By Erica Eades, Staff Contributor
Peter Dykhuis is preparing for what he believes to be the “hardest show ever to install.” As Director and Curator of the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Dykhuis has organized his fair share of exhibits. But he knows that the 56th Annual Student, Staff, Faculty and Alumni (S.S.F.A.) exhibition is going to be a challenge.
The show, which started in 1953, has existed for as long as the Gallery has been open. According to their website, the S.S.F.A. exhibit began as a way “to showcase University artistic talent and firmly identify the gallery as a university facility.”
With no visual arts department at Dalhousie, this type of event continues to provide a necessary outlet for the school’s creative students.
“A well-rounded university touches on all aspects of contemporary culture and life”, says Dykhuis. “What we’re providing to Dalhousie is the visual arts component that basically every other larger university has.”
The event is open to all members of the Dalhousie and King’s communities. Contributors can submit up to three pieces of work, which can include painting, photography, mixed media, video, sculpture and crafts.
Although the event organizers aim to include all submissions, they require that artists rank their pieces. If an abundance of work is received, the artists’ number one piece will be shown.
“I don’t stand around going, ‘This is in. That’s out,’” says Dykhuis. “It’s really meant to be a portrait of the community.”
Dykhuis also sees the event as a great opportunity for non-professional artists to have their work shown to the public.
“It shows the work that people do for themselves,” he says. “They may not sell the work, they may not want to sell the work, but it’s still absolutely worthy and socially interesting to display.”
New to the show this year is the Art of Inclusion segment. This is a collaborative project between the Dalhousie Art Gallery, Student Accessibility Services, International Students and Exchange Services and the Black Student Advising Center.
According to the Art of Inclusion application form, their hope is “to create a deeper comprehension of the changing demographics at Dalhousie and raise awareness about the importance of a welcoming and inclusive environment.” The program aims to represent a vast range of religions, races, cultures, sexual orientations and disabilities.
“That’s the second layer of experiment,” says Dykhuis. “To see what comes in from their jurisdiction and then whether or not it ends up being an exhibition within an exhibition or whether that work is spread out throughout the main exhibition.”
Organizing the main exhibit also has its difficulties. Dykhuis says part of the challenge comes from the wide range of voices present in this type of show.
“It’s multi-authored,” says Dykhuis. “If you have 40 or 50 artists, you have 40 or 50 voices.”
Dykhuis relates the set-up process to a game of Scrabble.
“When you start a game, you just kind of dump all the tiles,” he says. “At the end of a game, everyone has their tiles, and they’ve made words, and you’ve got this complete conversation. Everything links off of each other.”
Dykhuis says he searches for the artists’ intentionality when organizing this exhibit. He then analyzes the work to find commonalities in terms of subject matter and material.
“I want it to look good, but there should also be an intellectual pragmatism as to why things are beside each other,” says Dykhuis. “If you leave the person confused as to what it is they’re looking at, you’ve failed.”
Dykhuis hopes that the Student, Staff, Faculty, and Alumni show will tell a story through the collective work of the Dalhousie community.
“This is our way to reach out to the community, and just have a conversation with our neighbours,” he says.
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