Exhibits

Current Exhibits:

Kim Adams: Love Birds

Love Birds by Kim Adams

April 12 - September 2, 2013

Public Reception: Friday April 19, 2013 from 7 pm - 9 pm
Admission to the event is free, but regular admission to the museum applies through the duration of the exhibition.

The Western Development Museum and the Mendel Art Gallery present Love Birds, an exhibition by contemporary Canadian artist Kim Adams.

BMO Financial Group announced the gift of the sculpture to the Mendel Art Gallery today, at a reception in Saskatoon celebrating the company’s annual meeting in the city. The gift represents a significant contribution to the Mendel’s collection of contemporary art.

“The Western Development Museum is truly excited about this partnership with the Mendel Art Gallery,” said Joan Champ, Executive Director of the Museum. “I think WDM visitors will be quite delighted by Kim Adams’ assemblage. It has a bit of a fun-house feel and actually juxtaposes quite well with WDM exhibits.”

Love Birds playfully re-imagines everyday materials, like many of the items that can be found in the collection of the Western Development Museum. Adams uses farm machinery, grain silos, automobile parts, toys and model train parts to create fictional worlds and imaginary landscapes. His work examines the implications of technology, and the divide between life and art. He questions ideas of utility and mobility, and our relationship to our environment, domesticity, and the social world.

Kim Adams - Artist Biography

Canadian artist Kim Adams is known for hybrid, assemblage type sculptures that incorporate the readymade and prefabricated to explore social structures, the implications of technology, and the divide between life and art. He uses industrial processes to make structures that interrogate ideas of utility and mobility, inspiring questions about our relation to our environment, domesticity, and representations thereof. Adams has exhibited extensively in Canada and internationally, and his works are shown both in sanctioned gallery spaces, as well as out amongst the public.

In this particular show, Adams presents work based on ideas he originally had and made small-scale models for in the 1980s. His return to this project now reflects his unique approach, in that he conceives of many of his works as ongoing, constantly in a state of process and flux. Here he explores the idea of the interaction of two objects, the language of the space between.

Kim Adams has been showing for almost three decades and is currently based in Toronto. Recent solo shows include Artist Colony (Bureau de change, 75th Anniversary of the Banff Centre) at the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto, Roadside Attractions at Galerie Stadtpark, Krems, Austria, and Bugs and Dragons at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Recent group shows include Beyond/In Western New York, Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre Buffalo, Wandering Positions/Here We Go Again, Museum of Contemporary Art, University of Mexico, Insiders at the Musée d’art contemporain in Bordeaux, France, and El Geni de Les Coses at the Office for Artistic Diffusion (ODA) in Barcelona. He is the subject of numerous books and catalogues, and his work is part of many major public collections such as the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Vancouver Art Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada, the Art Gallery of Hamilton and the Centraal Museum in Holland.

More:

Read the full Media Release -->

Visit the BMO Financial Group website -->

Visit the Mendel Art Gallery website -->

View a video of the installation on the CBC website -->

Square Set

A Showcase Exhibit

Square Set Showcase This exhibit features artifacts and video from the 1950s when square dancing became all the rage in Saskatchewan and kept some folks doing the “do si do” for life.

We have partnered with the Hub City Square and Round Dance Association. The first square dance groups in Saskatoon were formed in 1953 – the Gingham Swingers and the Cotton Capers. The HCSRDA’s purpose is to encourage, foster and promote square and round dancing as well as offering training, advice and encouragement.