NEWTON — By pouring and peeling back large drips of paint, Debbie Westergaard Tuepah makes vibrantly coloured graphs and charts based on Surrey demographics.
Fellow artist Ben Reeves throws darts at a map of Surrey and then drives to the sites, where he makes one small painting for each location, mounting the panels on his car steering wheel as he works.
These are some of the works featured in “Views from the Southbank III,” the final exhibit in Surrey Art Gallery’s year-long celebration of its 40th anniversary.
The showcase opens Saturday (Sept. 19) and continues at the Bear Creek Park gallery for the next three months.
The exhibit, subtitled “Information, Objects, Mappings,” brings together three different sets of artwork by 22 artists “who respond to this societal shift while, at the same time, capturing a cross-section of Surrey and its surrounding South of Fraser region.”
In one area of the gallery, Sandee Moore creates an interactive, animated video game influenced by GPS mapping and townhouse living.
Elsewhere, Connie Glover’s wheel-thrown ceramics and hand-built sculptures include elements of nature, including seedpods and buds.
Others involved include husband-wife artists Don and Cora Li-Leger, to be feted as two of Surrey’s latest Civic Treasures at an Oct. 6 event at Surrey Arts Centre, along with historian Roger Bose and journalist Alex Browne.
In all, the art gallery’s three “Views from the Southbank” exhibits this year have featured works by more than 75 local artists.
In SAG’s main gallery, the fourth and final chapter of “Re:Source—A Living Archive 1975-2015” also opens Saturday, continuing its look back at the gallery’s history as presented by artists Jim Adams, Polly Gibbons, Cora Li-Leger, Haruko Okano and Mandeep Wirk. They’ve worked this year to bring the gallery’s archives to life with stories, behind-the-scenes photos and more.
Meanwhile, a new multi-channel soundscape and visual narrative at the gallery explores “The Grove,” the treed area of Newton that has become a hub of creativity over the past year or so. The so-called “Spatial Narrative” is the work of Carmen Papalia, Phinder Dulai and Andrew Lee, who delve into the multidimensional use of the public space, located near the bus loop and rec centre, to tell its story as part of the “Open Sound 2015: Polyphonic Cartograph” exhibit.
The gallery’s latest exhibits open Saturday with an evening reception and artist talk, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Related events this fall include an exhibit tour (Oct. 14), Family Day (Oct. 18), another inFlux party (Nov. 6), an “Archaeology of Art” chat with the artists involved in the “Re:Source” project (Nov. 14) and a two-day Sound Thinking Symposium (Nov. 28-29). For details, visit Surrey.ca/artgallery or call 604-501-5566.
tom.zillich@thenownewspaper.com