Every one of the artworks featured in the AHVA Gallery at the Audain Centre feels a little different. From realist paintings in warm tones to others in impressionist blues, the mediums vary, as do the subjects and emotions they convey. But, walking around the room from one piece to the next, There is a sense of cohesion.
The department of art history, visual art and theory held their Undergraduate Exhibition at the AHVA Gallery in the Audain Art Centre Jan. 22 through Feb. 13. The exhibition is an annual event showcasing second and third-year student work from across the department. This year, instead of being run by professors, the Undergraduate Exhibition was curated by students of VISA 475: Exhibition Theory and Practice, a change that has been meaningful for curators and artists both.
As student curators Yesha Gunara and Fiorella Hayashida walked me through the gallery, they explained the many choices that go into creating an intentional gallery space. Right away, before I had even fully entered the gallery, the huge, striking painting of musical artist Humbe by Juliana Pombo, streaked with gold foil, grabbed my attention. The curators were deliberate in this placement, and the massive face’s gaze beckons you further into the gallery. Everything was considered — which works were grouped together, their height, how they were spaced out along the walls, the lighting. The benches, alongside the one and only free-hanging artwork, split the gallery space in half. “It was a lot of trial and error,” Gunara said. The small group of students learned what felt right as they experimented with the lessons they were learning in class.
“Everyone handled [curating the exhibition] super competently, because they wanted [the exhibition] to do well, and I think it ended up fantastic,” said Griffin Schwam, another student curator. “Getting that hands-on experience is really such a unique and amazing experience.” The value of curating is not just for students like Schwam who want to pursue curatorial work after graduation, but for artists who can appreciate the behind-the-scenes elements of gallery spaces.
Hayashida explained how the class broadened how she thinks about audience, and how the “architecture of the space” became important to her own artistic process. Making these curatorial choices, added Gunara, “nurture our own practice [as artists] as well.”
Offering a physical, dedicated gallery space for student artists is another part of what makes the Undergraduate Exhibit so valuable for students in the AHVA department. The AHVA gallery both “bring[s] artists together” and is a space where they can get exposure, said Schwam. “I am really appreciative that we have [that space] at UBC.”
One of the challenges that the curators had to navigate was audience engagement when bringing together multiple works that weren’t originally intended for the gallery setting. Schwam said they enjoyed this challenge. “It pushes both curators and artists to think creatively about how work can be displayed, even outside of the initial intentions [of the artist].” One example of this is Ava Brown’s Horsemeat, which was physically rearranged to fit within the exhibition.
Though most of the artworks in the exhibit were chosen by the curators from a pool of applications, Horsemeat was specifically requested by the curators — they had seen her work in class and thought it would be a great fit. “We had an area of space that was still quite vacant,” Schwam said. Instead of spacing other artwork out, curators approached Brown and offered to include her work in a special way.
Brown’s piece is one of the first you see in the exhibit, a life-size drawing of an English thoroughbred horse. Coat, muscle system and skeleton are layered atop one another in green, red and blue colours, and under a black light the paper reveals the anatomical names of these components. Originally, it was displayed in a dark room and the audience could interact with the art through the use of a flashlight.
At the AHVA Gallery, as part of The Undergraduate Exhibition, the horse couldn’t be displayed in this way. Instead of a drawing that interacted with the audience and the light, the pieces of paper that the horse was drawn on were rearranged, creating a unique experience of a different kind.
Schwam described this process of rearranging the pieces of the horse in a “different kind of context” as “deconstruct[ing] and scrambl[ing]” the art to form the final product. “Part of the [reason for the] rearranging was the knowledge that it couldn’t be displayed in the way it originally was.”
Griffin and Fiorella said Brown’s fragmented horse is “emblematic of [their] exhibit.” In less than three weeks, the students of VISA 475 made an assortment of work for different classes out of different media into a cohesive exhibition. In a way, the deconstruction of the English thoroughbred and the subsequent collaborative act of putting it back together again is how the exhibition itself was put together.
Hayashida sees Horsemeat as one of the most ambitious pieces in terms of installation, and a “big accomplishment.” Schwam added that, “there's a sort of unconventionality with that piece." These are the sort of works the curators are excited to see moving forward to the Graduating Exhibition, the end-of-year exhibition that showcases the work of students graduating that year. Held in April, the Graduating Exhibit is always curated by students. As the curators look forward to this major project, they want to “encourag[e] students to submit their more creative and unconventional and maybe almost strange works that can really flourish in a gallery setting.”
