Vancouver IslandUniversity

evolution: a journey

A VIU Visual Art Alumni Exhibition

January 14 - February 14

It is with pride and great excitement that we welcome back to the VIEW Gallery six recent graduates from VIU's Visual Art Program. Since leaving VIU, these exceptional individuals have continued to grow and thrive as they push their art-forms in new and exciting directions.

Inspired by the interconnectedness of Indra's net, Jadranka Andros builds up the surfaces of her watercolour and acrylic paintings with rhinestones, crystals, wire and paper to create compelling works in relief. Andros says that "Each piece is both a fragment of the whole and a mirror of it, inviting viewers to see themselves as part of a larger, unified world"

With vibrant colour, hard edges and flowing lines, Carra Christie’s vibrant acrylic on canvas paintings beautifully capture the energy of air, water, sound and movement through space.   Within the frames of her recent acrylic paintings she creates a “visual bending-of -the -rules” to conjure a perspectival impossibility that creates, she says “ a visual enigma which the viewer intuitively attempts to ‘untangle’ in order to satisfy the rational mind. “

With a profound and delicate touch, A. Georgi Frie has created a suite of reductive block prints that invite the viewer to take flight with her. With minimal means Frie successfully conjures, wonder, innocence, and the peace that comes from direct observation. With two, three and four colour compositions, she cinematically portrays the aerial acrobatics performed from a flight school close to her home studio.

Julia Knowlden’s lush and atmospheric oil on canvas depictions of the fungal world and the mycelia networks that support them, hold within them a quiet resistance to the commercial, industrial powers that seek to transform our wild natural places into condos and strip malls. Her sculptural textile work Hanging by a Thread is, itself an artifact of a performative act of resistance in front of Canmore Town hall ( that can be viewed in her video). The performance was a protest to the recent decision to develop part of the Three Sisters  Wildlife Corridor into condos and resorts.

Working intuitively in sculpture, mixed media, watercolour and ink, Jason Ritter transforms his grapples with past trouble into beautiful works of art. Through a process akin to alchemy, he wrests with these internal battles, forging his struggles into objects and images of power and beauty.

Denise Tierney’s evocative work in oil on cradled panel and canvas takes as its focus the human condition. Her use of colour and gesture reveal a masterful handling of her medium. In the suite of works she is sharing with us here, she casts her sensitive gaze on life’s rituals. Whether in light hearted shared traditions, or personal rites of passage, heavy in gravitas, are all present in these compelling compositions.

It is an honour to welcome these six VIU Visual Art Alumni back to share the fruits of their labours.