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Art gallery hosts open house and reception to celebrate first new exhibition of 2023

Heart of the House: Art and the West Coast Modern Home features works made and collected by architects and owners of noteworthy modernist B.C. houses.
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Supermarket by Molly Lamb Bobak is featured in the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria exhibit Heart of the House: Art and the West Coast Modern Home. ART GALLERY OF GREATER VIcTORIA

The Art Gallery of Greater Victoria is hosting a free public open house and reception to celebrate the opening of its first exhibition of 2023.

Heart of the House: Art and the West Coast Modern Home features 40 works — including paintings, drawings, sculpture and textiles — made and collected by architects and owners of noteworthy modernist houses in British Columbia.

The exhibition runs Jan. 28 to May 14.

This is the first exhibition curated by Steven McNeil, the gallery’s new Curator of Historical and Canadian Art.

Heart of the House: Art and the West Coast Modern Home will showcase a range of works of art and design objects from mid-century modern homes in British Columbia,” said McNeil. “British Columbia is rich with important modernist homes from the 1950s and ’60s.

“This exhibition will give visitors an opportunity to see first-hand the kind of art and objects that architects and owners of modernist houses would have had, both in Victoria and in Vancouver.”

The exhibition includes works by B.C. Binning (1909-1976), Bruno Bobak (1923-2012), Molly Lamb Bobak (1920-2014), John di Castri (1924-2005), Jack Shadbolt (1909-1998), Alan Hodgson (1928-2018), Nicholas Abkhazi (1899-1987) and Peggy Abkhazi (1902-1994).

The free open house runs 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Jan. 28, with a panel talk with historians and experts on West Coast mid-century design and art from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m., followed by a question and answer until noon.

There will also be a free opening reception between 5 and 7 p.m., where the public can meet exhibition curator McNeil and purchase a cocktail made by Twist of Fate Cocktail Company.

For the evening reception, attendees are encouraged to dress in their best 1960s cocktail attire (think Mad Men) to help kick off the exhibition in style.

The gallery is at 1040 Moss St. More information can be found at the art gallery’s website.

parrais@timescolonist.com