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Irene F. Whittome is a contemporary artist of national and international repute with over 35 solo exhibits to her credit and 130 group exhibitions that have been held throughout Canada, Europe and the United States. A critically acclaimed exhibit of her work was held at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montreal in 1997; the exhibit brought together works acquired over the years by the MAC as part of its permanent collection as well as two new works: Gymnasium: Outfit of the Soul (1997), and Chateau d’eau: lumiere mythique(1977). Another important exhibit was held in 1998-99 at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Also, this year, the Musée de Quebec held a major retrospective of her work which will travel throughout Europe in 2001.
In the autumn of 1997, Irene F. Whittome was awarded the prestigious Prix du Quebec’s Paul-Emile Borduas prize, and is the first woman in 10 years to be so distinguished for exemplary achievement in the category representing the visual arts, architecture, crafts and design. Several years earlier, in 1992, she was awarded the Gershon Iskowitz prize for excellence in the arts in Canada.
Prior to taking up residence in Quebec, the Vancouver born artist attended the Vancouver School of Art where she was strongly influenced by Jack Shadbolt and spent another 5 years of study in printmaking at the Atelier 17 of Stanley William Hayter in Paris, France. Almost immediately upon her return to Canada in 1968, Irene F. Whittome began her teaching career at Concordia University in Montreal. In 1974, she created the innovative ‘Open Media’ programme to accommodate developing artists at both the undergraduate and graduate level at the Faculty of Fine Arts of Concordia whose work sidestepped the boundaries of more traditional disciplines. Made full professor in 1995, Irene F. Whittome continues to teach Open Media and Painting at the graduate level as well as courses in numerous visual arts disciplines at the undergraduate level. Her own evolution as an artist has been interdisciplinary, beginning with explorations and creative work in printmaking, painting and drawing, then moving into the areas of installation in her more recent work through her use of architecture, lighting and sound.
In an interview with Bernard Lamarche of Le Devoir (December 8, 1997), Irene Whittome stresses the importance of teaching as an integral part of the life of the artist. It is through teaching, she explains, that the artist remains connected to her or his social environment. Education, in turn, provides a venue through which the essential nature of things are transformed. Similar to the dynamics that are set into motion between the artist and her work, the artist / teacher likewise enters into a relationship with her students by which both can be revivified. "It is they," she confides, "who teach me."
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Irene F. Whittome
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Oceania |
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a portfolio of 9 photo etched images
41.5 x 34.5 cm. (16.25 x 13.5")
aquatint and embossed relief on Kitikata paper
chine colle' to BFK Rives 300g
100% rag, edition 20
released June, 1999
sale price:
$4250
The Portfolio
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Oceania, the shimmering continent, whose archipelagos have fed the West’s imagination ever since the sixteenth century.
Observed from a distance, Oceanian customs and forms have been the object of many a mythic tale. Over time, the tales have converged with the cultures of the Pacific rim and the Indian Ocean to create a great labyrinth of odysseys into the distant past. The travelling narration's inhabit the Oceanian objects, especially the invisible mana, a symbolic and energetic charge bestowed by the objects’ makers and handed down from generation to generation.
In 1929, Francois Poncetton and Andre Portier published a group of works belonging to French amateurs and Surrealist artists (Les arts sauvages Oceanie, Editions Albert Morance, Paris). In keeping with her practice of investigating the significance of collection and her fascination for Pacific art - Ozeanische Kunst (1990), Oceanie/Chine (1997) - Irene F. Whittome has explored her own Oceania, taking as her starting point nine plates from this book.
Whittome observes the way in which the common and distinguishing cultural traits of these myriad islands of the Southern Seas are interwoven, and offers a variety of translations from their common ground. The photoengraved images of the tiki, an ancestral pendent, of the tapa, a fabric woven of vegetable fibres and decorated with pigments, or of masks made of wood or bark, all serve to buttress the artist’s acquatint mediation. She superimposes her own stamp on the work through the addition of a calligraphic gesture, which in turn is heightened by a subtle relief.
Whittome’s creative interpretation stands on its own, however, much like the expressive gestures of the dancer for whom rhythm provides only the initial impulse to movement. The goal is to rediscover the secret writings, to reconnect with the original source when the divine had joined with the human.
States of gemination, plenitude, penetration; and shapes - symmetrical, round, strong - unite with distant idols to give motion to these visual and creative zones as they journey into infinite transgression. Laurier Lacroix, Montreal, 1999.
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