remote communities. According to the Walter Phillips Gallery the work is, “focusing on whistling languages as a form of communication, as well as an economy and pedagogy in the Canary Islands, Greece, and Turkey. The Calling looks at forms of non-verbal communication and ancient modes of exchange in contemporary culture.”
“What ties these three communities is the fact that they all still use ancient forms of whistling as a method of communication,” Rake said. “It’s such a beautiful film and shows the different ways they use it, in economies, in the fields and the mountainous regions.”
About the artists: Mesiti’s video works use cinematic conventions and performance languages as a means of responding to the particularities of a given location, its history, environment and communities. Mesiti has exhibited internationally in biennials and institutions including: the 19th Biennial of Sydney, 13th Istanbul Biennial, 2nd Aichi Triennal, 5th Auckland Triennial, 11th Sharjah Biennial, and 1st Kochin-Mizuris Biennial.
Biernoff’s work is about searching, and paying attention to things that escape notice. She employs many media – small paintings, collages, sculptures and large-scale installations – to register things that are lost, distant or overlooked. She received her BA in Art from Yale University and her MFA from California College of the Arts. A recipient of a 2015-16 MacDowell Fellowship, Biernoff has shown at the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, The University of Richmond Museums, and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville.
Los-Jones lives and works in Calgary. His photographic and sculptural practice draws on his proximity to Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, and investigates how western expectations of environments are created and fulfilled through photography and tourism. Los-Jones’ work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in the United States, the United Kingdom and throughout Canada. Recently, his work has been exhibited at Division Gallery, Toronto, Platform Centre, Winnipeg, and Ditch Projects, Springfield.
