On Location

Artists Explore a Sense of Place

Exhibition

Back to calendar

Overview

Organized by Glenbow

Curated by Sarah Todd

Glenbow’s collection of modernist and contemporary art provides the source material for an expansive exploration of different kinds of places, both remote and lived in, pristine and altered.

Drawn from Glenbow’s collection, and including works by Canadian and international artists spanning eight decades, On Location is a rich survey of modernist and contemporary artworks that use notions of place and the spaces we inhabit as a point of departure.

Expanding upon the beloved and well-worn trope of landscape within Canadian art and culture, On Location looks beyond the scenic toward the social, material, political, geographical, and personal factors that shape places and our connections to them. These artworks engage with a plural conception of place beyond landscape – place as a physical location, a contested territory, an ecosystem, a human-made architectural space, a state of mind.

Christopher Pratt, Window with a Blind, 1970, Collection of Glenbow

The artists in On Location work with spaces both real and imagined, from colonized landscapes, to impossible cities, to sublime vistas, to dreamlike interiors. These artworks are shaped by memory, collective histories, and political forces, addressing what it means to be located within a specific space and to experience dislocation. The exhibition raises questions around how we collectively and individually relate to the environments we inhabit. This is a symbiotic relationship, demonstrating how we, as humans, construct a sense of place and how, in turn, these places ultimately shape us.

Exhibition Artists

Vicky Alexander, Karoo Ashevak, Maxwell Bates, Eleanor Bond, Paul-Emile Borduas, Edward Burtynsky, Emily Carr, Victor Cicansky, Lynn Cohen, L. Lemoine Fitzgerald, Tanya Harnett, Lawren Harris, Faye HeavyShield, Fred Herzog, Illingworth Kerr, Roy Kiyooka, Glenn Lewis, J.E.H. MacDonald, Kimowan Metchewais, Laura Millard, Ron Moppett, Marion Nicoll, Christopher Pratt, Mario Reis, Allen Sapp, Takao Tanabe, David Thauberger, Jeff Thomas, Jin-Me Yoon