Visitor Information
Mon, Tue, Thu, Sat: 10 am – 4:30 pm
Wed & Fri: 10 am – 8 pm
Sunday & Holidays*: Closed (*Open Heritage Day, Remembrance Day and Family Day from 12-4:30pm)
July 6, 2019 – September 29, 2019
Unfamiliar Selves
In their paintings and sculpture, Jude Griebel and Tammy Salzl use the transforming body as a tactic to explore their relationships to the social and natural world. A shared Prairie background and mutual interests in narrative and affect come together in a detailed sense of storytelling through their chosen media.
The exhibition Unfamiliar Selves presents recent painted sculptures by Jude Griebel and a series of watercolor paintings by Tammy Salzl. Both artists explore themes of psychology and identity, played out upon the body. In their work, the transforming body is used as a way to explore the artists’ relationships to the social and natural world.
Depicting bodies in various states, Jude Griebel’s work examines how our imagination deals with ideas of growth, change and mortality. His sculptural bodies become sites of fusion, in which physical anatomy is merged with symbolic counterparts. Their realistic nature is reminiscent of museum dioramas and academic science models, causing them to waiver between fact and a sense of unease and mystery.
Tammy Salzl’s watercolour portraits contribute to a tradition of realism rooted in observation. Through body language and expression she explores the human psyche and experience. Salzl treats the body as a symbolic landscape: a place where the human condition is both staged and performed. Within this ever-shifting terrain, she narrates histories – the real, the imagined, and the invoked.
A shared Prairie background and interest in allegorical storytelling come together in Griebel’s and Salzl’s work. Autobiographical influences, ranging from the agricultural to the domestic, are examined through art historical and mythological references. Through the layering of factual experience and imagined scenarios, the work in Unfamiliar Selves conveys dramatic moments of self-awareness and realization.
Thank you to the Esker Foundation for the loan of stantions for our summer exhibits.
Thank you to our Funders:
About the Artists
Tammy Salzl
Tammy Salzl is an Edmonton/Montreal based interdisciplinary artist who completed her Master of Fine Arts at Concordia University in 2014. Salzl has presented her work across Canada, as well as in Germany, Mexico, and the U.S.A. She is a Tedeschi Scholarship recipient, a 2018 OALA/Ground Award recipient, a 2011 Honourable Award Winner in The Kingston Prize, and has received grants and residencies from Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, I-Park International Artist in Residence Program, U.S.A, the Klondike Institute of Art and Culture Centre, Yukon, The Banff Centre, KHMessen Art House, Norway, and the Vermont Studio Center, USA.
Detail of Bones for Egon, Tammy Salzl, watercolour on paper. 2017.
Jude Griebel
Jude Griebel is a Canadian artist working between Bergen, Alberta and Brooklyn, New York. He has completed numerous residencies including HALLE 14 Center for Contemporary Art, Leipzig, Germany; MASS MoCA, North Adams, MA; and the International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York, where he is currently working through 2019. A major sculptural installation of his work was featured in Future Station: The 2015 Alberta Biennial of Contemporary Art at the Art Gallery of Alberta, and recent exhibitions include El Museo de Los Sures, Brooklyn, NY; the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago, IL; Esker Foundation, Calgary, AB; Galerie Johannes Sturm, Nuremberg, Germany; and the Redpath Museum, Montreal, QC. In 2017, his public sculpture Plastic Ghost was mounted in the city center of Jyväskylä, Finland. Griebel is a three-time recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant for figurative artists and is a current nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Foundation Grant for emerging New York artists.
Detail of Accident Mouth, Jude Griebel, papier-mâché, epoxy resin, foam, hair, glass, wood, oil paint. 2014.