Oaag Tour: Station Gallery

This weekend, Tudor and I decided to go big and visit three galleries.  The Station Gallery in Whitby was our first stop in a tiring but fulfilling day.

This gallery’s website really got my hopes up.  The pictures in the website made the gallery looked positively gorgeous.  I had totally expected this renovated train station (with an adapted rail container as a separate classroom!) to be the classic but fearlessly modern gallery that the Oakville Galleries were too faint-hearted to be.

The interior courtyard.  Excuse my shoe-dress combo.  It’s a new dress and I haven’t figured out the appropriate shoes.

As you can see, much was lacking in the exterior which looked something like a glass barn with about as much allure as the ROM Crystal (no, I still haven’t went).  Luckily the original interiors of the station were preserved enough to still be charming.

Tudor orders a ticket to destiny.

For some reason the light panels in all the rooms were so-three-generations-ago.  Tudor would like to suggest that the Station Gallery come in to Schneider Electric for consultation.

Also the poor rail container was defiled.  It looks like a builder’s house from the 80’s.

So now to the exhibitions.

The main show was Dan Steeve’s Tantramar Gothic, as stylish narrative about the modernization of a community from the point of view of its houses and landmarks.  At least, that’s what I got from it.   Each image had prose in the borders that read suspiciously like post-parent’s-divorce teenage poetry.  Maybe that was what through me off.  There was something willingly unchallenging about these pieces and the facile pap about modernization as the Big Bad is simply too easy for me to dismiss.  Sadly, the gallery decided to devote three whole rooms to this nonsense.  Note to Station:  you are never obligated to show an artist’s whole portfolio, particularly if it looks all the same.

If the Steeve show wasn’t bad enough,  SG also had a cluttered display of Gary Blake’s nature photography.  I don’t know what went wrong but the images printed flat flat flat.  Oh, and the white balance was a bit blue.  It’s too bad, the images could have been beautiful, if pedestrian.

Also around, Francis Musat’s edutainment globes.  I don’t know.

Our last stop before leaving the gallery were the children’s art display in the garden.  What was sad about this was the children’s pieces had so much more energy and genuineness.

Tell me if these are not brilliant.

So the ratings

(1) Environment:

Attractiveness of space: 9/10
Use of space: 5/10
Maintenance of space: 8/10
Element of Surprise: 0/10
(2) Curating

Effectiveness of Display: 7/10
Consistancy of Display: 4/10
Attractiveness of Display: 7/10

(3) Exhibition

Effectiveness of Exhibition : 1/10

Average: 5.375/10 – aka barely worth going.