Giving members of Visual Arts Nova Scotia an opportunity to create an exhibition of their work.

Selections from Inventories and Micro-mapping

Peter Dykhuis

July 4 – August 9, 2013.

Artist, curator, and former VANS Mentor Peter Dykhuis exhibits a series of recent works examining personal ephemera through a mapping framework. Describing the works exhibited and their relationship to Visual Arts Nova Scotia’s corridor gallery, Dkyhuis explains:

The works in the series titled “Inventories and Micro-mapping” began with paper-based ephemera — such as personal lists, envelopes and notes — that were cut-and-pasted onto clipboards, then overlaid with maps and images and, as sequenced works of art, posted onto the walls of the Gallery. As visual sentences that embody human relationships that also depict spatial mapping systems, these works mimic communications parallel to those found in digital social media, albeit environments dominated by corporate interests in human interconnectivity.

The works on display in the VANS Corridor are selections from a solo exhibition at the Red Head Gallery in Toronto in September of 2012.  Two of the works were illustrated in a review by Crystal Melville in the Winter issue of Visual Arts News; one was also the anchor image in an article by Kyla Brown in the Summer issue of cmagazine.  Illustrations, however, are pale representations of the real thing.

I thank Crystal Melville, former employee of VANS, and Kyla Brown, a NSCAD alumni now engaged in her Masters Program at Western University in London, Ontario, for their insights. The third work, “Inventory #7 (YORP and Rock Wrap, for Annie)” was exhibited in September at Red Head, but was initially generated for VANS’ 2012 Mentorship Program where I had the privilege of engaging with Annie Macmillan.

Peter Dykhuis has exhibited in artist-run centres and public galleries throughout Canada and the United States. As a member of the Red Head Gallery in Toronto, he has participated in solo and group projects since 2004. On the international stage, Dykhuis has exhibited at The Embassy of Canada in Tokyo in 1998 and installed Pressure Today at the conference titled Cartography and Art – Art and Cartography in Vienna, Austria, in 2008. You Are Here (Works on Paper) was presented at the Sydney College of the Arts in Australia in 2009. TAG Fine Art in London, England, displayed new works produced on clipboards in the exhibition The Art of Mapping organized in November of 2011.

Parallel to this, Dykhuis developed a career as an arts administrator, curator and critical writer, first in Toronto and presently in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In August 2007, Dykhuis became the Director/Curator of Dalhousie Art Gallery at Dalhousie University in Halifax where he is responsible for its administration and programming.

Located inside the Visual Arts Nova Scotia (VANS) office at the Halifax Seaport, since 2000, the Corridor Gallery is complimented by a historical legacy of Nova Scotia culture, simple yet modern architectural elements and an array of current cultural activity in the Cultural Federations of Nova Scotia office. The Corridor Gallery is located at 1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, Nova Scotia and is open Monday through Friday, 9am-5pm.

For further information regarding the Corridor Gallery or this exhibition, please contact:

Becky Welter-Nolan
Programming Coordinator
Visual Arts Nova Scotia
1113 Marginal Road, Halifax, NS B3H 4P7
902.423.4694 1.866.225.8267 f: 902.422.0881
communicate@visualarts.ns.ca