Visiting Artist Series (VISA): Dick Averns

Join us to in the Green Room, (CCS 227) to hear from our fantastic visiting speaker, internationally exhibited sculptor and award-winning artist, Dick Averns.

Averns has established a vibrant, socially engaged art practice. The content of his multi-disciplinary oeuvre recalibrates the commodification of space: probing how mental and physical spaces are valued, bought, sold, exchanged, and contested. Since being deployed as an official war artist with Canadian troops in the Middle East, Averns’ work has toured nationally and been
featured in numerous publications. In addition to exhibiting at museums and galleries, he also maintains an active presence through public art.

The critical value of the artist’s practice was recognized in 2020 when he received the City of Calgary Mayor’s Cultural Leaders Legacy Award for Healing Through the Arts, following a multi-year project addressing community mental wellness. The artist’s current projects include a twenty-five-year survey exhibition Illumina(ng Language, writing an essay for a book on acclaimed Métis artist David Garneau, and exhibiting in Monumental, a major collection show at the Canadian Clay and Glass Gallery.

His Exhibition, Illuminating Language, curated by Lubos Culen, opens at the Vernon Public Art Gallery on Thursday, October 5th, 6-8 pm.