Embroidery Walking

Drooling, snuffling, and scratching, we headed to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to see art by contemporary Japanese artists and woodblock prints from the gallery's beautiful collection.

The kids, the dog, and our stomachs were getting restless and hungry, but we made the journey through the small gallery, absorbing as much as we could.

There was an event happening inside the mansion, so we couldn't check that out. The building houses the offices of the AGGV staff.


I love the cheerful colour scheme of the exterior of the house.
There is a shinto shrint here and I forgot to take a photo of the donkey made of styrofoam packing that one of the Japanese artists had made that stood on one side of the courtyard.

Of all the contemporary work, I best enjoyed the pieces by Sayaka Akiyama. She makes visual diaries using handmade paper, embroidery, beads and cloth. One of her pieces is a big tent you can hang out in, its transparent walls printed with maps. Her home spun work is a refreshing presence in a post modern art scene that often rewards slick and over-produced work. I was happy to see a good representation of the work of female artists in the show. The wood block prints in the other gallery were stunning. The colors are still fresh in their muted tones, and the amount of information they convey on a two-dimensional surface reaches across the centuries.