Critical Writing Index

They Made A Day Be A Day Here

by Shawna Dempsey, Lori Millan and Anthea Black

Grande Prairie: Art Gallery of Grand Prairie, 2013

ISBN 978-0-9877278-3-1

Catalogue accompanying the travelling exhibition They Made A Day Be A Day Here, co-produced by the Art Gallery of Grand Prairie, Mendel Art Gallery in Saskatoon and School of Art Gallery in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Catalogue includes Director's Foreword, a curatorial statement by Amy Fung, three essays, artist sketches by Amy Fung, and contributor biographies and photographs throughout. The exhibition "fuses personal histories with cultural prairie lineages, and the day-to-day messiness of the art scene with the comparative isolation of prairie geography." (Quote taken from Alison Cooley's exhibition review, featured on the Canadian Art website.) This exhibition explores issues of time, labour and place.

Amy Fung, who met hundreds of artists between 2007 and 2011, says the show is a reflection on invisibility in artistic labour. “Conversations can reverberate as resonances of a specific time and place, conjuring a shade of purpose and identity,” she says. “We were all isolated geographically and perhaps politically, but we each held a space, and together we made a place.” (Quotes taken from page 11 of the catalogue.)

Texts by Shawna Dempsey, Lori Millan, Anthea Black, Nicole Burisch, Joan Borsa, and Amy Fung. Edited by Andrew Wilmot.

ITEM 2013.169 – available for viewing in the Research Centre

Videos, Artworks and Artists Cited

Amalie Atkins

Heather Benning

Jennifer Bowes

Tammi Campbell

Brenda Draney

Wenesday Lupypciw

Sarah Anne Johnson

Maria Madacky

Mary-Anne McTrowe

Divya Mehra

Jennifer Stillwell

Leesa Steifler