ViewPoint Gallery celebrating 20 years of fine art photography

The photographic art cooperative marks the milestone following a move from downtown Halifax to Bedford just before the second wave of COVID-19 shut down the province

HALIFAXtoday\ Steve Gow

ViewPoint Gallery is celebrating more than two decades as one of HRM’s most unique photographic arts showrooms by having a grand opening of sorts.

Having moved the gallery from downtown Halifax to its new storefront Bedford location in October 2020, the group was forced to delay an official grand opening due to the pandemic until it coincided with ViewPoint Gallery’s current Looking Back Twenty Years retrospective exhibition.

“One problem has been the shutdowns,” says president Roxanne Smith about moving the gallery just before the second wave of the pandemic. “We have had a few new people coming in to look at our gallery (but) perhaps our promotion has been too low key up to this point (because) some people will be visiting for the first time.”

A cooperative gallery run by volunteers, ViewPoint forged ahead throughout the pandemic regardless, extending most one-month exhibitions to two months to make up for restrictions on the numbers of people allowed in the space at one time.

The pandemic also forced the gallery to reduce or adjust some of their other offerings such as photography classes and workshops as well as panel discussions and artist talks. Now with their Looking Back Twenty Years retrospective exhibition, Smith hopes that it will be an introduction to the community.

“What we want is to let people know is that we’ve been around for a while and that we represent a really diverse group of artists,” says Smith about the exhibition. “Also, there’s room for all different voices of artists to participate in the gallery — as a member, as a friend of the gallery and in the other events that we have.”

ViewPoint Gallery exhibits and specializes in promoting fine art photography from specifically Nova Scotia artists. In part, that initiated the group’s decision to move to the Bedford Highway location as it allowed the space to be more welcoming to artists outside HRM.

“It was really important that it was accessible for people who are from out of town,” admits Smith, who notes people were often challenged finding the gallery’s previous location just off Spring Garden Road. “So we almost want it to be a grand opening in a way to our new location (and welcome) more local visitors and have more community engagement with our artists and our work.”

The Looking Back Twenty Years retrospective exhibition will spotlight some of the nearly 240 exhibitions that ViewPoint Gallery has showcased since the artist-run cooperative was founded as a collaboration between photographers and printmakers looking for shared gallery space.

“There will be 82 images that each represent one of the (past) solo exhibitions,” says Smith, noting that the scope of the project forced organizers to exclude group exhibitions and some work from previous solo exhibitions.

“It really depended on the participation of the person holding the solo exhibition so if they’re not represented with an actual print, they do have cards that represent their exhibitions (and) a lot of group exhibitions are represented by the rack cards that were needed to promote the shows as well so there are a lot of those.”

The exhibition will run until the end of October with the gallery open and free to the public Thursdays through Sunday. Private viewings can also be arranged provided there are no other conflicts.

In addition, ViewPoint will feature retrospective virtual panel discussions over Zoom on Sept. 12 and 26 as well as Oct. 21.

“They will be panel discussions with members talking about the history of the gallery, talking about their shows and about being a member of the gallery,” says Smith, noting links and information will be available through ViewPoint Gallery’s website.

Smith also encourages interested artists to submit their photography for peer review, adding that becoming part of the ViewPoint’s cooperative has many perks for would-be artists.

“There’s a lot of public galleries and artist-run spaces but they (aren’t) showing a lot of local people,” says Smith. “We hope that people will be coming here and choosing it as a destination to see local art and interesting exhibitions.”

For more information on ViewPoint Gallery, visit their website.