Fall 2018 exhibitions

Esker Foundation is excited to present our fall exhibition season featuring exhibitions by Tammi Campbell, Agnes Martin, and Sarah Stevenson, and in the Project Space a collaborative project by Calgary-based artists Alana Bartol & Mia Rushton + Eric Moschopedis.

Tammi Campbell
Dear Agnes

Tammi Campbell’s Dear Agnes presents a selection from the series of visual letters that served as the artist’s wordless communion with Agnes Martin for seven years. Beginning in 2010, Campbell would start each day in her studio by drawing a different variation of a grid in graphite on Japanese rag paper. Campbell would then write the salutation “Dear Agnes” in the top left corner, then fold the drawing twice like a letter. The duration of Campbell’s letter-writing ritual reflects Agnes Martin’s seven-year hiatus from painting, from 1967 to 1974.  

In addition to these drawings, Dear Agnes includes a selection of paintings from the Monochrome series providing a greater appreciation of Campbell’s practice. Placed across from Martin’s paintings, and as if in conversation, all the paintings share an interest in a serene and restrained colour palette and in visual and compositional simplicity that initially belies the true complexity of the works. Each of Campbell’s paintings appears to be wrapped in a layer of bubble wrap, or corrugated cardboard. Closer inspection reveals that these compositions—bubble wrap, cardboard and all—are made entirely of acrylic paint. Campbell calls into question the preciousness of the physical artwork and the ways in which it is ascribed value, a gesture that reveals the critical depth of Campbell’s meditation on the history of modern art, and the relevance of her introspection to the contemporary moment. 

Read more about the exhibition.

Agnes Martin
The mind knows what the eye has not seen

When I think of art, I think of beauty. Beauty is the mystery of life. 
It is not in the eye, it is in my mind. In our minds there is awareness of perfection.
–Agnes Martin from the 1989 essay “Beauty Is the Mystery of Life”

In 1967, Agnes Martin unequivocally abandoned painting, gave up her New York studio, and, with a white pick-up truck and an Airstream trailer, set out on road trip. She travelled first to California, and then to her birthplace in Saskatchewan, before finally settling in the Southwestern United States, where she had lived prior to her decade-long sojourn in New York. Martin would live in New Mexico for the rest of her life.

The mind knows what the eye has not seen offers an unprecedented focus on Agnes Martin’s print works. All 46 prints attributed to Martin are included in the exhibition along with a parallel collection of ephemera on Martin’s life and work. This exhibition brings a renewed emphasis to Martin’s print works, a comparatively under-examined facet of her practice. Shown alongside the prints are three of Martin’s paintings, to provide a more complete picture of her corpus of work and to establish a dialogue between the print and the medium for which Martin is best known. 

This exhibition is co-produced with the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina and has been curated by Bruce Hugh Russell and Naomi Potter, with Elizabeth Diggon. 

Read more about the exhibition.

Sarah Stevenson
Nothing Hidden

Sarah Stevenson’s Nothing Hidden acts as a counter dialogue to Martin and Campbell, using line and grids to delineate three-dimensional space with string and wire sculptures. The relationship between the sculptures and the spaces in which they are installed acts as a constant and shifting dialogue of transparency and containment. The string and wire lines that form grids define the shape of each sculpture, while also framing everything around them—a reciprocal dialogue between inside and out, background and foreground. Like drawing in air, wire and string are arranged into bilateral and almost symmetrical forms and are suspended from the ceiling. They suggest the apparent weightlessness of a jellyfish, the minute exoskeleton of a zooplankton organism, or even the universal energy system of Toroidal Dynamics. 

Read more about the exhibition.

In the Project Space:
Alana Bartol & Mia Rushton + Eric Moschopedis
a hint of perennial magic lingers in its fingertips
Until October 28

a hint of perennial magic lingers in its fingertips is a site-specific project that examines native and non-native weed species in relation to urban development in the community of Inglewood in Calgary, Canada. Soil and seeds of native and invasive weed species were collected from the construction site across from the Esker Foundation and elsewhere in the neighbourhood. These seeds will be grown in the Project Space throughout the duration of the exhibition. In this work, the artists hope to create a conversation about land use, notions of progress, and the de/naturalization process of invasive species. 

Read more about the exhibition.

Followed by:
Jen Reimer and Magnus Tiesenhausen
A tender proposition to the din
5 November 2018 – 27 January 2019

About Esker Foundation
Esker Foundation is a privately funded contemporary art gallery located in Calgary, Canada. The gallery connects the public to contemporary art through relevant, accessible, and educational exhibitions, programs, and publications. Esker Foundation reflects on current developments in local, regional, and international culture; creates opportunities for public dialogue; and supports the production of ground-breaking new work, ideas, and research. Founded in 2012 by Jim and Susan Hill, Esker Foundation is a new model for institutional relevance, curatorial focus, and audience engagement. Admission and programs are free.

View and download the Fall Exhibitions Brochure.

For a digital companion to the exhibitions, download the Esker Foundation App at App Store or Google Play, and watch the Esker Vimeo Channel.

Press contact
Esker Foundation, T 1 403 930 2499 / jhenderson [​at​] eskerfoundation.com
View and download the Press Package.