Vancouver Art Gallery Presents RAPTURE, RHYTHM AND THE TREE OF LIFE: EMILY CARR AND HER FEMALE CONTEMPORARIES

Vancouver Art Gallery presents Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree Of Life - Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries from December 7, 2019 to June 28, 2020. Emily Carr (1871-1945) is an iconic Canadian artist who is widely recognized for her paintings of the forested landscapes of British Columbia that evoke the possibility for transcending the material world through the colour, shapes and rhythms of nature. Drawn primarily from the Gallery's permanent collection, this exhibition features a number of Carr's paintings of forest interiors-environments that she often described in her journals as offering an almost rapturous connection to the divine.

"Emily Carr is without doubt a crucial figure in the development of Western modern art in British Columbia," says Daina Augaitis, Interim Director of the Vancouver Art Gallery, "Her achievements were extraordinary - during her lifetime she repeatedly transgressed the societal norms that confined the behaviour of women."

Carr's iconic pictures of West Coast rainforests and Indigenous villages play a central role in the way British Columbia is represented in the popular imagination, but at the same time, have become a focal point for critical discussions of the region's troubling colonial history. Her compositions of geometric and organic forms successfully capture the rhythm and rapture of our coastal rainforests, yet the sombre, melancholic images of Indigenous settlements and totems contributed-intentionally or not-to the myth of the "disappearing Indian" that became one of the foundations of Euro-Canadian colonialism during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Presented in conjunction with Carr's paintings are works from the same era produced by Indigenous creators such as Amy Cooper (Th'ewá:li), Mary Little (Nuu-chah-nulth), and Placida Wallace (Líl?"wat Nation) who followed long-standing sacred traditions in sourcing roots, bark and wood from the cedar tree, known to the Indigenous Peoples of the Northwest Coast as the "tree of life." The continuity of this practice is testament to the vitality and persistence of Indigenous cultures at the time.

The exhibition also features paintings, drawings, prints and sculpture by Vancouver-based artists such as Irene Hoffar Reid, Vera Weatherbie, Beatrice Lennie and Unity Bainbridge who developed their own distinct approaches to the ideals and palettes of modernism. Considered together, these works present an expanded view of the diverse creative practices of women in this region during the first four decades of the twentieth century.

List of artists in Rapture, Rhythm and the Tree of Life: Emily Carr and Her Female Contemporaries:

Unity Bainbridge (b. 1916, Victoria, BC; d. 2017, Vancouver, BC)

Emily Carr (b. 1871, Victoria, BC; d. 1945, Victoria, BC)

Nan Cheney (b. 1897, Windsor, NS; d. 1985, Vancouver, BC)

Amy Cooper (Sto:lo, Ts'elxwéyeqw First Peoples, Th'ewá:li First Nation) (b. n.d., Th'ewá:li; d. 1975)

Olea Davis (b. 1899, Buffalo, NY; d. 1977, Vancouver, BC)

Gertrude Dick (Dzawada'enuxw First Nation) (n.d., Gwa'yi)

Lilias Farley (b. 1907; d. 1989)

Statira Frame (b. 1858, Granby, ON; d. 1935, Vancouver, BC)

Rowena Gross (n.d.)

Edythe Hembroff-Schleicher (b. 1906, Moose Jaw, SK; d. 1994, Victoria, BC)

Beatrice Lennie (b. 1904, Nelson, BC; d. 1987, Vancouver, BC)

Grace Wilson Melvin (b. 1892, Scotland; d. 1977, Vancouver, BC)

Irene Hoffar Reid (b. 1908, Vancouver, BC; d. 1994, Sidney, BC)

Ina Uhthoff (b. 1889, Kirn, Scotland; d. 1971, Carleton Place, ON)

Unknown Séliš (Salish) makers

Placida Wallace (Líl?"wat Nation) (n.d., Mount Currie)

Vera Olivia Weatherbie (b. 1909, Vancouver, BC; d. 1977, New Westminster, BC)

Margaret Williams (b. 1902; d. 1981)

About Emily Carr

Emily Carr is one of Canada's most renowned artists. Born in Victoria in 1871, Carr trained in San Francisco, London and France. Her first important body of work was executed in 1912 when, using the new sense of colour and paint handling she developed in France in 1911, she turned her attention to the totemic art of the First Nations of British Columbia. This work was not well received when it was first exhibited in 1913 and for many of the years that followed she rarely painted. In 1927 she was included in the Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern at the National Gallery of Canada, where her work was widely praised. Encouraged by fellow artists, notably Lawren Harris, Carr returned to painting and continued to paint actively until 1942, when ill health curtailed her practice. In later life, she devoted more time to writing; her first book, Klee Wick won the Governor General's Award for Literature in 1941. She is best known for her attention to the totemic carvings of the First Nations people of British Columbia and the rain forests of Vancouver Island.