Editor's Note: Time of opening reception has changed to 4 to 6 pm, Thursday, June 5.
Although living now in Brooklyn, fifth generation artist Peter Gynd was exposed to old masters’ oil painting through his mother, Ursula Medley, who lives in Powell River.
He has travelled through various art genres and arrived at Sense and Place, an exhibition of 20 new photographic works. The work, all part of Gynd’s Blanket Series, explores themes of landscape (place) and its role in the shaping of a cultural identity. Malaspina Art Society will host Sense and Place at its exhibition space throughout June.
Gynd’s exploration centres on creating a dialogue between a landscape and a figure through the vehicle of a cultural object. The principal object being used in this dialog, the Hudson’s Bay Point Blanket, is an icon of historically weighted significance. It is heavily laden with references in trade, colonialism, societal status, regionalism and genocide. Through subtly engaging and investigating these specific references Gynd creates staged visual scenes, a milieu which pairs these histories with art historical poses, relating back to the landscape through a distanced, at times touristic-like, interaction with it.
The resulting dialog explores the contextual narratives built into the visual structures of cultural objects and their links through a figure to the realities of a place. Each work becomes just as much a response to an environment as it is an intervention into it.
Gynd received a bachelor of fine arts in glass from the Alberta College of Art and Design. In 2011, he relocated to New York City, where he currently works from his Brooklyn studio and as an independent curator.
Gynd’s show will open with a reception from 4 to 6 pm on Thursday June 5 at the Vancouver Island University. Everyone is welcome to attend.
