AGSM provides virtual tour of photo gallery

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/04/2020 (1998 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After closing their doors due to the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak, members of the Art Gallery of Southwestern Manitoba had to think outside the box if they wanted to publicly showcase their latest exhibit on March 24.

AGSM curator Alyssa Fearon and her staff eventually came up with the idea of providing patrons with a virtual tour, which they accomplished using Facebook Live and an old iPhone 6.

In a series of videos that accumulated more than 500 views, Fearon was able to give Westman residents stuck at home a sneak peek of the Brandon Camera Club’s newest collection of photos.

This showcase, titled simply “Manitoba,” features more than 45 pieces designed to celebrate the province’s past, present and future in recognition of its sesquicentennial.

While each photo is unique, the exhibit definitely cultivated certain recurring themes and images, including rural churches, grain elevators, birds in flight, flowers in bloom and magnificent sunsets.

During the March 24 livestream, Fearon explained to her online audience that the Brandon Camera Club has been active in this region since 1965 and features a roster of members who come from various backgrounds and influences.

“Many of them are retired teachers, there are even some retired accountants (and) all different sorts of professions,” she said. “But upon retiring, they really picked up their artistic practice and have plunged themselves into learning new techniques, experimenting with different ways to capture images and capture the way they see Manitoba.”

Even though an unreliable internet connection forced Fearon to restart the virtual tour several times, the gallery’s curator told the Sun afterward that she was happy with how this trial run worked out.

“I think the preparation is more nerve-racking, because there’s a lot of technical details to figure out and learn,” she said. “But once the technical details are sorted out then it was actually a lot of fun.”

In fact, Fearon went on to say that the gallery will be relying on a lot more online resources moving into the spring, since the coronavirus pandemic will keep large public gatherings off the menu for at least another two months.

Not only does this mean more virtual tours, but AGSM is also putting together online workshops to try to make up for all the in-person events and programming they had to cancel in mid-March.

For example, gallery associate Dallas Flett-Wapash recently hosted a series of online seminars on how to use the Unity video game engine in an attempt to satiate the people who were looking forward to the gallery’s scrapped Game Jam event.

And while the ongoing COVID-19 outbreak grows more and more complicated by the day, Fearon said she and all her staff at the gallery are definitely up to the challenge of connecting with their patrons through whatever means possible.

“I think art galleries tend to have the reputation of being slow-moving or slow to bring on new changes,” she said. “So we really want to be as nimble as possible with this situation and respond in a way that still allows our audience to be engaged with what’s happening here, even if they physically can’t be here.”

Anyone who missed out on the gallery’s virtual tour of the Brandon Camera Club’s “Manitoba” collection can re-watch the entire livestream through the gallery’s Facebook page.

 

» kdarbyson@brandonsun.com

» Twitter: @KyleDarbyson