The October Crisis had just settled and Trudeaumania was hitting the streets of Montréal.
Sideburns, bell bottoms and polyester were in. War was out.
Smoking was still allowed in every restaurant and bar. Renee Lévesque and his Parti Québecois were gaining steam.
A Romanian gymnast named Nadia Comaneci became a star. Pop prince René Simard ruled the airwaves drowned out by the vinyl guitar blasting of Kiss and Led Zeppelin.
The ‘70s was an interesting decade in la belle province, no more reflected than with the politics and pop culture at the time.
A small taste of the times reflected through art is about to arrive at the Vernon Public Art Gallery when Les Années 70s, or the The Big Turnaround of the Seventies, opens in the Topham Brown Gallery on Jan. 10.
Produced by the Musée du Bas-Saint-Laurent in Rivière-du-Loup, Que., and made possible in part through a contribution from the museum assistance program from the department of Canadian Heritage, the exhibition contains paintings, sculpture, printmaking, photography, digital arts, and fibre arts, produced between 1962 and 1982 by 25 leading artists from Québec.
Visual art produced in this decade in Québec was both visually stimulating and historically revolutionary, said VPAG curator Lubos Culen.
“It focuses on the changing paradigms in the visual arts in Québec that began in the 1940s and was fully reaffirmed in the 1970s,” he said. The exhibition documents the development in visual arts which positioned artists from Québec in the international mainstream of art production with diverse influences including minimalist art, land art, conceptual art, op art and kinetic art movements, hyperrealism and the return to figurative art.”
Along with Les Années 70s and Katie Brennan’s Clouds and Other Sky Phenomena, the Vernon Public Art Gallery will be showing a large collection of small works titled GoPoPs (Glass on Paint on Paper) by Langley artist Lorena Krause as well as Breakaway Pottery Studio’s 20 + Hands, featuring the work of local potters under the guidance of Al Scott.
The Jan. 10 opening reception takes place from 6 to 8 p.m. All exhibitions will run to March 14. For more information, visit www.vernonpublicartgallery.com or call 250-545-3173.
