The Potemkin Collective is celebrating “the end” this weekend with a new exhibit that is a tip of the hat or the Grim Reaper’s scythe to the Mayan Calendar which predicts the end of the world this week.
It opens at the Dr. Penny Foster Building at 324 -5 street south and runs until Aug, 1.
The exhibit drew 60 artists from as far away as British Columbia and Alberta.
“Some are local, and some are from out of province,” said Bowman Arts Centre Darcy Logan describing the works are varied. So there will be drawings, paintings, sculpture, video installations and even exhibits incorporating sound.
The Lethbridge artists collective left the theme open to interpretation for the artists to explore.
“We really wanted to keep the theme as open as possible, so people cold explore theme of may things like the Mayan Calendar or science fiction movies. We tried to keep it really open,” Logan continued.
They had received very few of the pieces by the beginning of the week.
“So it will be a surprise to us when we install it,” he continued.
He wasn’t surprised by the response to the artist’s call.
“Potemkin exhibits are an opportunity for everybody to contribute,” he said.
The exhibit is also the end of the Downtown Lethbridge Gallery Hop being held in conjunction with the Alberta Summer Games.
There will be five exhibits featuring free wine and cheese from around the world on July 28.
The Gallery hop begins at the Bowman Arts Centre from 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. featuring the exhibits Metamorphosis from the Oldman River Potters Guild and “From the Ground Up” featuring paintings from Anne McClelland and wine and cheese from Australia.
It continues at 7:30 at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery featuring Portuguese wines and the exhibits “Remote Viewing: True Stories” by Milutin Gubash and “Stories from The Lower World” by Marcus Coates.
Then everybody will be hopping to the Burning Ground studio beneath Historic fire hall No. 1 (402-2nd Ave South) at 7:30 p.m. where you will be able to see the works of the Burning Ground Studio Co-operative and wine from South Africa.
From 8-9 p.m., the Trap\Door Artists Run Centre who present “the Wandering Thought II: Harvest by Stephanie Dawn Murray and Argentinian wine.
It “ends” at the Dr. Penny Foster Building with “The End is Near, which begins at 8:30 p.m.
