Gallery One currently boasts a fabulous collection of copies of famous art works. Come and view the likes of Monet, Matisse and Modigliani! These sensational original works (over 40 of them!) are extremely well-executed in a wide variety of media. These masterpieces were created by artists in the region and donated for auction to raise funds to support exhibitions and programming at Gallery Vertigo. The works will be on exhibition until Saturday August 19th at which time they will be moved to the Vernon Community Arts Centre and auctioned to the highest bidder starting at 8pm.
New Larger Venue!
Due to the popularity of this event, we find it necessary to move to a larger more comfortable venue this year! Many thanks to the Vernon Community Arts Centre for accommodating us. Your hospitality is very much appreciated.
Tickets on sale now!
Tickets are available for just $20 in advance at Gallery Vertigo and at the Vernon Community Arts Centre for those who would like to attend the event. The number of tickets is limited. We urge you to buy your tickets early to avoid disappointment!
Our Gala Reception begins at 7pm on August 20th
Scrumptious appetizers will be served from 7 to 8pm (included in ticket price) and wine will be served at a nominal cost.
Enjoy live music by Windmill (Cory Myraas) between 7 and 8pm.
This will allow guests to mingle and have a close look at the works before the action begins.
Guests are asked to wear their most fantastic frippery for this over-the-top tongue-in-cheek “elegant” affair. (What better time to sport your feather boas and silk, that old bridesmaid dress, your jewels, fancy hats and tiaras, your cowboy boots and tattoos?!)
This is a cash and carry event! We accept cash or cheque only.
Please arrive on time! Her majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, (aka Christine Pilgrim) will begin the auction promptly at 8pm! Tardiness is tantamount to treason!
God Save the Queen!

About Auctioneer Christine Pilgrim:
Christine Pilgrim studied method acting with Joan Littlewoods's theatre workshop in the East end of London, England. After three years training, she went straight into London's West end with an awful play called The Overdog, and soon she came out again! Her TV claim to fame is in The Benny Hill Show. She's made several films, including The Fool which is available on DVD here in Canada.
Always having an eye and an ear for comedy, she specialized in British music hall and eventually became a stand-up comic, both on the international and British stage and was featured on British TV.
Pilgrim immigrated to Canada in 1992, when her stepfather died, to look after her mother.
She got bitten by the BC history bug and specializes in bringing stories from the past to life at historic sites from Barkerville to Fort Langley and all stops between, including our local Hat Creek Ranch. She also visits schools and museums with her one-woman history-based shows, and her indominatable school ma'am character, "Mrs. McPherson". She has appeared at Gallery Vertigo as the artist Emily Carr and, of course, as Her Majesty the Queen. She has also conducted family workshops and done some storytelling at the gallery.
Pilgrim is also a great storyteller and frequently presents classic stories, as well as some of her own, to children at schools and private functions. Her latest (and dearest) venture has been facilitating workshops that use drama to problem solve, with youth at risk.
Comedy always feeds whatever Christine Pilgrim does, whether it's a show, historic interpretation, storytelling or workshopping. She is convinced that laughter keeps you healthy; it prompts the memory glands and is the best way to learn anything. It certainly feeds her outlook on life.
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The exhibition, remapping, consists of recent work that challenges everyday understandings of maps as objective graphic representations to aid navigation. By deconstructing and reconstructing various forms – an atlas, vintage roadmaps, and a child’s globe – remapping questions the political, economic, and environmental assumptions embedded in the ways we are encouraged to understand the world. The centrepiece of the exhibition is white out, a 384-page road atlas of North America. Each map has been masked with white gesso so that only major highways are visible. This absurdly non-functional object thus becomes a metaphor for the uncertain global future created by over-consumption and unsustainable environmental practices.
The map is open and connectible in all its dimensions; it is detachable, reversible, susceptible to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual, group or social formation. It can be drawn on the wall, conceived of as a work of art, constructed as a political action or as a mediation.
(Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1987)
Portia Priegert is an artist and writer based in Kelowna. She is completing a Master’s degree in Fine Arts at UBC Okanagan and is a former director of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art. |
Selected works from local artist, Sindri Hans Guðmundsson will be on exhibit at Kalamalka Vertigo until May 6th. These colourful paintings reflect the artist’s exuberant graffiti and mural work. Originally from Iceland, the artist currently has a studio outside Vernon. He is also a popular instructor at Gallery Vertigo’s SMARTIES, a family art-making program that runs from 2 to 4 pm every Sunday at the gallery. Sindri’s work can also be viewed at “Kush Organics” where a large wall mural is in progress.
