- March 5, 2019
University of Manitoba Press and the Winnipeg Art Gallery present the launch of Don Proch: Masking and Mapping.
Date: Tuesday, March 5, 7:30 pm
Location: Ferdinand Eckhardt Hall, Winnipeg Art Gallery (300 Memorial Boulevard), Winnipeg.
Cost: FREE
Featuring Patricia Bovey, Don Proch, and Stephen Borys.
Light refreshments available + cash bar. McNally Robinson Booksellers will be selling books.
Three artworks of Don Proch’s from the WAG’s collection be displayed at the event, including Night Landing Mask, 1982 (silverpoint, graphite, Fiberglas, leather, steel, polyester resin, fibre optics, bone, electrical components); Red River Flood Mask, 1997 (graphite, coloured pencil, steel, wood, sisal, cotton, Fiberglas), and No. 1 West Mask, c. 1980 (Fiberglas, graphite, silverpoint, sisal, metal).
About the Book
Since 1970, Manitoba artist Don Proch has built an astonishing body of work evoking a semi-mythical Prairie past and an unsettled and unresolved modernity. In his complex sculptures and life-size masks, Proch combines intricate draftsmanship with natural and found materials in surprising and transformative ways. Proch grew up in the farmland of north-central Manitoba. Using the rolling hills and unique parkland vistas of the Asessippi valley he creates a complex personal iconography based on prairie life, landscape, geology and history. The result is what art critic Robert Enright called “inexplicable as a miracle.”
Proch first came to the Canadian art world’s attention as part of a group of radical young artists in the 1970s, intent on shaking up the art establishment. His complex installations, masks, and silkscreen prints quickly established his reputation as an innovator with a unique vision. Today he is recognized as one of the most influential visual artists to come out of western Canada, and his work can be found in major public and corporate collections including Canada’s major art galleries.
Richly illustrated with more than 80 plates, the book includes rare excerpts from Proch’s notebooks that reveal his intricate working process. Surveying the course of Proch’s career, curator and art historian Patricia Bovey discusses the themes and influences behind his work and their context within the history of Canadian art.
About the Speakers
Patricia Bovey FRSA, FCMA is former director of the Winnipeg Art Gallery (1999-2004) and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (1980-1999) and Adjunct Professor of Art History at the University of Winnipeg. She writes and lectures widely on Western Canadian art, and is the author of many catalogues and monographs on Canadian art. Patricia Bovey was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 2016.
Don Proch was born in Hamilton, Ontario in 1944. He moved to Winnipeg where he received his BFA and B. Ed from the University of Manitoba in 1966. His debut exhibition with the Winnipeg Art Gallery was the Twelfth Winnipeg Biennial in 1971, followed by eight more exhibitions at the WAG between 1972 and 1997. He has exhibited widely in Canada and abroad, including exhibitions in Paris, Brussels, Chicago and the National Gallery of Canada. His work is represented in collections such as the Art Gallery of Ontario; Art News collection, New York; The Canada Council Art Bank, Ottawa; Exxon Collection, Calgary; Glenbow Museum, Calgary; Manitoba Telephone System; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Shell Canada Collection, Calgary; Vancouver Art Gallery; The Winnipeg Art Gallery; The Richardson Foundation—Greenshields Collection; The Mancy Collection, New York; The Bronfman Collection, Montreal, Quebec; and The Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto.
Stephen D. Borys is the Director & CEO of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Canada’s oldest civic art gallery and one of the country’s largest.
