This month’s exhibition at the Salmon Arm Art Gallery has garnered so much interest and repeat visits that curator Tracey Kutschker has extended it to Sept. 19.
“We’ve had almost double the attendance,” she says, noting summer visits usually average about 30 to 50 people per day. “Typically, we’ve had between 50 and 80 for this exhibition and on the day of the gala, we had 200 visitors.”
And visitors are coming to Salmon Arm specifically because of the powerful show.
The two-part exhibition by internationally renowned artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures-Miller includes Experiment in F# Minor (2013), a mixed-media sound installation, and The Muriel Lake Incident 1999), a cinematic installation.
Within a darkened room, built especially for the exhibition, sits a large table covered with a collection of bare speakers of all shapes and sizes.
Light sensors are set into the edge of the table and as the viewers move around the room, their shadows cause the various sound and instrumental tracks to fade up and overlap, mingle and fade down.
When several people are in the room a cacophony of musical compositions results. And when the room empties, the table fades to silence.
In the Muriel Lake Incident, viewers don headphones and watch a three-dimensional film, with onscreen dialogue interspersed with whispers in the ear of the listeners, as if a woman were sitting next to them.
“Some people are really resonating with it and they some come back two or three times, especially for Experiment in F# Minor, so it’s bringing people downtown,” Kutschker says, noting young folks are really enjoying the experience. “For me, the big reason I said yes when they offered to extend it is because it goes into the school year so more children can see it.”
Kutschker says the exhibition appeals to a very wide audience.
Another reason to visit downtown for an art fix is the annual Culture Crawl, which displays artists’ work in 30 businesses as well as at Marionette Winery the Hive in Canoe from Aug. 1 to 29.
Brochures for this self-directed walking tour are available at the art gallery on Hudson Avenue Tuesday to Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and at the Visitors’ Centre from 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.