Artist Statement:
Hello my name is Sindri Hans Guðmundsson aka “Softy”. I was born in Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland in early summer in 1982. I have four siblings, three brothers and one sister. They are, starting from the eldest, Óli, Daddi, Gunny and Dolli. My mom is Gunna and my dad is Gummi. These are all nicknames. The real names are way too long and unreadable for the English speaker.
Since the crazy 80´s so many things have happened. I was one of those hyperactive kids, but instead of being medicated, my Grandma had other solutions. She would just keep me busy with all kinds of different things. So, as child, I took piano lessons, practiced soccer, basketball, badminton, chess and track and field, along with writing and acting in school plays and other cultural events.
In my late teen years I started a crew with some of my friends and made hip hop mix tapes and graffiti. It was called T. M. C. or Twisted Minds Crew. By then I had started working in a coffee shop in Iceland called “Prikid”. In English that means “The Stick”. This coffee shop is the oldest coffee shop in Iceland, established in 1951. It is very dear to me, as it has been a second home for Icelandic artists since the 50´s. There, you can come at eight o´clock in the morning and have breakfast and join in on the city gossip or philosophical discussions. At night, it changes into a bar and on weekends it is a really popular popular hip hop/indy/electro club with the occasional live performance. It was a great place and still is. I started working there when I was 18 and continued until I moved away from Iceland at 23 years old. In those five years along with my job I would organize small concerts, do all kinds of different art projects, started a nightlife guide, and founded the first free newspaper just for girls called “Ordlaust” with four friends.
I always knew I needed to travel a lot, which is hard when you live in Iceland because, as you probably know, it´s an island in the middle of the Atlantic! And the plane tickets are not that cheap. So, I finally figured it out. I found a job in Norway on a cruise ship which sailed between Norway and Denmark. It was great! I worked for two weeks a month on board and then I used my other 2 weeks for travelling. I had a little place on board the ship where I could paint (by then I had already started selling my work in Iceland). Most of the work made in Norway is still in Norway on the walls of my co-workers houses. I always had a new order when I came on board again and some extra pocket money. After 2 years of sailing and travelling, I had kind of fallen for Copenhagen. It´s such a beautiful city! But, I moved back to Iceland and started working at my little coffee shop again. But, after two years of travelling, I kind of felt that Reykjavik was a little small for me.
My girlfriend at that time was an exchange student from Paris, France. After her year was finished in Iceland, I went with her to Paris and spent almost a year there. I was so lucky to be able to get this wonderful apartment on the hill just under the Sacred Heart (that is one of the most beautiful places in Paris). I started painting graffiti again in Paris, as well enjoying the city of arts on my long board looking for wood panels from houses under construction to paint on and sell outside in the “area of the masters”, where the painters lived in Paris during its many years of being the home of geniuses.
After Paris I just really felt that I needed to live in Copenhagen. So that’s where I went. I started working as a backstage vegan and vegetarian cook in a concert house that hosted 70 % of all foreign bands that visit Copenhagen. I got to meet all kinds of different artists like Ac/Dc, Depeche, Mode, Moby, Air, The Mars Volta , and Hank Williams the III. I had two exhibitions while in Copenhagen.
I came to Vernon in August 2010. My mom and my little brother had lived in the Okanagan for four years. I had visited a couple of times before and I found it to be a warm and welcoming place. I have never had time to start my education, and I have been alone and away from my family for so long. I figured I could hit two flies in one punch and so I chose a school here, close to my family.
I have had one show here at Gallery Vertigo last November. I have also been having fun guiding the Vertigo art group for kids on Sundays called “Smarties”, as well as painting a big mural in a local store called “The Kush Organics”. So, if you like what you see here you can go there and see a giant-sized wall mural.
This show is dedicated to my Grandmother, Ebba, who was the rock in my life. She moved to the next life last Christmas. She loved all animals, and inspired me to always paint beautiful things. She taught me how to love life and nature.
Inspirations: Nature, spiritual guides, role models, forms, shapes, happiness, colours,music, psychedelic, beauty, feelings, imagination, love, vanity, molecules, space, infinity and galaxies…(Guðmundsson) |