The University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, is hosting The Wave2008: Blurring Boundaries, an international art and design exhibition which aims to foster collaboration between art schools around the world. This year’s World Arts College Vision Exchange Exhibition and awards show opened on 16 December.
The show has never been held outside Europe and Asia since it began five years ago at the Ewha Woman's University in Korea. Works by students and staff from several arts and design schools, including the Camberwell College of Arts, the University for the Creative Arts and the Cardiff School of Art and Design, all in the United Kingdom, along with those from Korea and the University of Alberta are on display till 17 January at the Fine Arts Building Gallery. Students will compete for as much as US$5,000 awards.
Art and design professor Aidan Rowe, who is also the exhibition’s curator, says it’s a great opportunity to have a non-traditional art show at the U of A and that the university’s inaugural hosting of the international exhibition is not the only unique feature of this year’s show.
Rowe said the exhibition was the largest held so far in the series. "When I tallied the works, 165 art pieces have arrived from around the world,” Rowe said.
This year’s exhibition questions the fundamental understanding and concepts of the arts and their media.
“Arts and design shows are normally very focused, either on a special individual or field. This is a mixture of different schools and types of works all displayed together,” Rowe said. “We try to brake or blur those boundaries between concepts of art and design and their national origins.
“Definitions and categories help make things manageable and understandable,” Rowe said, and that the traditional practice of grouping art has its limits. “But the further we move along academically, the more we can start to question those. There will be pieces of work at the exhibition that question whether artwork is a drawing or a painting, design or art.
“It’s quite interesting to take a piece of art on a different value than the definitions we impose on it," he said.
The Wave2008: Blurring Boundaries. World Arts College Vision Exchange Exhibition and awards, 16 December 2008-17 January 2009, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
