For many of us who grew up on the prairie, the vast expanse of the skyline seems endless, stretching into eternity. The endless flatness of the canola and wheat fields, stretching beneath a boundless blue sky, creates a feeling that time itself has paused. In this place, it often feels as though the world is defined by nothing more than the faint, delicate line where earth meets sky.
On November 30th, the Wag-Qaumajuq opened a brand-new exhibit at the Pavillion at the Assiniboine Park Conservancy that explores the idea of the vistas that make up the horizon, called Shifting Horizons.
The exhibit explores the idea of the horizon. A place where lines, shapes and patterns brim with energy. The exhibit contends that the horizon line does not simply guide our sightline, it also disrupts space and interrupts time.
The exhibit is curated by WAG-Qaumajuq’s newly appointed TD Curatorial Fellow Nawang Tsomo Kinkar.
Nawang Tsomo Kinkar is a curator, writer, and researcher of Tibetan descent. Born as part of the exile community in Kathmandu (Nepal), she is also an immigrant and settler from Toronto where she completed her undergraduate studies in Art History, English, and Book and Media Studies at the University of Toronto. She holds a Master of Arts in Photography Preservation and Collection Management from Toronto Metropolitan.
Kinkar has been in Winnipeg for just a little over 5 months. She has spent a good portion of her time exploring what the WAG-Qaumajuq has in its holdings, as well as learning about artists that are from Winnipeg. As Kinkar explains, “One of the main things for me was to get to know my colleagues from different departments. I did receive some exhibition tours, collection gallery tours from the other curators. I also got a tour of the vaults... I’ve been trying to make a point of speaking to at least one person from each department to get a good idea of the space and the gallery. That is a big part of how this exhibition came into fruition.”
The art of Ivan Eyre serves as a basis for the exhibit. There are many works by other artists, but it is his work that Kinkar drew inspiration from. As she explains, "I was really drawn to the horizon line in a conventional landscape painting. It guides your perspective. It draws you into a specific area... I looked at Eyre’s work a lot and of course he has a lot of landscape paintings, he has a lot of still lifes, he does a lot of figurative-surrealist works, but I was more drawn to the landscapes... I guess more personally because I am new to the region. I have been going back and forth exploring here in Winnipeg. I took a road trip out Brandon, where I got to see the canola fields and the vast blue sky. So, I drew from that and went back to Eyre’s work thinking about his high horizons that he was really known for and seeing what that line [the horizon] does in his work, and then seeing how that line is experimented with by other artists.”
Some of the other artists that are on display in the exhibit are Billy Akavak, David Firman, Ron Gorsline, Bruce Head, Lisa Klapstock, Kenneth Campbell Lochhead, Sylvie Readman, Tony Tascona, Diana Thorneycroft, Elizabeth Willmott and Mario Yrisarry.
The line of the horizon is used as a jumping off point in the exhibit. “With some of the works that I have paired with Eyre’s works in the exhibition, there is no narrative. You will see different kinds of lines. It invites the viewer to look at any aspect of the work,” says Kinkar. The lines and markings in the works become a quasi-horizon that provides a reference point for the viewer.
Many of the artists in Shifting Horizons exhibit are quintessentially Winnipeggers with a few of them having very prominent art installations that can be found around the city. Examples of this are the large green art installations in the rotunda of Health Sciences Centre by David Forman, the Bruce Head wall installation that is under Portage and Main in the concourse, the murals by Tony Tascona in the lobby of the Centennial Concert Hall and of course the Ivan Eyre Statue that is in front of the Assiniboine Park Pavillion where the exhibit is on display.
Shifting Horizons is a fascinating look at how perspective in art, both the artist’s perspective and the viewers perspective can be re-interpreted and re-imagined depending on the context of how the art is presented and what is around the reference point, or horizon of the work.
The exhibit is free and is on right now at The Assiniboine Park Conservancy.