Artists Depiction

Artists for Kids, the Gordon and Marion Smith Foundation for Young Artists, and photographer Victor John Penner have partnered to develop an extensive historical documentation of the artists who have been involved in building Artists for Kids and the Gordon Smith Gallery of Canadian Art for the past twenty-four years, including Ed Burtynsky, Rodney Graham, Angela Grossmann, Gu Xiong, Karin Bubaš, Gathie Falk, Irene Whittome, and Attila Richard Lukacs.

The portrait at its simplest is a picture of a person, a “life-like description” to celebrate and/or identify. Artists Depiction is a series of portraits of Gordon Smith Gallery and Artists for Kids patron artists and is a visceral manifest of the artist as “object.” Taken on a large-format camera with sheet film, the sitter is revealed in a microscopic way, as flesh and blood, and not as their body of work that usually hangs on the gallery walls. Stripped of any pretense, this document serves to preserve the essence of the artists that are the heart of Artist for Kids (AfK).

This exhibition is displayed on the north wall of the Smith Gallery and acts in conjunction with the main gallery exhibition, Figurative Contemplation, an exhibition of works from the AfK Permanent Collection that represent the figure and the creation and discovery of identity.