Above: Mal de Mer, a film, by Marina Roy and Graham Meisner. ???? Courtesy of Nanaimo Art Gallery
By Managing Editor Molly Barrieau
The first exhibit of 2017 and last in a series of three for the Nanaimo Art Gallery (NAG) opens this week with a reception in the recently renovated space, celebrating the 40th anniversary of the gallery.
Landfall and Departure follows Nanaimo’s longstanding history and connection to the harbour located merely metres from the doors on Commercial St. Featuring artwork, photos, recordings and archival material from the Nanaimo Archives, the NAG develops the good and bad that arose from the jobs and resources the harbour created for Nanaimo and its residents.
Chris Kuderle, Administrative Director of the NAG, said in a press release, “Throughout its existence the Nanaimo harbour has seen the displacement of the Snuneymuxw people who had utilised the harbour’s resources for thousands of years, the arrival of precarious mine workers from China, UK, and Scandinavia, and the World War II internment of Japanese Canadians who ran successful herring salteries and boat-building companies there.”
There is abundant history in the waters, and the physical remains shown at NAG this spring not only come from Nanaimo, but across the world, and even “harbours of the imagination.”
Following two years of resource-based exhibits Black Diamond Dust (2014) on coal mining; and Silva (2015/2016), forestry, Landfall and Departure will ideally gather our historical relational knowledge of our harbour city for future Nanaimoites, and travelers alike.
The exhibit will run from the reception on January 26 to March 27. Admission is by donation.
Molly is a creative writing major with a modern languages minor, has a love for editing, publishing and linguistics. She is in her fifth and final year at VIU. She hopes to land a job in Montreal and open a poutine truck with her partner when she retires.
