Cameron Kerr, Freud’s Ceiling, 2012, Marble. Collection of the Kamloops Art Gallery, gift of the artist.

Image Credit: Contributed/Kamloops Art Gallery

KAMLOOPS - The Kamloops Art Gallery and the City of Kamloops are proud to announce the permanent installation of a new artwork at the entrance to the Tournament Capital Centre.

The newest public artwork recently installed in the city is by important British Columbian artist, Cameron Kerr.

The work is from the Kamloops Art Gallery’s permanent collection and is now installed permanently at the TCC location as part of a public art partnership with the City of Kamloops.

Cameron Kerr has a longstanding relationship with the Kamloops Art Gallery. He created the commemorative wildfire sculpture that is permanently installed outside the TNRD building, which houses the library and art gallery, and his work was notably included in the exhibition An Era of Discontent: Art as Occupation at the KAG in 2012. The acquisition of this work, Freud’s Ceiling, is indicative of the Gallery’s mandate to collect work by living Canadian artists who have previously shown in Kamloops Art Gallery exhibitions.

Installing the work at this location allows the Gallery to share its permanent collection with a broader public. Public art is a key marker of all mature cities and this initiative is indicative of the dual importance Kamloops puts on both sports and culture. This work reflects the KAG’s commitment to supporting artists who are working and contributing to the conversation in British Columbia’s vibrant art scene today.

Freud’s Ceiling is based on a pattern found on the ceiling of an addition that was built on to Sigmund Freud’s house in London, UK, where the artist Cameron Kerr visited. The design references a naturally occurring pattern that forms in the visual cortex of the brain when one is half asleep. As part of his exploration, Kerr was also interested in research developed by a neurological scientist at the University of Chicago, Jack Cowan. Cowan discovered the mathematical formula that occurs in the visual cortex which produces hexagonal patterns.

Commissioned by the City of Vancouver to celebrate the City’s 125th anniversary, Freud’s Ceiling is part of a body of work that emerged from research into various sources, including art history, modernist architecture, iconography in the built and cultural environment, as well as the fields of biology and psychology. Freud’s Ceiling is similar to Cameron Kerr’s earlier work, in which he produced sculptural objects based on hexagonal concrete city planters. The carved forms and markings in these works evoke familiar urban shapes and reference the rods and cones that form the human eye retina.

Kerr’s geometric sculptures suggest a bodily relationship to our built environment and allude to perceptual processes, where the sculpture embodies the very mechanisms of viewing in the object being perceived and understood by the eye. Now in its prominent location at the TCC, the architectural references of this sculpture acknowledge the importance of this civic building to the citizens of Kamloops.

Cameron Kerr developed his marble carving skills at the Academy of Fine Arts in Carrara, Italy and studied with William Tucker and Anthony Gormley in the UK. He went on to study at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, where he worked with well known artist Liz Magor. Working in marble, he developed an approach that merges traditional, figurative and conceptual strategies.

News from © iNFOnews, 2016