Image: Audain Art Museum, Vancouver
At the opening of ‘Solstice: Through Storm & Stillness,’ the museum officially named its Upper Galleries the Gordon Smith Mezzanine in celebration of its 10th anniversary. The exhibition is presented in the Gordon Smith Mezzanine this winter.
Drawing on the Audain Art Museum’s Permanent Collection and private holdings, the exhibition brings together works by Andrew Dadson, Gathie Falk, Gordon Smith, Karin Bubaš, Kim Dorland and Landon Mackenzie across painting, sculpture and photography. ‘Solstice: Through Storm & Stillness’ explores winter as both a natural environment and a metaphor for the emotional and psychological experience of enduring difficult times.
Anchored by Gordon Smith’s ‘Winterscape,’ the exhibition presents works by Andrew Dadson, Gathie Falk, Gordon Smith, Karin Bubaš, Kim Dorland and Landon Mackenzie as distinct yet connected perspectives on landscape, material and atmosphere. Gordon Smith (1919–2020) was a defining figure in Canadian painting whose more than 70-year career included an evolving practice across painting, printmaking and sculpture, moving between representation and abstraction.
Across painting, sculpture and photography, the exhibition considers how moments of turbulence—including storms, shifting weather and stark landscapes—exist alongside quieter states of suspension, where stillness becomes a space for introspection and recovery.
