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Robert Amos: Changing times in our art world

Things aren’t what they used to be. This week, I went for a walk around downtown to visit the galleries and was surprised to find that Winchester Modern, the satellite of the flagship gallery in Oak Bay, had taken down its sign and gone.

robertamos.jpgThings aren’t what they used to be. This week, I went for a walk around downtown to visit the galleries and was surprised to find that Winchester Modern, the satellite of the flagship gallery in Oak Bay, had taken down its sign and gone.

The premises were put up for sale and sold immediately, and quiet descended on the Humboldt Valley. I recall the time not long ago when Winchester had not one but two galleries on that block, kitty-corner from the Empress. The Side Street Studio of Oak Bay had an outpost across the street. And now there are none.

(Please note that Winchester is not going broke, as evidenced by their strongly selling show of Toni Onley’s watercolours over in Oak Bay.)

So I continued on my walk, up to Broad Street to visit Couch Gallery in its location at 1010 Broad St., where once Winchester had its first downtown shop … and a sign taped on the door thanked Couch’s clients for their “short and sweet” run there. Somehow, running a gallery wasn’t as much fun as the owners thought it would be.

I walked over to Fort Street and dropped in on the new Alcheringa Gallery (621 Fort St., 250-383-8224). After 30 years at their old location, which was low, dark and rambling, Alcheringa moved into new premises just a block west, in a new building.

It’s one large room, with high ceilings and a bright, quasi-industrial flavour. How will they fit their hugely eclectic range of material into the new space? As ever, the art work is terrific, featuring Susan Point in many media, Chris Paul’s new-age totem poles and those brilliant painted wooden carvings from Papua New Guinea.

On the north side of the Bay Centre is West End Gallery (1203 Broad St., 250-388-0009), where I had a nice visit with owners Dan and Lana Hudon. They are “minding the store” in Victoria this summer, although they also operate a successful West End Gallery in Edmonton.

There, hanging on the wall front and centre, was Blythe Scott, not long ago the toast of Couch Gallery. They tell me she will present a solo show of her new Victoria paintings in the fall.

West End is home to many artists I admire — Greta Guzek’s marvellous arbutus trees and Nixie Barton’s inexplicable encaustic floral panels get my attention. Linny D. Vine, Elka Nowicka and Ken Faulks, who are all in West End’s summer show, were exhibiting at the corner of Rockland and Moss during the TD Art Gallery Paint-In last week, each within hailing distance of my easel.

A little further down View Street is Madrona Gallery (606 View St., 250-380-4660), which is onward and upward in the art game under the enthusiastic directorship of Michael Warren. Warren searches Canada to find new art and artists, and on my recent visit, I spied a thrilling small Emily Carr watercolour of arbutus trees, dating from the early days before she went to France.

Dominating the front entrance was a huge two-part bronze abstraction by Morley Myers. Beside it hung a clutch of expressive oils by Serge Brunoni, and on another wall landscapes of the north shore of the St. Lawrence by Claude Langevin. What is it about the Québécois artists that makes them so productive and so popular, even here on the far side of the continent?

A block away, at Yates and Broad (630 Yates St., 250-721-6562), the Legacy continues to find its way as the University of Victoria’s downtown branch plant of the arts. The building was formerly a bank, then an Argentinian steak restaurant and, for a decade, Starfish Glass.

At that time, it was one of many Old Town properties owned by Michael Williams, who left them to the university, along with his art collection of more than a thousand works by local talents. Now, after extensive renovation, the Legacy has classrooms and meeting rooms upstairs, and the main floor is a functioning gallery where students can gain expertise in exhibiting art.

Currently, “unlimited editions,” a show of First Nations prints, adorns the walls. It is on tour from the Kelowna Museum, where it was curated by Tania Willard of the Secpwepemc Nation, and is of more than the usual interest.

Daphne Odjig’s commanding and brutal rape scene The Evil Spell (1975) shines forth from the far corner, for the exhibition is designed “to preserve, portray and popularize oral histories and address social inequalities.” Roy Henry Vickers’ screen print Second Timothy: 211-212 (1976) is a face of Christ as the man of sorrows, with crown of thorns and a strongly marked bilateral symmetry, designed in form lines derived from his Tsimshian roots.

Near it hangs Art Wilson’s depiction of a front-loading earth-mover driven by a bear. The title, Seizure on Luuluk’s Land, identifies this as a land-claim story.

Polychrome carries on a few blocks to the east at 977 Fort St., and Dales Gallery on Fisgard is a pop-up clothing store for the summer, as is their usual habit. Martin Batchelor is between exhibitions, preparing for a self-portrait show opening on Aug. 15.

And that was that. In the gallery world downtown, things aren’t what they used to be.