A Studio Quivering in Readiness

September 13-November 24, 2024

Gordon Adaskin / Todd Baker / Wayne Eastcott / Max Ernst / Miriam Haworth / Brian Fisher / Roy Kiyooka / Toni Onley / Bill Reid / Lin Chien-Shih / Gordon Smith / Jack Wise

A Studio Quivering in Readiness explores a breadth of West Coast art sustained through the friendships and collecting practices of lifetime supporter and patron of the arts, Harry Locke. Representing some of the province’s most significant artists, this exhibition brings together vibrant works on paper from the City of Burnaby Permanent Art Collection, offering a radiating vantage into life in the studio and the relationships that sustain an artist’s way of being and creating.

Through this single donor, we begin to trace the vital networks of support which propel an artist’s practice and livelihood. Through companionship, acquisition, institutional governance, collection safe-keeping, and exhibition, an artist’s vision may come into view. While a teacher of English at the Carson Graham Secondary School in North Vancouver, Harry Locke was elected to the Burnaby Art Gallery Association in 1974, and records indicate he was on the Board until 1980. Archived letters between artists and collector highlight the influence of the broad range of the arts had on their studio practices, which resulted in the works now in the care of the Burnaby Art Gallery.