April Exhibitions
Spring exhibitions that'll peak your interest
April is full of new exhibitions! Each month, we spotlight a new visual arts exhibition in the city, followed by a roundup of others you can see this month.
TRUCK Contemporary Art launched its Spring 2024 main space exhibitions at a lively event on March 29, 2024: Through this window is a home by Calgary-based Harvey Nichol and Kelowna-based Michaela Bridgemohan, and Pilot Astronauts by Raeann Kit-Yee Cheung, a dual-heritage photographer residing in southern Alberta.
“Originally crafted by incarcerated Filipina women and later associated with political activist Huey Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, through this window is a home considers the history and intertwined legacies of the Peacock Chair, exploring themes of invisible labour and cultural erasure that collide with conflicting forms of resistance and privilege.” The collaborative exhibition achieves this “through Nichol’s referencing of Philippine folklore and Manila prison blocks, and Bridgemohan’s use of West African craft.”
Chueng’s Pilot Astronauts reflects on the term “astronaut families,” which “was popularized in Hong Kong and Taiwan, referring to family arrangements in Asia where the fathers remained in their home country to work while the mothers migrated to the west with their children for stability, opportunities, living experiences, and education”.
You can check out both of these exhibitions until June 1, 2024 at TRUCK Contemporary Art (2009 10 Ave. SW), located in the central community Sunalta, just west of downtown Calgary.
More April exhibition openings:
Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships
April 10 – May 19, 2024
Glenbow at The Edison (Second Floor, 150 9 Ave. SW)
Free to explore
In Building Black Civilizations: Journey of 2,000 Ships, artist Ekow Nimako explores what might have been when ruler Abu Bakr II chose to abdicate his throne and set out across the Atlantic. Using LEGO® to recreate epic possibilities, Nimako creates a narrative of Black civilizations and imagines liberated futures.
glenbow.org
Winnie Truong + Derek Liddington
April 10 – August 25, 2024 | Opening reception April 10, 6 – 9pm
Contemporary Calgary (701 11 St. SW)
With admission
Curious Nature expands on the intersectionality of the feminine form within landscapes, both real and imagined. The exhibition features Truong’s characteristic dioramas alongside new sculptural forms, stop motion animations and a site-specific ephemeral wall installation.
contemporarycalgary.com
The trees weep, the mountain still, the bodies rust features a recent body of work by Derek Liddington in which the genre of landscape is the central focus. Having turned away from performance and drawing in recent years to explore the medium of painting, Liddington examines how we experience the landscape rather than how we see it.
contemporarycalgary.com
Diana Zasadany: Summer’s Edge
April 13 – May 1, 2024 | Opening reception April 13, 2 – 5pm
Wallace Galleries (500 5 Ave. SW)
Free to explore
Diana Zasadny paints who she is, bringing her appreciation of nature born of her love of the prairie and the sky to all her compositions. Zasadny blends the boundaries of impressionist interpretation and contemporary abstraction into a glimpse of that elusive realm of life between reality and imagination.
wallacegalleries.com
Dennis Ekstedt: Observer
April 13 – May 11, 2024 | Opening Reception April 13, 2 – 5pm
Herringer Kiss Gallery (Suite 101, 1615 10 Ave. SW)
Free to explore
Dennis Ekstedt’s latest exhibition Observers depict events of luminous phenomena. Many of the paintings portray the moment where a silhouetted figure witnesses these events. These paintings are inspired by the paintings of the Romantic Sublime such as the Tonalists and Casper David Friedrich but represent a contemporary moment.
herringerkissgallery.com
Sean Jena Taal | Shadow of the Hollow
April 26 – June 8, 2024 | Opening reception April 26, 5 – 7pm
Norberg Hall (Suite 333b, 36 Ave. SE)
Free to explore
Calgary based artist Sean Jena Taal’s Daedalian graphite drawings highlight an elusive tension created between humans and a subterranean ecoverse. These natural forms take shape in dark and moist areas like caves and hot springs found throughout the Rocky Mountains in Alberta.
norberghall.com
For more visual arts events and exhibitions, head over to the arts and culture events section of yycwhatson.ca
