While many of Calgary’s stages are quiet at this time of year there is plenty of action at Motel in the Epcor Centre where the inaugural Common Ground Theatre Festival highlights emerging artists in theatre dance music and comedy in 15 performances running until August 2 — read all about it on this page.
There is also plenty to see in the hallways of the Epcor Centre including a new exhibition of works by three artists in the Windows Galleries outside the Max Bell Theatre. Artist photographer and writer Alexis Marie Chute’s Unfulfilled Precognition is an exploration and attempt at understanding the tragedy of her unborn son’s impending death; local artist Natalie McDonald’s The Future Is Not Ours To See is a series of paintings of people communicating with the most minute of gestures; and Tia Halliday’s Kindred is a series of collages drawings in watercolour and paintings that invite the viewer into the process of manipulating synthesizing and translating a visual reference like a photograph into a semi-abstract painting. The works are on display until the end of September.
If you head up the stairs from the Centre Court check in on the progress of award-winning Calgary-based artist musician and animator Lyle Pisio at the Ledge Gallery where he will be working on a stop-motion animated short called Haiku 7: PULSE until August 18.
Continuing along the second level take time to contemplate the rotating lineup of exhibitions presented by local galleries in the Plus-15 Windows such as: Alberta Craft Council — Frontiers by concrete artist Matt Heide and Rabbitery creative ceramic interpretations of the natural world by Lisa McGrath (until August 31); Truck Galley — The Canada Collection by Arianna Richardson which consists of collected mass-produced artifacts representing Canadiana accompanied by created artworks informed by this same collection (until August 1); and Untitled Art Society — Calgary-based artist Jake Klein-Waller’s An Idle Warning a series of sculptural investigations into place and existence that consider how personal conceptions of an afterlife might be expressed through the physical and visual languages of the Canadian landscape.
And there’s still more including three short films and videos showing on three monitors in the centre — Friendship created by Ocean Demuth Medina Dennie and Zaiyah Dennie; The Chase created by Jeremy Pavka; and Ravined created by Nicholas Mayne — presented by the Gallery of Alberta Media Arts.
If you’re going to take it all in at once you’ll need nourishment — the bad news is you’re out of luck for now but the good news is the Epcor Centre recently announced that Teatro Group will open a new café called Ca’Puccini this fall in the space formerly occupied by Baraka. And by then there will plenty of action on the stages a new lineup of art exhibitions in the windows and maybe a new name on the building.
