The Comox Valley Art Gallery will mark the closing of Renée Poisson’s sweeping exhibition Meeting the Ground with a full day of activities on Saturday, March 5.
There will be an all-ages Make Art Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., an encore of the community performance We Rise, We Fall at 2 p.m., a book preview and a closing reception.
Activities will start at 11 a.m., when participants in Make Art Saturday will be invited to create and decorate floating assemblages in response to Meeting the Ground.
At 12:30 p.m. participants will go to the Courtenay River to launch the pieces they created.
Make Art Saturday is open to everyone of all ages. Admission is by donation, and materials are provided by the gallery.
At 2 p.m. there will be a presentation of We Rise, We Fall, a collaborative performance that is part of Poisson’s exhibition Meeting the Ground.
After the performance there will be a preview of a publication that will flow from Meeting the Ground, and following that there will be closing remarks and a reception.
Meeting the Ground, which has been on display at CVAG since Jan. 22, is a multi-faceted exhibition based on several years of Poisson’s artistic inquiry into questions related to aging and death.
Poisson, a Merville resident who has practised art for more than five decades, used sculptural elements, video installation, soundscape, performance, printed material, and interactive public response to explore the theme.
Running concurrent to Meeting the Ground is a community exhibition called Falling. This is an ongoing community response to Poisson’s exhibition, where members of the public of all ages are invited to create art that is hung in the CVAG community space.
Meeting the Ground and Falling are open Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., until the closing event on March 5.
After that the gallery will close for installation until March 18, when the next exhibition program opens. The CVAG shop remains open Monday to Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Make/Repeat/Alter — the next exhibition program at CVAG — will feature the work of artists Eric Lesage, Janet Wang, and fine arts and robotics students from the North Island Distance Education School.
It opens Friday, March 18, with an artist talk at 6 p.m. and a reception at 7 p.m.
For details about CVAG exhibitions and events, call (250) 338-6211 or visit www.comoxvalleyartgallery.com.