AVALANCHE! Looks Back On Its First Year
The AVALANCHE! Institute of Contemporary Art opened a year ago with the goal of promoting emerging Canadian artists and a fondness for the caps lock button. To celebrate their one-year anniversary they will be hosting an exhibition of prints from each of their installations so far titled PAPER TRAIL.
PAPER TRAIL runs from November 8 to December 21, 2013 and features work by Jesse Stilwell, ONVIS (Thomas Dahlgren and Stephen Nachtigall), Kyle Beal, Matthew Mark, Lindsay Wells, Bodgan Cheta, Henry Gunderson, Jeremy Pavka, Karly Mortimer, Kuh Del Rosario, Sarah Van Sloten, Cassandra Paul, Slavek Pytraczyk, Ryan Scott and Austin Taylor. The prints were made in limited edition sets of 10 and will be for sale at the gallery.
Programming director Nate McLeod talks about the gallery’s first year and its plans for the future.
What were your goals when you first opened the gallery?
We were really interested in creating a space specifically for emerging artists and for more experimental practices in a commercial environment. We were trying to create a different structure that is a commercial environment and we are able show work that’s not traditionally sellable.
And lot of your exhibitions have been installations that are site specific?
We’re really interested in allowing the artists to have a lot of freedom with the space and to experiment. A lot of the time when you’re exhibiting in a gallery it needs to know exactly what you’re going to be doing ahead of time. We were really interested in doing something that is based on an artist’s past work, but lets them work with the space and respond to the space.
How has the first year of AVALANCHE! been?
It’s gone really well. We worked with a lot of really great artists. We’re on to our second space now because our first location was flooded. We were right across from the Saddledome. That was a great space. We had the gallery space with six studio spaces that wrapped around it and it was street level. We got a lot of really good attendance and people were excited about what we were doing. Now we’re moved into a new space with the Untitled Arts Society Satellite Gallery on 11 Avenue S.W..
What kind of exhibitions did you present over the past year?
What we’ve been doing for the most part is pairing artists so people whose work complements each other but they’ve never worked together and often they don’t even know each other and we introduce them.
What are your plans for the coming year?
We’ve got a couple of partnerships we’ve been working on. With this exhibition we’ve been working with Jarvis Hall Fine Arts who is doing all of our framing now.
In terms of the future, we try not to plan too far ahead because we like to be able to stay responsive.
PAPER TRAIL runs from November 8 to December 21, 2013 at AVALANCHE! Institute of Contemporary Art, 343 11 Ave S.W., 403-462-6773, avalancheavalanche.com. The gallery is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. or by appointment.