Winnipeg
Winnipeg () is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. It is centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, near the longitudinal centre of North America. , Winnipeg had a city population of 749,6 ...
-based visual artist who paints large (2.5 x 6.1 m/8 x 20 ft) cinematic
baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
landforms. Grottesque, her current work on climate catastrophe, is a series of interconnected underground sanctuaries based on seventeenth century English shell grottos.
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...
.
Career
Pike's ''Grottesque'' series of paintings, which the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina circulated nationally in 2018, Pike explores playful and sardonic dystopian refuges using monumental scale and fragile glazes.
For the 2018–2020 Canadian tour publication, the
Dunlop Art Gallery
The Regina Public Library is the citywide public library system of Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.
Services
*Information and reference services
*Access to full text databases
*Community information
*Internet access
*Reader's advisory services
...
's Assistant Curator Blair Fornwald analysed the
gouaches
Gouache (; ), body color, or opaque watercolor is a water-medium paint consisting of natural pigment, water, a binding agent (usually gum arabic or dextrin), and sometimes additional inert material. Gouache is designed to be opaque. Gouache h ...
on paper: "...lumpen bezoars of bedclothes, knitwear, yarn, and fabric coalesce into compositions resembling quasi-landscapes, details from domestic spaces, and the cavernous fleshy interiors of the body."
Museum London
Museum London is an art and history museum located in London, Ontario, Canada. It is located near the forks of the Thames River. It started its operations in 1940 with London Public Library and amalgamated with London Regional Art Gallery and Lon ...
's Curator/Director Cassandra Getty wrote in their publication, "Evocative titles like ''Cavernous Sun Parlour'', ''Buried Dance Pavilion'', and ''Subterranean Day Spa'' suggest that these spaces comprise the leisure sites of a new underground civilization." In her June 2018 Border Crossings review, Sandee Moore called this work "...a tour de force of demented whimsy..."
Curator Mary Reid, described the ''Hysteria Chronicles'' paintings as, "mountainous bundles of clothing...creating a visual topography of overlapping social histories and constructions of gender."
Of the 1990 solo show at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Curator Shirley Madill described Pike's ''Boudoir Series'' as a "...balance on the threshold between reality and the inner space of dreams....to imbue everyday reality with poetry, magic and doubt."
The paintings have shown extensively at large public galleries and artist-run centres across Canada. Pike has received senior level grants from Canada Council, th Winnipeg Arts Council and the Manitoba Arts Council, including several prestigious Major Arts Awards. In addition, paintings and artist-books are in public collections in Canada, the UK (
Tate Britain
Tate Britain, known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery, is an art museum on Millbank in the City of Westminster in London, England. It is part of the Tate network of galleries in ...
,
Victoria & Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
among others) and the US (
National Museum of Women in the Arts
The National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA), located in Washington, D.C., is "the first museum in the world solely dedicated" to championing women through the arts. NMWA was incorporated in 1981 by Wallace and Wilhelmina Holladay. Since openin ...
among others).
As a feminist activist and cultural advocate, Bev Pike has lectured at universities and colleges across Canada. She has been on many boards and action committees, a mentor at
Mentoring Artists for Women's Art Mentoring Artists for Women's Art (MAWA) is a feminist visual arts education center based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Created in 1984, this non-profit organization encourages and supports the intellectual and creative development of women in the visual ...
and is a founding member of the Wendy Wersch Memorial Lecture Series. In 2021, Herizons magazine published Pike's research into 1975's ''Woman as Viewer'' protest exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery for
International Women's Year
International Women's Year (IWY) was the name given to 1975 by the United Nations. Since that year March 8 has been celebrated as International Women's Day, and the United Nations Decade for Women, from 1976 to 1985, was also established.
Hist ...
. The
Winnipeg Free Press
The ''Winnipeg Free Press'' (or WFP; founded as the ''Manitoba Free Press'') is a daily (excluding Sunday) broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It provides coverage of local, provincial, national, and international news, as well as ...
followed up with a feature on Pike's talk on this for a March 2021 First Friday in the Exchange District.
Pike also has created video art and publishes artist's books as well as opinion pieces for CBC,
MSN
MSN (meaning Microsoft Network) is a web portal and related collection of Internet services and apps for Windows and mobile devices, provided by Microsoft and launched on August 24, 1995, alongside the release of Windows 95.
The Microsoft Net ...
, the
Winnipeg Free Press
The ''Winnipeg Free Press'' (or WFP; founded as the ''Manitoba Free Press'') is a daily (excluding Sunday) broadsheet newspaper in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. It provides coverage of local, provincial, national, and international news, as well as ...
among others. Her papers are at the
Archives of Manitoba
Archives of Manitoba (), formerly the Provincial Archives of Manitoba () until 2003,Artexte. For her leadership of a 2001-2002 community action to protect the mandate of Mentoring Artists for Women’s Art (MAWA) to develop professional skills in women, see both Pike’s and MAWA’s fonds at the Archives of Manitoba.
Publications
''Autobiography of an Eccentric Line'' (2001) shows a neurodivergent gene pool.
Swallowing Safety Pins (2007) is an
epistolary
Epistolary means "in the form of a letter or letters", and may refer to:
* Epistolary ( la, epistolarium), a Christian liturgical book containing set readings for church services from the New Testament Epistles
* Epistolary novel
* Epistolary poem ...
history of romance.
''Agony Aunt's Cavalcade of Mysteries'' (2017) compares circus acts to relationships.
Her videotapes, distributed by Video Pool Media Arts Centre, include ''Agony Aunt Tarot'' (2015) about organising women and ''Suffragette Sight Gags'' (2004) satirizing collective action.