Bathers

Neil McClelland

This exhibition opens on Friday, Feb. 6th, 7:00–9:00 PM
Exhibition runs through Sunday, Feb. 22nd, 2015
Gallery Hours:
Saturdays and Sundays, 12 to 4 pm,
or by appointment.

Artist Talk — Sunday, Feb. 22nd, 2:00 pm

In “Bathers” Neil McClelland works through ideas about how contemporary images of people at the beach, which he sources from image-sharing sites such as Instagram, have a genealogy that traces back to the art historical tradition of the bather. Neil’s paintings take Cezanne’s bathers as a starting point for using the visual language of painting to create bathers that exist somewhere between the past and the present, between “the art in the museum” and contemporary representations. He seeks to convey something familiar but strange, an in-between space and hybridization that provokes questioning about how we represent ourselves now and how we look at paintings.

Neil McClelland grew up in Quebec and currently lives in Victoria, BC, where he received his MFA from the University of Victoria. Neil has exhibited in artist-run, public, and commerc­ial galleries across Canada. He teaches painting and drawing at the Vancouver Island School of Art and has taught in other art education institutions in BC and Alberta. His paintings explore connections and disconnections between the art historical tradition and contemporary visual culture.