The Project
The Northeast Mini Galleries program started in 2023 as part of the City of Calgary’s Northeast Public Art Initiative.
History
Calgary City Council noted a lack of public art in northeast Calgary compared to other quadrants, passing a motion on October 13, 2020 to specifically identify and support public art projects in the northeast.
The Northeast Public Art Initiative brings several public art projects to Calgary’s northeast communities, supports local artists, enhances northeast neighbourhoods and reflects the people who live in the communities where the art will be located.
This initiative aims to build amazing spaces for people to come together and provides opportunities for local artists to showcase their talent while celebrating the diversity of artforms, people and cultures represented in northeast Calgary.
The Northeast Mini Galleries
As a part of this initiative, the Northeast Mini Galleries launched in 2023 and showcased 39 local artists, selected by local art curators. Each mini gallery exhibition runs for a four-month period. Calgary Arts Development is working with The City of Calgary to transition this successful public art program into our work.
The Northeast Mini Galleries Public Art Program is comprised of 13 mini galleries, including 10 located at different community associations, and three located downtown inside the Calgary Municipal Building’s atrium.
Summer 2024 Exhibition
This exhibition ran from July to October 2024 and was curated by Tomas Jonsson.
Curatorial Statement
I grew up in what would now be called Inner City Calgary, off Edmonton Trail, in the near Northeast. From the vantage of the hill outside of our backyard, I could survey the neighbourhoods, industrial park, the parallel flows of traffic on Deerfoot trail and the railway, the regular departure and arrival of airplanes.
My conception of the Northeast eventually expanded along conduits of buses and CTrain stations, visits to friends in Temple and Marlborough neighbourhoods, family visits to Ikea, Franklin and Marlborough malls, and movie theatres. Later visits would extend to further reaches of the North, past Nose Hill, to communities like Beddington, where my mom relocated. She continued to enjoy the airplanes that regularly flew overhead, until the flight paths changed due to complaints from residents. My conception of the Northeast continues to redefine as I gain understanding of the dynamic currents and relationships, across scales and frames including the personal, geographic, cultural and political.
Artist and Architect Adrian Blackwell identifies four primary physical divides of cities: Rivers, Rails, Roads and Infrastructure. These have implications as to the ways in which different areas of cities develop. It’s not a coincidence that ‘the wrong side of the tracks’ often falls to the north and east of urban spaces. The development of industry is influenced by geography, the flows of water and airways, which in turn influence where people live. The quadrants in Calgary are marked by the Calgary Tower and Centre Street separating east and west, and the Bow River demarcating the north and south. The continually expanding Northeast of Calgary is further defined by complex build-up of infrastructures that have shaped development, as have industrial and commercial centres. This thin veneer of urbanity is a recent overlay on deeper Indigenous relations, orientations and currents that continue to resonate despite attempts at obscuring and erasure by colonial structures.
Within these structures, an interlacing of individuals, communities and networks of relation and navigation flow like water, further articulating and redefining each other. We all emerge from different centres, and the corresponding ripples that emerge form new patterns and points of relationships. The artworks, and perspectives by this gathering of artists, give me pause to question: Can new frames of reference cause us to look, and live differently? Rather than bifurcating the city, can we think in different wholes? How do our stories change when we listen and share with each other?
— Tomas Jonsson
Artists
The participating artists, artworks and community locations:
- Amelia Vermeulen: Hearth | Thorncliffe Greenview Community Association
- Leia Guo: Trials and Tribulations #1 | Winston Heights-Mountview Community Association
- Mohar Gupta: My house window in India | Crossroads Community Association
- Mitra Samavaki: Somewhere in between | The Livingston Homeowners Association
- Maya St. Louis: Roots in a Room | Beddington Heights Community Association
- Penny Gunderson: Alberta Storm | Falconridge/Castleridge Community Association
- Ashley Andrade: Transit | Marlborough Park Community Association
- Simona Singh: Lost in Translation | Temple Community Association
- Fadi Alkhouri: Community of hope | Rundle Community Association
- Nirmal Cheema: Stay | Martindale Community Association
- Paityn Savoie: ᒪᐢᑯᑌᐤ MASKOTEW prairie | Municipal Building Atrium
- Shruti Sharma: City | Municipal Building Atrium
- Hareet Ranu: My Colourful Neighbourhood | Municipal Building Atrium