Renowned Victoria artist Tanya Bub has a new exhibit in town, Under the Sea, which aims to promote marine life advocacy and allow the public to get to know some of their aquatic neighbours.
The exhibit is running at the Cedar Hill Art Gallery, located within the rec centre, and runs until Sunday, October 5th.
Bub says that this exhibit was inspired by the way this specific gallery looks akin to a fish tank to her.
“I thought it would be really cool to make it feel like you were walking inside of a block of water,” Bub told Victoria Buzz.
She added that as the show began to take form, she partnered with the Georgia Strait Alliance, who do advocacy and conservation work in the waters surrounding Vancouver Island.
“What I wanted to do was really focus on the individuals who are our neighbours in the sea,” she explained.
“So I have a lot of stories about specific, particular animals.”
One way Bub did this is by creating driftwood and wire sculptures of all 27 Southern Resident killer whales in the J-pod.
Each whale she represented through her art is accompanied by a story of that particular animal.
“I made every single one of them, I named them and you can see how old they are, and kind of get some interesting facts about them, which is really fun,” said Bub.
Another way she tells the stories of the animals around us is with a piece dubbed “Moira and the Jellies,” which aims to convey the journey of a Loggerhead sea turtle who was found off the coast of Victoria.
“They’re not usually found here, and in fact, there’s only ever been one other recorded in the Victoria area,” she said.
“So she must have gotten tossed off track, maybe because she was a very curious sea turtle who got pulled by the current, but she ended up hypothermic in our waters and taken to the Vancouver Aquarium and released near San Diego.”
The Under the Sea exhibit is also meant to be an immersive experience, with pieces high and low, and collages created by Bub that provide added perspective to the viewer.
“I made two huge collages, around six feet by four feet, of a scene which is from the perspective of the featured animal,” said Bub.
“So in one case it’s from the octopus, and you’re kind of looking up through the water and you can see up into the sky, and you can see a tiny little boat—in both cases there’s people that are represented, sort of as after-thoughts, on the surface of the water, unaware of this incredible life that’s right underneath their boat.”
In total there are around 100 pieces in the Under the Sea exhibit, made of driftwood, wire and paper mache, and ranging from three inches to over 10 feet in size.
See some examples of what is in the exhibit below.
(more below)
By partnering with the Georgia Strait Alliance, Bub hopes her exhibit will inspire people in and around Victoria to consider the marine wildlife that surrounds them more as individuals than just things.
“Where we mesh is that both of our goals are to make people really care about the ocean and the inhabitants of the ocean, and through that emotional connection, to possibly take action to support and preserve what we have,” she explained.
Bub will be onsite at the Cedar Hill Art Gallery a few times over the course of the exhibit for various reasons.
On Wednesday, September 24th, and Thursday, September 25th, she will be at the gallery to show folks around from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Additionally, she will be there for a reading by local author Amorina Kingdon on Friday, September 26th, from around 5 p.m. onward.
This show is only running for a little more than a week longer, so get down to the Cedar Hill Art Gallery and check it out while you can!
