Staycation: The Art of Being Here features more than 100 Manitoba-related artworks from the Winnipeg Art Gallery-Qaumajuq collection, spanning the past 50 years. These pieces reveal how the places around us are layered with memory, story and lived experience. Over the coming weeks, the Free Press will spotlight works from this eclectic exhibition, each one offering a new way of seeing home. Experience it in person and enjoy some staycation time at the gallery, on view until December.
William Pura’s View from the Bridge
William Pura. View from the Bridge, 1991
Oil on canvas. Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery; Acquired with funds from The Winnipeg Art Gallery Foundation Inc., G-92-91. Photo: Ernest Mayer. Artwork sponsored by Ken & Lynn Cooper.
If William Pura’s View from the Bridge feels familiar, it should. The painting depicts a stretch along Kingston Row in Winnipeg, but the scene could be any suburban setting, making it easy to place yourself right in the painting. Its large scale draws you in, while the cool colour palette and absence of activity create an eerie calm. Curator Riva Symko describes it as “a big, concentrated work of seemingly nothing”— a fleeting but recognizable moment of Winnipeg life. The artist Bill Pura, who was born in Winnipeg and taught at the University of Manitoba School of Art for many years, currently resides in Santa Fe, N.M.
Gallery hours are 11 a.m.-9 p.m. on Wednesdays (free after 5 p.m.) and from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Thursday through Sunday (free on second Sunday of every month).