VIU visual art students of all levels and disciplines are showing off the work they created at home during the fall term.
Vancouver Island University’s View Gallery is hosting the exhibition online. It features 73 images of art works made by 55 first- to fourth-year students, including drawings, paintings, sculptures, photography and ceramics. The works will be on display as the View’s current exhibition until April 22, at which point the show will be archived online indefinitely.
“For a full year we haven’t seen an exhibition in the gallery so it was really important to put this together, the virtual exhibition, because we wanted people to see the work that our students were doing in isolation and just to show how great they are,” View Gallery curator Chai Duncan said. “It shows their resilience and their commitment to their degree.”
Duncan, also a visual art professor, chose the works from those shortlisted by his fellow art faculty members. He said the experience of working from home is evident in the students’ work, with many pieces alluding to quiet, sadness and solitude.
“I think absolutely the remote learning this year has made people reflective and introspective and that often generates really great results in terms of content. In terms of depth of looking,” he said.
While this show is happening online, Duncan said the plan is to have the View Gallery open for visitors in time for next month’s graduate exhibition, as the school will be welcoming students back for classes in the fall.
Small groups of masked guests will be permitted to see the work in-person but the opening reception will happen online. Duncan added that virtual tours may be offered as well as “we’re starting to experiment with VR technology.”
The graduate show will be the first time the gallery is open to the public since shutting down last March and Duncan said he’s taken the time to make some improvements.
“After a long period of time of a lot of holes being put in the walls and filled not necessarily professionally they get a little bumpy,” he said. “So we redid the walls and got a fresh coat of paint everywhere and it’s going to look pretty good when we get back.”
The fall term exhibition can be viewed here.
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